“Let’s clear the air and call for total civilian disarmament. Period.” says Greg Bates, in an op-ed for the Portland Press Herald in Maine, for which he takes off the mask and calls for an end to the 2nd Amendment.
Mr. Bates is a book editor, and has been linked to writings by radical leftists Ralph Nader, Howard Zinn, Noam Chomsky, and others. He was also a big supporter of Ralph Nader’s presidential campaigns. His editing and pseudo publishing company is called Harvard Editing. He also runs, or used to run, something called “common courage press”, which little information is available on.
In his latest op-ed, titled “Yes, we want to take away your guns: The case for civilian disarmament”, the lowlights include:
We need to stand up to the NRA and push for what is so desperately needed: a complete ban on firearms.
As students under fire in Florida speak out to end mass shootings, many hope this time it’s different. Indeed, their demand is compelling: Our representatives in Washington must act less like politicians and more like parents. Most of them have children; they should act like it.
But a fuzzy demand for “gun control” will likely squander this opportunity to save lives. To end gun deaths, we need to ban all civilian guns.
In the U.S., eliminating guns looks politically impossible. Elimination would be difficult even if we carved out an exception for licensed hunting clubs to keep registered rifles under lock and key. How could a buyback program address our gun culture? Banning guns is especially problematic when the Second Amendment is touted as the right of any individual to own firearms.
Yet while we are a nation that reveres our Constitution, we are also one that changes it when it becomes clear that the Founding Fathers failed to see what modern times require. We changed the Constitution to allow women the right to vote. We reinterpreted it to protect the right to gay marriage.
We must have laws that keep Americans safe from gun technology that the Constitution’s framers never foresaw, from manufacturing techniques to laser gun sights to automatic weapons. Even a simple revolver was beyond their conceptual horizons. On the cultural front, the Australian experience suggests that pro-gun attitudes shift in favor of reducing weapons – once the restrictive legislation saves lives.
Abolishing guns will profoundly alter the American way of life for the better, just like women’s suffrage did. Is gun abolition too extreme? Not if human life comes first.
Many great political victories aim for what initially seems like an impossible objective. Opponents of slavery didn’t advocate “slave control.” They were abolitionists. Gandhi did not campaign to control the British – he sought Indian independence from a starting point that looked hopeless. Nevertheless, in both cases, proponents succeeded while stating their objectives in uncompromising terms.
In contrast, gun-control advocates have long espoused incremental aims while eschewing any overarching objective – and we have been completely overrun by the National Rifle Association. Background checks and banning AR-15s won’t suffice. As long as we demand ineffective change, the NRA can rightly claim that we are either mistaken, delusional or dishonest.
If we want to end the carnage, we must advocate for the solution that is required, not one designed to be politically palatable. Instead of shying away from the NRA’s accusation that gun control advocates want to take away their guns, we should embrace it as a mantra.
Let’s clear the air and call for total civilian disarmament. Period.
To give credit where credit’s due, at least he’s open and honest. He’s outright calling to take away everyone’s guns, unlike the Bloombergs.
