We saw "Avatar" in 3D yesterday. The theater took some money from us in exchange for the tickets, but they would not give us the 3D glasses until we left every bit of our common sense as collateral. It's a good thing, too, since if they had allowed us to keep any common sense whatsoever, I wouldn't have been able to enjoy the movie, considering that in the theater I was unable to turn the sound off. The movie's visuals were pretty astounding and the 3D was very natural and unforced, unlike the equally astounding in-your-face stupidity of the dialog.

In the story, Jake Sully is a disabled former Marine who switches his allegiance from the Marines to the Navy, but for some reason they spell it Na'Vi. He goes to the planet Pandora - which is actually a moon of some other planet that appears to be Jupiter, but blue -under the aegis of a corporation with mining interests on the planet, er, moon. It's a big bad corporation that employs more former Marines than all its miners, scientists and suits put together. Its mining equipment consists of bulldozers, gun ships and giant headless robot soldiers which are driven by normal-sized mindless human soldiers.

There, Sully's mind is placed in the body of a specially cloned member of the Navy, er, Na'Vi. This special Na'vi is the avatar of the title. Sully "drives" the avatar by using his mind to control the Na'vi body. The Na'Vi appear to be human, but blue. Also, they're ten feet tall, super athletic and have tails,which I've read are prehensile, but there is no evidence of prehensileness in the movie.

Sully digs that the Na'vi are super athletic, since his disability is paraplegia and while he's driving his avatar he can run faster and jump higher than any human, and barefoot, too. His impetuousness and exuberance get him into trouble immediately, since, like every maverick hero of every movie with astoundingly stupid dialog, Sully did exactly what he was told not to do by his handler, played by Sigourney Weaver. She's a no-nonsense scientist with her own avatar. We know she's no nonsense because she smokes cigarettes and doesn't like "idiots with guns." I'm not too fond of idiots with guns, either, which is why I was glad Sigourney Weaver's character didn't carry one.

Virtually every human in "Avatar" is an idiot, Sully in particular.After being told by every person he meets on Pandora, from the evil military commander to the, well, evil or stupid everyone else, that Pandora is one danger after another and if he does not do exactly as he is told he will not live to see tomorrow, he wanders off on his own, gets separated from his group and finds himself in mortal danger. After nightfall, he is attacked by a pack of alien dogs. We know they're dogs because they look and act like dogs and we know they're alien because they have six legs. Sully has made himself a spear,the blunt end of which he turns into a torch by wrapping it in some vegetal matter that he somehow knew would burn, even though it was his first day on the planet, and dipping it in some sort of tree sap that he somehow knew would burn, even though it was his first day on the planet.

He is rescued from being Pandoran dog food by a Na'Vi warrior princess who shoots a dog with an arrow, which magically makes all the other dogs go away. He thanks her for saving his life but she's ticked off that he made her do it. She calls him an idiot. She's right. She's disgusted by his ignorance. "Teach me," he implores, whereupon he follows her home like a puppy.

All the foregoing is in English. Sully doesn't speak Na'Vi. The Na'Vi warrior princess speaks English because Sigourney Weaver's avatar taught her. Sigourney Weaver is the Jane Goodall of the Na'Vi.

It's a great convenience to Sully that the very first Na'Vi he meets is the daughter of the Chief, since this gets him immediate access to the top without his having to earn it,  not to mention acquaintance with the best looking Na'Vi woman. He needs access to the Na'Vi Chief of Staff since the whole point of the corporation rocketing him to Pandora and hooking him up with an avatar was to get him on the inside so he could convince them to let the corporation destroy their most sacred site for the sake of some unobtainium. That's right. Unobtainium.

It would have been really tough to earn his way inside, since the corporation hooked him up with an avatar that was a freak by Na'Vi standards. He had five fingers on each hand and five toes on each foot, like you or me. The Na'Vi have four. Sully's polydactylism does not deter the warrior princess from falling in love with him, proving that she is tolerant of freaks and idiots.

The Na'Vi ride alien horses and alien pterodactyls. They are able to control them by plugging their fiber-optic hair into the animals' fiber-optic hair receptacles and then mind melding. In due course Sully get his own horse and pterodactyl, leading to the human Sully being plugged into the Na'Vi Sully who is plugged into the animal. I began to wonder about the impedance of the connections. I also wondered whether the animals were bugged by the fact that the control didn't work the other way around.

The warrior princess is betrothed to the Na'Vi warrior who is next in line for chiefdom, but she never spends a moment with him in the whole movie, instead spending every waking moment with Sully, and nights, too. Don't get any ideas;it's all perfectly chaste for the first six hours (did I mention it's a long movie?) They don't exchange Na'Val jelly until the last act.

Eventually - you knew it would happen - the military arm of the corporation attacks the Na'vi "Home Tree." By this time Sully has been on the outs with the Na'Vi for being in with the humans and on the outs with the humans for being in with the Na'Vi. He wants back in with the Na'Vi because he loves their culture, which at times seems African, other times American Indian and other times Caribbean and his non-paraplegia wants back in with the Na'Vi princess.

Her great-great grandfather became legendary by riding the biggest and baddest kind of Pandoran pterodactyl, the kind that eats the puny ones that the Na'Vi normally ride. Sully figures he'll ride one, too. Then they'll have to let him back in. So he does. They do.

A big battle ensues. The Na'Vi are getting slaughtered. Suddenly the Na'Vi deity - I think it's Enya, the Irish singer - gets ticked off over the despoilment of the planet and sics all the Pandoran animals on the corporate thugs. They crash and burn. Only the evil military commander is left. He is in his own giant headless robot soldier. This device acts as a parallel to Sully's avatar. It is carrying a giant rifle, like Paul Bunyan would carry if he were a twenty-third-century Hessian. Why the guns weren't just built into the giant headless robot soldiers is a puzzlement, since nothing but a giant robot could lift one. Anyway, he goes mano-a-mano with Na'Vi Sully. Sully manages to disarm him, whereupon the evil military commander pulls out Paul Bunyan's Bowie knife! It's an actual giant knife pulled from a sheath on the robot soldier's waist. Now, if I'd designed that sucker, I would have had some retractable blades that could extend like Wolverine's unobtainium, I mean  adamantium, claws, but the big Bowie knife was good for a laugh.

The fight takes place right next to human Sully's don't-bother-me-I'm-driving-my-avatar pod. The evil military commander manages to trash it, leading to a mortal crisis for human Sully, but not before the Na'Vi warrior princess puts a couple of arrows into the evil military commander. Na'vi Sully is out of commission and human Sully is dying. Luckily, the Na'Vi warrior princess's mother is a great shaman who is in good with Enya. She is played by the great actress CCH Pounder. As a gun store owner, I've always wondered why her parents named her Color Case Hardened. Have you ever seen the TV show "Without A Trace?" There's an actress in that show who reminds me of a younger CCH Pounder, but not nearly as good. I think of her as CCH Quarter Pounder.

The custom among the Na'Vi when greeting one another is to say "I see you." This, it is explained, is very deep. It goes 'way beyond "I have visual confirmation of you" and means "I see into you and have understanding of your soul and your mind and your heart." The Na'Vi princess cradles human Sully in her arms. He is dying. With what could be his last breath he says to her, "I see you." She replies, "I see you,too." I thought he would reply, "No, ICU. Get me to the ICU!"

Anyway, the Na'Vi princess gets the Sullys, both human and Na'Vi, to the most sacred tree in the forest - the Na'Vi ICU- and mom, with the help of all the other Na'Vi, who are chanting or singing some Enya song, does some voodoo -she's Caribbean at this point - and the tree covers the Sullys with its own fiber-optic hairs and transfers - well, why spoil it for you?

Since Al Franken was elected to the Senate - wait, no he wasn't; oh, yeah he was; hang on, no he wasn't; well, I guess he was - I thought I'd post this magazine illustration I did for an article on the leftist imbalance in the media. This was when Senator Franken (it just rolls of the tongue, doesn't it?) was a talk-show host on Air America and I was an artist instead of a licensed gun dealer. You might also recognize Phil Donahue, Congresswoman Maxine Waters and a couple of others.

Unfortunatley, the magazine was printed in black & white, so the illustration ended up looking like this:

I’m a little gray in the beard to have been so green in the horn, but sometimes interests develop later in life. At fifty-one years old, I was heading for only my second hunt. On my first hunt, the only deer we saw were three does on the side of the road as we headed home. My hopes were running pretty high this time around, but my expectations were tempered by experience. 

 

Camp was on the banks of the Kern River, a six-hour horse ride from the pack station. The ride was sometimes as scenic as a John Ford western, the high Sierras rising purple through the melancholy pines. Mostly, though, it was rugged, a more-or-less continuously downhill plod over rocks and soft earth on a narrow trail that was often just a ledge along a hundred-foot tumble down to more rocks. From time to time the carpeted forest floor offered a respite from stream crossings, charred hulks of fallen redwoods and the other treacheries of the trail. At those times, we could enjoy the soft crunch of pine needles under hooves.

 

Our little pack train consisted of the pack station owner’s twenty-something daughter who acted as our guide, three mules, my buddy (and gun store boss) Hal, Hal’s old friend Harvey, Harvey’s grandson David and me. Two and a half hours into the trek, Harvey fell off his horse. The saddle had slipped forward onto his horse’s neck and Harvey’d tumbled keister over coconut, landing shoulder first onto a rock. At 67, Harvey was not as resilient as he may once have been, so the fall effectively ended his hunt before it began. He decided to go on, but his left arm was immobile for the rest of the week.

 

When Hal, Harvey and I went hunting two years earlier, Harvey left camp on the second day, neglecting to take with him his map, compass, fire-making tools, food and generally all other survival tools. He then got lost. He slipped into a stream while filling his canteen, risking hypothermia, and spent two nights in the wilderness before finding his way back not to camp but to the pack station. We of course aborted the hunt when Harvey failed to return to camp on that first night. Hal set out on a hike back to the station to get help, while I remained behind to break camp and pack all our things and generally wait around until the rescue party or Harvey showed up.

 

This time, he made it back up into the saddle despite being unable to move his left arm, and we continued without further incident to camp. There, we unburdened the beasts and bid adieu to our guide, who led all the animals back with her to the pack station. It was Tuesday. We were now happily on our own until Sunday.

 

We spent the rest of the day establishing camp, relaxing and recovering from the ride. I was saddle sore for the next three days.

 

On Wednesday morning, I scouted the area along the Kern south of camp. I found rocks and more rocks. It was strenuous work. The river bank sloped sharply and I found myself seeking higher elevations. I had to rest frequently on the climb. More than once I was afraid I’d be unable to climb down. I had several what-have-I-gotten-myself-into thoughts. In the end, of course, I got back to camp none the worse for wear, just tired.

 

Conventional wisdom has it that deer are active in the half-light times of dawn and dusk. They bed down during the day and are uncanny at becoming invisible to humans during that time. So, tired from my recon, I took a nap. When I got up, Hal and Harvey told me about the does that they’d seen directly across the river from camp. Does aren’t bucks, but they’re deer and I wanted to see one.

 

That afternoon, I took off scouting to the north. I kept to the main trail for a little more than half a mile then turned east toward the river. Almost immediately, I found deer sign. There were tracks of at least three or four separate animals, obviously traveling together. The tracks led into the type of thick entangling brush that deer favor but that people can’t negotiate, so I decided to follow the tracks backward, hoping to find where they came from.

 

This led to another fairly steep climb. This time, though, it was over pine needles and fallen trees, punctuated by the occasional boulder or rocky patch. I soon found fresh bear sign in the form of a pine-needle bed and a large mass of droppings. This was exciting to me; I had a bear tag as well as a deer tag.

 

Before too long, the deer tracks led me to a well-used game trail. Here were fresh tracks, much fresher than the ones that led me here. And there were fresh droppings. I followed the trail for quite some distance before I lost it. I’m not the world’s greatest woodsman; I was proud to have spotted the tracks in the first place and to have recognized a game trail when I saw it. At any rate, the idea formed in my mind as I made my way back to camp that tomorrow afternoon I would find a likely spot above the game trail where I could dig in, hide and wait to see what came along.

 

David, Harvey’s sixteen-year-old grandson, didn’t have a rifle, so Hal brought an extra one for him to use. The problem was that Hal hadn’t time to sight it in before the trip. He was going to hike a few miles on Thursday morning to a place where he could sight it in without (he hoped) spooking the game near camp. Now, I had sighted my rifle in, but I had done so with different ammo from my hunting ammo. Ammo of different bullet weights with different velocities will hit at different points of impact. I wanted to zero my scope to my hunting ammo, so I tagged along.

 

The rifle Hal wanted to sight in was a scoped Marlin 336 in .35 Remington. He tacked up a paper plate at about forty yards distance and took a shot. Now, Hal is an expert shot. He’d once come close to being an Olympian, trying out on a whim without having trained. His lack of training took its toll in stamina when, after a crowd-drawing string of bullseyes, Hal tired and shot sixes and sevens in his last few shots, ending his Olympic chances. He could not possibly miss a paper plate at forty yards with a scoped rifle unless the scope were horribly off. Miss he did, so he moved closer and shot again. The plate was still untouched. Closer yet and the bullet found the plate. After six or seven more shots and scope adjustments, the rifle was putting them on the plate at forty yards. David would have a rifle to use.

 

When we got back to camp, Harvey and David told us of the does they’d seen. Now everyone had seen deer except me.

 

Afternoon came and I made my way to the spot I’d chosen about fifty yards upslope of the game trail. I was hidden by a few boulders and a large redwood carcass, but I had a clear view of as much trail as I’d need to see a passing deer, identify it as a legal buck and take a shot. One of the tree’s branches would serve well as a rifle rest. All that remained was to wait.

 

I was dug in well. I’d munched some trail mix and was starting to swat mosquitoes. If it had been a mosquito hunt, I could have filled my tag in five minutes. The light was beginning to dim. Suddenly, from the direction of camp I heard the reverberating boom of a rifle shot. In the woods, a rifle shot sounds different from the way it sounds on the range. The boom is deeper; the trees seem to baffle the higher register, leaving the baritone to fill the air. It’s a very masculine sound. The trees diffuse the sound, allowing it to surround you while maintaining the general direction of its origin before it dissipates and the air is once again still.

 

I was at once excited and disappointed by the shot. I hadn’t seen a deer and, for some reason, I wanted very much to have the first shot at one. So much for that. Now it was possible that any deer coming down the trail might have been spooked into other behavior. Oh, well. I would sit tight.

 

Then came another shot.

 

A minute or two passed and a third shot ruptured the calm. Now I was becoming curious.

 

A fourth shot came and a fifth. I wanted to know what all the shooting was about, but I also wanted to maintain my vigil.

 

A sixth shot boomed out. Now I was going to find out what was up.

 

I arose from my cover and started down toward the main trail. The sun had slipped behind a peak and dusk was swallowing the Sierras. I was crunching not-so-softly on the trail, unconcerned about the noise I was making; by now I was no longer in hunting mode.

 

Just as suddenly as the first rifle shot had come, there came a thrashing in the brush thirty or so yards ahead of me and to my left. A deer bolted from the brush as fast as you can imagine, ran ahead several yards and stopped. A second one stayed in the brush, heard but unseen.

 

It was a deer, alright, but a doe or a buck? I couldn’t tell and it had stopped hidden from me by some trees. I don’t remember unslinging the rifle from my shoulder, but it was now ready in my hands. I crept forward as silently as I could and as slowly as I dared.

 

Ten yards later, I cleared a tree and there it was. My only thought was, “It’s a buck!”

 

It stood stock still. Its rear was facing me at a quartering angle. The buck was looking over its right shoulder straight at me.

 

When I shoot at the range, I am constantly aware of my technique. I concentrate on sight picture and hold and breath control and trigger control. There is never a moment when I am unaware of any or all of these.

 

When I faced the buck, none of these entered my mind. Everything happened automatically, instinctively, smoothly. In one motion I raised the rifle, flicked off the safety, took the shortest of looks to make sure the buck was legal, placed the crosshairs on his shoulder and squeezed the trigger.

 

In the many times I had mused about this moment, every outcome had played across my fantasies. Choking and not taking the shot; hesitating until the deer took off; missing the shot; wounding the animal and having to track it over miles; making a great shot - these and countless other eventualities had occupied my ruminations.

 

No outcome in any of my dreams could compete with the perfection of the reality. There was no hesitation in my actions. I made absolutely the best shot that could have been made.

 

Immediately, the buck’s front legs crumpled. Seconds later, its rear legs folded and it was down.

 

I moved toward it quickly. I lay down my rifle and drew my revolver in case I needed to administer a coup de grace. The buck’s eyes were unfocused and its last breaths were short and quick. In a few long seconds it was dead.

 

 I now faced a few minutes of indecision. I poked the deer with a stick to make sure it was dead. I turned it onto its back and unsheathed my knife. I began to cut a slit from the bottom of its sternum to its genitalia, as I had read and seen in videos that I should. All of a sudden, I realized I didn’t know how deep to make the incision. It seemed like I was penetrating the skin, but, curiously, I couldn’t really tell.

 

I decided to stop and go back to camp to get some assistance. Part way there, I felt foolish, so turned around and went back to the deer. A minute later, I stopped again and again headed for camp. I had to face that I didn’t know what I was doing.

 

When I walked into camp, all eyes were on me. “Well, did you get him?”

 

“Gentlemen,” I replied, “Would one of you like to help me dress this guy out?”

 

Hal and David came back with me to the buck. It was getting pretty dark, now. I actually passed by the buck before I realized it and backtracked to the spot. When he saw the buck lying there in death, Hal, his deep and relaxed voice sounding like Sam Elliott’s, said, “Now that’s a nice mule deer!”

 

He said, “Okay, you cut and I’ll guide you.” I straddled the buck’s chest facing his hind legs. I made the cut, just slightly nicking the stomach. The internal organs bulged from the gaping incision. I cut along the sternum and then detached the diaphragm. I reached into the ribcage holding the knife in a two-hand grip and, with the blade facing upwards, cut clean through the sternum. I reached up over the lungs and tried to sever the trachea and esophagus. It was sweaty, laborious toil, not to mention bloody.

 

The organs of the upper torso spilled out of their cage. The heart was obliterated. The bullet had gone clean through its center.

 

It was very difficult to cut entirely around the inside of the body cavity in order to detach all the organs. By the time I was done, total darkness had fallen.

 

The three of us carried the carcass back to camp. I dragged it to the banks of the river and cleaned it as thoroughly as I could. We then found a tree – conveniently right next to my tent – where we could hang it. I tied the parachute cord around the antlers and we lifted and pulled.

 

As hard as we tried, we couldn’t lift the back legs completely off the ground. It was a good sized buck, maybe 180 pounds, and there was too much resistance from the tree bark against the cord. I used a stick to hold the ribcage open, tied the rear feet to the antlers so nothing would be touching the ground and I put a game bag on the carcass. It was now protected from flies and other meat-spoiling factors.

 

That’s how I took my first buck.

 

What, you ask, was all the shooting about in the first place? David had seen a couple of bucks. He was somewhat south of the camp, among the rocks that I had scouted on that first day. The bucks were along the river bank north of the camp, about 250 yards from him. Even though it was a very long shot, especially with an unfamiliar rifle that an expert shot had just that day put on paper at only forty yards, he took the shot. He missed. The deer didn’t move. Seeing that they weren’t dead and were, apparently, unconcerned, David took another shot. He missed. He also missed his third, fourth, fifth and sixth shots, which left his rifle empty. The deer, by that time, decided that the air smelled a little too much like lead, so they skedaddled, apparently in my direction.

 

David told Hal that he thought one of the bucks had jumped upon his first shot. Hal thought that it may have been hit but not killed. He went where the deer had been to look for blood trail or any other sign that one of them had been wounded. He, apparently, drove them further toward me.

 

The six shots drew me to the buck and drove the buck to me.

 

I learned something about myself that afternoon. The lesson was not that I could take personal responsibility for the food on my table, although I was not really sure I could prior to the event. It was that, in the event some human predator were to violate my home with mayhem in mind, I would be able to protect my wife. While I have always believed I would be able to take the shot if it were a matter of mortal necessity, I now knew I could.

One of the lies we hear repeated is that guns are more available than ever. Unfortunately, the facts don't support the assertion.

 

1968 saw the passage of the Gun Control Act (GCA.) Prior to the GCA, a resident of any state could buy a gun legally in any other state. Since 1968, one can buy a handgun only in the state of one's residence. Prior to the GCA, one could send some money to a catalog company without identification and a couple of weeks later have a gun delivered to one's doorstep by the U.S. Post Office. This is no longer possible. Prior to the GCA, there was no minimum age for acquiring a firearm. A ten- or eleven-year-old kid could save up his newspaper route money, send it to J.C. Penney and soon have a .22. Now, one must be eighteen to buy a long gun and twenty-one to buy a handgun.

 

Prior to the GCA, guns could be sold by any merchant who cared to carry them. It was not uncommon to see shotguns, rifles and revolvers in the local hardware store. Since the GCA, in order to sell guns one must have a Federal Firearms License. Prior to the GCA, one could walk into that hardware store and walk out with a gun without a background check or a waiting period. Now, there are federally-mandated background checks and many state-mandated waiting periods. Here in California, the waiting period is ten days.

 

Prior to the GCA, it was not uncommon to see kids bringing their guns to school. Rural kids brought them so they could bag some dinner for the family on the way home. City kids, in New York, for example, would carry their rifles on the subway in preparation for Junior ROTC, Boy Scout or NRA marksmanship training or competition. Nowadays, needless to say, such an innocent act would land a school kid in jail.

 

Here's what you have to do if you want to buy a handgun legally in the state of California: 1) You must be at least twenty-one years old. 2) You must have at least one of the following: a) a Handgun Safety Certificate (HSC), which you get by passing a written test and paying $25.00. The HSC is valid for five years. Prior to 2003, you must have had a Basic Firearms Safety Certificate, which the state promised us was good for life. It is now null and void, supplanted by the HSC. It apparently was good for life only if you were a mayfly. When the state tells us that the HSC is good for five years, we can only shrug and think “if you say so...”; b) Special Weapons Permit; c) Federal Firearms Curio & Relic License with a California Certificate of Eligibility; d) Carry Concealed Weapon Permit; e) Law Enforcement Identification: active, reserve or honorably discharged; f) Military Identification: active, reserve, honorably retired. Simply having served honorably in the United States military is no longer sufficient for the state of California. g) A few other qualifying credentials. 3) You must not have bought a handgun within thirty days of the purchase, because California has a "one-gun-a-month" law. 4) You must pay a fee to the state for a Dealer's Record of Sale (DROS). That registers the handgun by make, model and serial number and subjects you to the ten-day wait. On the DROS, you must affirm that you are not a felon and have never been adjudicated by a court to be a danger to yourself or to others, been found not guilty by reason of insanity or placed under a conservatorship and you are not subject to a restraining order. 5) You must fill out a federal form (Form 4473) on which you affirm a set of ideas similar, but not identical, to those on the DROS. 6) You must buy the gun from or through a holder of a Federal Firearms License (FFL.) 7) You must then wait ten days. 8) Upon claiming your gun, you must sign the Form 4473. 9) You must buy a lock for your gun that was approved by the state of California for that particular gun and show a receipt for such a lock dated within thirty days of the gun purchase or you must sign an affidavit affirming that you own a gun safe that has been approved by the state of California. Speaking of state-approved locks and state-approved safes, there is also a list of state-approved handguns, about which more below. 10) You must leave a right thumbprint. 11) You must leave a proof of residency aside from a valid California Driver License or California Identification Card in the form of a deed, lease, utility bill dated from within the prior three months or an automobile registration with the same address shown on the DROS. 12) You must perform a safe gun handling demonstration.

 

You have jumped through the foregoing hoops in order to get your gun. Your FFL holder has jumped though some hoops, too.  In addition to the contortions he’s performed to get the FFL, he’s recorded in his Acquisition and Disposition (A&D) book every transaction of both incoming and outgoing guns by make, model and serial number. His FFL limits him to retail sales. He buys his guns from a distributor. The only handguns he is allowed to buy are those on the Department of Justice’s Roster of Handguns Certified for Sale.

 

The distributor has his own special FFL that permits him to distribute guns to retailers but prohibits him from retailing. The only handguns the distributor is allowed to sell to California dealers are those on the Roster. The distributor also records every serial number of every firearm that passes through its possession in its own A&D book. The distributor buys its firearms from either “super-distributors” or from the manufacturers. Each of these entities must have its own special FFL and must also record every serial number.

 

Additionally, every FFL that ships a gun into California must get permission to do so from the California Department of Justice. This permission comes in the form of a so-called "Shipment Approval," a product of the "California Firearms Licensee Check," which is itself a new layer of bureaucracy as of July, 2008 and it applies to every FFL in the nation, regardless of the state in which the FFL is located. California's Department of Justice is in this case acting as a national gun-control agency. If a shipping FFL is unaware of the mandatory "Shipment Approval," and he sends a gun into California without having acquired one, the receiving FFL must contact the shipping FFL immediately to make the shipper get one. If the shipper cannot or will not generate the "Shipment Approval," the receiving FFL, regardless of how legitimate he is and how current his licenses are and how compliant he otherwise is with California law, must return the firearm to the shipper.

 

If a manufacturer wants its handguns to be on the Roster, it must provide for testing three samples of each model of each gun. According to the law, if a gun comes in several barrel lengths, each barrel length constitutes a different model, even if every other aspect of the guns is the same. So, for a gun that is made in, say, three barrel lengths, the manufacturer must provide nine guns to the state. If it comes in blue steel and stainless steel, he must provide eighteen guns. If it comes in fixed sights and adjustable sights, he must provide thirty-six guns. The manufacturer must also supply ammunition for each gun and must pay a fee to the tune of thousands of dollars per gun. The manufacturer does not get the guns back. Once a gun is accepted onto the Roster, its life there is finite. The manufacturer must continually renew the gun’s status. Apparently, a gun that was perfectly safe yesterday can be declared unsafe today, simply because the maker didn’t fork over thousands of smackeroos.

 

In addition, every semi-auto pistol candidate for the Roster must have both a so-called magazine disconnect and a loaded-chamber indicator before it is eligible even to be tested. A magazine disconnect is a gadget that prevents the semi-automatic pistol from firing if the magazine is removed from it. The anti-gun bureaucrats who fuel the Roster’s engine think that any doohickey that prevents a gun from firing somehow makes it “safer.” A loaded-chamber indicator is a thingamabob that informs a person that there is a round in the chamber. According to California law, such an indicator must make the gun’s condition apparent even to someone who doesn’t know what a chamber is.

 

This Roster is ostensibly a list of guns that are "safe" for Californians to own. The preposterousness of this notion is obvious to literally every single person who works with guns or uses them for sporting purposes or collects them or who has even a quantum of intellectual honesty. For example, there is a law-enforcement exemption from the Roster. Police officers can buy any gun they want. Apparently, Sacramento finds it perfectly acceptable for police officers to have guns that the state considers to be inherently unsafe. Moreover, beginning in 2010 the only handguns that may be sold in California are those which are somehow magically able to "microstamp" their serial numbers on the case of every round of ammo that is shot in them, providing the technology enabling them to do so exists and that at least two companies are able to do it independently. Such a capability has absolutely nothing - nothing - to do with the safety of the gun. Instead, the pretext of its mandate has to do with crime fighting and prevention, despite the fact that any such mysterious and wonderful microstamping wizardry can be defeated by even the dopiest thug. The real reason this law exists is to reduce the number of guns that decent honest citizens may acquire. 

 

All these laws and regulations, passed under the rubric of “safety” have had not a scintilla of effect on making a single person safer. Their only effect is to place more and greater impediments between honest law-abiding citizens and firearms. Guns are not more readily available now than they have been in the past. In fact, they are less available than they have ever been. Next year, they will be less available still.

No matter how often or by whom the gun-control issue is debated, there never seems to be any progress made. Why this should be is something of a mystery, since the issue allows only one of two conclusions: either gun control is on the whole beneficial or it is not. The dichotomy is obvious and should be amenable to solution. The issue can be expanded to a trichotomy if we allow the solution that some gun control is beneficial but that the beneficial effects of the controls are vitiated by exceeding them. This complicates the matter by demanding that one bit less or one bit more of whatever amount of gun control is asserted to be the “right” amount be proven to be less beneficial than the “right” amount or that the “right” type of gun control be proven to be superior to some other type. Nonetheless, even this complication should yield to reasoned analysis. Why doesn’t it?

We never reach - or even approach - a conclusion to the issue not because the issue is intractable but because of the nature of the debate. The debate itself has become a corrupt quagmire in which none of the participants brings certain essential qualities that will permit some progress in and even a resolution to the issue. Both sides are guilty to some extent, but it has been my observation that the anti-gun advocates are guilty far more often and to a far greater extent than the pro-gun advocates.

The most important quality that we must posses but rarely do is the willingness to be persuaded. Participants on both sides of the question generally intend to persuade those on the other side of the errors of their ways. Unfortunately, they are themselves utterly opaque to the arguments of their opponents. How can one expect to persuade when one cannot be persuaded? Why should we expect our opponent to be open-minded and receptive to new thinking when we ourselves are not? The objective, of course, is to come to the correct conclusion. In a debate in which there are only two (or possibly three) conclusions one or the other is wrong. We (whoever “we” may be) owe it to the truth to be open to the possibility that the wrong conclusion is ours. After all, it is being right that is important, not maintaining the delusion of rightness or tenaciously defending a position that has been demonstrated to be wrong.

The willingness to be persuaded is nothing more than an invitation to your opponent to do his job. If participant “A” is willing to be persuaded and participant “B” is persuasive, then “A” will be persuaded. If “B” is not, then “A” won’t be.

What is ironic is that the more confidence one has in the correctness of one’s position, the greater should be one’s willingness to be persuaded. The absence of such willingness is responsible for much of the “talking at” each other that we hear on radio and television versions of the debate and which informs the style of grassroots debate among interested individuals in private life.

In any complex social issue, there is at least one legitimate point that can be made by either side. If there were not, it would not be a complex issue. But when the debate is conducted in a public forum such as talk radio, no representative of either side will ever concede a point to an opponent. The unwillingness to be persuaded is to a large degree responsible for this, but there are other reasons, as well.

Whenever a participant in the debate concedes a point to an opponent, no matter how minor the point may be, the opponent typically jumps on the concession and waves it victoriously as though the point were the issue. He will represent the intellectual honesty of his opponent as a weakness in the essential argument and claim, on the basis of the most minor skirmish, to have won the war. Each side knows the other side will do this. Consequently, neither side will ever give the other side the opportunity. Since every listener to the debate knows that at least one legitimate point can be made by either side, the refusal of both sides to concede a legitimate point is perceived correctly as intellectual dishonesty. The listener is more likely to hear legitimate points made by the representative of the side to which he is sympathetic being denied by the other side. He then sees the other side as dishonest and intractable, hardening his own position and diminishing his willingness to be persuaded.

When a point is made, it must be responded to in one of two ways. If it is false, it must be proven to be false in a clear and unambiguous way. If it is true, it must be conceded in a straightforward way, without embarrassment, spin or hesitation. It can then be pointed out that the opponent is being intellectually dishonest in leveraging a minor point into an overall victory. If the point is not a minor one and is instead compelling in its overall persuasiveness, then be persuaded. The audience is intelligent enough to understand all this and must be respected.

There are many other reasons that the debate shows no sign of budging, most of which are the responsibility of the antis. They include, but are not limited to, lies, bad reasoning, concentrating on details to the detriment of the big picture, intellectual cowardice, emotionalism and fear-mongering, superstition and magical thinking, misuse of statistics, false moral equivalences, denial of facts, argument by slogan, mistrust of democracy and emotional immaturity (assuming the role of child while relegating to the government the role of parent.)

In part 2, I’ll describe the lies that infect the debate and suggest methods for dealing with them.  

Most discussions of guns and gun ownership start somewhere in the middle, raising the issues of the second amendment, child safety, assault weapons, crime, etc. In discussions of that nature, in which the agenda is usually, but not always, set by the antis, we never come even close to a hint of commonality. There’s never any basis for agreement between the two sides. I would like to start at the beginning by setting out the axiomatic foundation of my support for the private ownership of firearms and opposition to gun control.

 

In setting out my position from fundamental principles, I will develop my position in a step-by-step fashion. In this way, any reader who is opposed to private firearms ownership can follow along and decide at precisely what point in the development of my idea we part philosophical ways. It will be at precisely that point that we can begin to find a way to resolve the difference.

 

My position stands on two axiomatic legs. The first leg concerns human rights. The second leg concerns the nature of government. These two legs represent independent arguments that lead to a common conclusion. That is, neither argument depends on the other, so if you agree with either argument you must accept the conclusion, regardless of whether you reject the other.

 

Leg One: Humans have rights. This is the “parallel postulate” of social philosophy, in that there is some disagreement as to its self-evidence. I recognize that there are folks who believe that humans have no inherent rights. If that’s your belief, then we part company at the very first step, but please understand that the belief in the non-existence of rights in no way undermines the justification of private firearms ownership. It just shifts the discussion to another playing field. Since I believe humans do have rights, the issues that belong on that other playing field are beyond the scope of this post.

 

The most basic right any human has is the right to live. This follows from “humans have rights” because if the right to live did not exist, no other right can be exercised. My use of the phrase “right to live” has nothing to do with abortion or any issue related to the common phrase “right to life.” I intend to limit the discussion to those folks who are alive beyond any philosophical doubt. Otherwise, the discussion has the potential to become a morass unrelated to the stated topic.

 

By social consensus a person, through his heinous behavior, can implicitly waive a right or have it stripped by society from him. Criminally attempting to kill someone else is heinous behavior. In doing so, the criminal waives certain rights. We understand that sometimes rights come into conflict. When they do, we resolve the conflict in favor of the right that takes precedence. Since the right to live is the most basic right, it takes precedence over every other assertion of rights. So, the criminal, in attempting to deprive an innocent person of life, waives his own right to live.

 

If every person has the right to live, then no person has the right unjustly to take another’s life. If someone attempts to deprive a person of his life, keeping which is his most basic right, then it follows that the person has the further right to prevent the deprivation. Furthermore, the person may use any means necessary to effect the prevention. This follows from the idea that the potential murderer has no entitlement to an advantage, because any advantage would allow him to circumvent his potential victim’s protection of that most basic right.

 

If the bad guy has no entitlement to an advantage, then the good guy has the right to ensure that the bad guy has no advantage. If the use of firearms were precluded from that right, then the criminal would have not one but two implicit advantages. One would be the advantage of knowledge that the innocent person was unarmed and the other would, of course, be the physical absence of a defensive firearm. This contradicts the idea that the bad guy is entitled to no advantage. Therefore, the good guy may include the use of firearms as a means of defending his life.

 

Leg Two: The most fundamental propensity of any government is to increase its power. This is true not only of governments in the whole, but of agencies and other subdivisions of government.

 

The constitutional system on which our government was built was constructed on the sound principles of taking its power by the consent of the governed and the division of powers that would ensure that consent. Even so, the government has grown in both breadth and depth from George W. to George W. Bush. Today, there are not only more persons working for the government than there have ever been, but a greater percentage of our citizens are government workers than ever before.

 

The expanding breadth of the government includes agencies and bureaus as diverse as the FCC, FAA, BLM, EEOC, HUD, (shudder) IRS, (double shudder) ATF, FBI, CIA, DIA, NSC, INS, Border Patrol and, now, the Department of Homeland Security. (By the way, is it just me or does the word “Homeland” give you the creeps also?) These and many other agencies can reach into virtually every area of our lives. Their increasing depth is evidenced by their inflating budgets, their expanding workforce and, most tellingly, by being vested with more and more armed authority.

 

If we look to the lessons of autocratic governments of the past and present, we see that they assert their power by disarming their people and, eventually, murdering those with whom they disagree. If we take the total number of Americans who died by gunfire during the twentieth century plus the total number who died in automobiles plus the total who died in warfare, the sum would be less than one-tenth the number of innocent persons who were murdered by their corrupt governments around the world. Today, innocent persons are being murdered in vast horrifying numbers by the governments of many nations, murders totaling in the millions. In every country in which this wholesale slaughter is taking place, the citizens have been denied the right to private arms.

 

Now, since our country is based on a foundation of individual freedom and our history is generally free of large-scale government murder, complacency regarding the government’s beneficence has become easy. We have cultivated an “it-can’t-happen-here” attitude. The fact, though, is that there’s nothing about being within our borders that inoculates anyone against tyrannical proclivities. It’s just as easy for a potential tyrant to be born and raised here as it is anywhere else. Only two things can prevent an American tyranny from arising: the separation of powers and the private ownership of firearms.

 

Unfortunately, the presidency is becoming more and more imperial, vitiating the checks and balances on it and breaching the wall of separation. Just look at the current administration. Only the private ownership of firearms will absolutely maintain a government of the people rather than a people of the government.

 

Now, I’m not suggesting the United States will become Pol Pot’s Cambodia next week. I’m saying only that the potential for despotism always exists and only an armed populace can quash it. George Washington understood this when he wrote, “Government is not reason; it is not eloquent; it is force.” A disarmed American populace may not guarantee that tyranny will arise (although I believe it will) but an armed American populace will guarantee that it will not.

 

It’s like this: If you don’t want to grow something, you don’t till, enrich and water the soil. If you do those things, something will take root whether you want it to or not. Mandatory disarmament of an innocent citizenry is the fertilizer of tyranny’s garden.

 

 These, in a rather large nutshell, form the foundation of my support for the private ownership of firearms. Again, if you believe such ownership should be outlawed, please rebut both legs of the foundation; they are independent of each other and either suffices to make the case.

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