A lost generation

Wish I'd said that!

[Reprinted from Issues & Views August 20, 2001]

Whether or not you believe that gun registration, gun owner licensing or any other anti-gun gimmick constitutes a threat to the rights of Americans, consider this: When one out of every five high school students believes the Bill of Rights doesn’t mean what it says, how safe can any of our freedoms be? You have to admit that kids today can’t help but be brainwashed. Look at the awesome accumulation of anti-gun images, messages, attitudes and biases they’ve been exposed to over the years.

Not long ago, high school rifle teams were as common as debating or baseball teams. Now they’re being eliminated as if they were some kind of subliminal "boot camps" for future killers. As long as anyone can remember, little boys played cops and robbers with toy guns. Yet now, in some cities, even toy guns are targeted with bans. Everyone from the President of the United States to your kid’s homeroom teacher treats firearm freedom at best with suspicion and, more likely, with outright contempt.

It’s a clever tangle the anti-gun spinners have spun, and not easy for a 14-year-old to see through. First they take a kid’s natural, inborn abhorrence to violence, then equate violence with gun ownership, and then equate gun ownership with gun-rights advocacy. Through this calculated metamorphosis, kids get the not-so-subtle message that owning a firearm is functionally equivalent to killing or committing crime and that the real danger isn’t the criminals, but rather the firearms and those who stand up for the right to own them.

You know where I stand, but let me say it again: I believe the Second Amendment is our single most essential safeguard against anyone who would take away our liberties or our lives, whether it be King George’s Redcoats or today’s criminal predators. But having the right to own a firearm means nothing if that right is buried under so many restrictions, requirements, fees and formalities that Americans simply throw up their hands in frustration and surrender.

-- Charlton Heston, president, National Rifle Association

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