THE ATROCITY ENGINEERS by L. Neil Smith Delivered at a Libertarian Party Second Amendment Rally on the Denver Capitol Steps, April 18, 1993 Some years ago I watched a broadcast advertised as "news", in which a citizen was about to read a part of the Bill of Rights, the first ten amendments ot the Constitution, to a gaggle of politicians holding illegal hearings with the intent of further suppressing the individual right to own and carry weapons. These hearings were illegal, among other reasons, because the Colorado state constitution warns that the individual right to own and carry weapons isn't "to be called into question" -- which, of course, was precisely the publicly-expressed purpose of the hearings. As we've all had occasion to learn the hard way, the mass media -- television, radio, newspapers -- never cover this issue with anything even remotely resembling fairness, accuracy, or, for that matter, intelligence, and this particular day was no exception. Before the citizen had even begun to read what the Supreme Law of the Land has to say regarding the individual right to own and carry weapons, some inane commentator's ill-informed and feeble-minded voice-over cut him off. Now an educated and reflective individual, better aware of history and the world around him than the average mass media reporter, understands perfectly well that the Second Amendment was drafted specifically to discourage authoritarian ambitions within the government. By now he also understands that the mass media expression "assault weapon" is actually authoritarian code for precisely the sort of hardware which, given today's technology and circumstances, best meets that specification. Thus an educated and reflective individual, better aware of history and the world around him than the average mass media reporter, refuses to surrender his "assault weapon" -- regardless of whatever legislation gets passed to intimidate him -- because, for instance, he never wants to see his country taken over by militaristic thugs, as happened earlier this century in Germany. "But that's ancient history", the mass media invariably simper (and to them, it is), "such events have nothing to do with now." Very well then, an educated and reflective individual, better aware of history and the world around him than the average mass media reporter, refuses to surrender his "assault weapon" because he never wants to see his whole town driven from their homes and marched to death on country roads, as happened not too long ago in Cambodia. "But that was far away", the mass media invariably simper, "such events have nothing to do with real civilization." Very well then, an educated and reflective individual, better aware of history and the world around him than the average mass media reporter, refuses to surrender his "assault weapon" because he never wants to see his kids or his neighbors' kids dragged into the street to have their arms and legs broken by uniformed goons, as has often happened in Palestine under "civilized" Israeli occupation. "But those are unique circumstances," the mass media invariably simper, "such events have nothing to do with America." Very well then, an educated and reflective individual, better aware of history and the world around him than the average mass media reporter, refuses to surrender his "assault weapon" because he never wants to see entire square blocks of his community bombed into ashes by police helicopters, as happened a while back in Philadelphia. Furthermore, an educated and reflective individual, better aware of history and the world around him than the average mass media reporter, refuses to surrender his "assault weapon" because he understands that politicians anywhere are capable of engineering such atrocities. Over sixty bloodsoaked centuries they've demonstrated exactly what they're capable of, time and again. Right down the line, from power-hungry federal "czars" to publicity-hungry county sheriffs, the atrocity engineers are completely out of control, justifying their latest crimes against the Bill of Rights with a phony "War on Drugs" which the mass media reporters -- who aren't one bit more responsible than when William Randolph Hearst was at the helm -- whipped up for them in the first place. The plain, inconvenient truth is that a century ago, when today's illegal drugs were as easily and cheaply available as aspirin, there wasn't any "drug problem". Not until the atrocity engineers created one. Thus an educated and reflective individual, better aware of history and the world around him than the average mass media reporter, refuses to surrender his "assault weapon" because he never wants to be murdered in his own home under a hailstorm of gunfire and grenades because the vice squad got the wrong address -- or simply because he told a cop he wanted to be left alone. It's happened more than once in Colorado. It happened recently in Waco, Texas. Somewhere in America it happens every day. And now, with their uniformly slanted opinionizing over the "assault weapon" issue, the mass media have handed the atrocity engineers yet another opportunity -- although they may not realize it yet, and by the time they do, it will be too late. When the day comes that they're covering a story which the authorities don't want covered, and a tiny, palm-sized .25 caliber "assault weapon" is conveniently "discovered" by a cop in some reporter's camera bag or glove compartment, I hope they'll remember that I warned them it would happen. I doubt they will. Neither their memory nor their attention-spans seem to be that long. The maintenance of civil order and social democracy is in our hands. It has been there all along. It was never anywhere else. In a nationwide study, Professor Don Kates at the St. Louis University School of Law found that the police succeed in wounding or driving off criminals only eighty-one percent as often as armed citizens do, and are fifteen percent more likely to be wounded or killed themselves. More than five times as many cops shoot an innocent individual in the process as civilians do. Five times. The maintenance of civil order and social democracy is in our hands. It has been there all along. It was never anywhere else. "We the people" were naive and lazy to believe that anything so important can safely be entrusted to "authorities" or "experts" through elections or through any other process. Self-defense, against individual criminals or criminals sanctioned by the state, can no more be delegated to somebody else than eating can, or sleeping, or any other bodily function. History warns us that delegated responsibility becomes power -- And that power is inevitably abused. The maintenance of civil order and social democracy is in our hands. It has been there all along. It was never anywhere else. If civil order and social democracy are ever to be restored to America, our emphasis now must be on enforcing the Bill of Rights -- On Bill of Rights enforcement. We must take that power out of the hands that have abused it and break it down -- break it down -- into units so small that it can no longer be called "power", but simply "responsibility", which, unlike power, comes not from the barrel of a gun, but from the minds and hearts of the individuals behind it.