Dear Friends,
It seems to me, we are bombarded by snake oil salesmen, who claim they will “protect” us, if only we turn over our Constitutional and natural rights to them. They use fancy sounding statistics to bolster their argument and appeal to our sense of humanity. The media that calls itself unbiased, shills for these snake oil salesmen, by reporting biased statistics and breathlessly reporting every shooting that happens, with complete biographies of the shooters, their motivation (unless it was politically inconvenient) and splashing their pictures all over the press. Which of course provides more incentive for other unstable people to engage in self aggrandizement, since they know that if only they shoot a bunch of innocent people their names, faces and biographies will be advertised and immortalized by the media that calls itself unbiased. These snake oil salesmen shed crocodile tears at every chance they get, to show how much they care, and that all we have to do is put a noose around our necks, with them at the lever and we will finally be safe from that dreaded gun violence. Of course the snake oil salesmen, and the media that calls itself unbiased, never tell us how they would gain if we submit and turn over our natural rights to them. Snake oil however, has never been shown to solve a problem, but often it has poisoned the person who drank it.
There are three kinds of liars, those who tell white lies, to smooth things over, those who are bold faced liars, who lie when the truth would serve them better, and the worst of the worst are statisticians, who make lies appear to be truths. A statistic can be massaged to tell any story the statistician wants it to. For example, “the US is the gun violence capital of the world…” while simply counting the number of gun deaths would make this statistic appear to be true, when population is taken into account, the US drops precipitously, and when these important considerations are made, Columbia, Venezuela and Honduras, (where guns are illegal), rise to the top. Another false statistic is, “American gun ownership is the highest in the world…” While simply counting the number of guns in the US and dividing them by population, would make it seem to be honest, the reality is far different. Most people who own guns own more than one. Then what is the real gun ownership rate in the US? Closer to 48%! Further, if you removed the cities with the highest gun crime rates, (cities that inconveniently have the toughest gun laws) the US gun crime statistics plummet. All of which shows the biggest liars are statisticians who make a lie seem like the truth.
The news reports on every shooting, showing the carnage and dwelling on the human cost. They tug at our heartstrings and play on our humanity. Each gun incident that bolsters the snake oil salesman’s spiel, we must give up our natural rights to a government, a government that has proven itself incapable, corrupt and rapacious, gets days of airtime, to better effect public opinion. However, if every time a woman was raped, if those stories were shown with the glee and excitement that politically convenient gun crime does, the perception of people would be that rape is out of control, similarly with bicycle deaths of children or any other type of unfortunate event. People’s perception of what is a crisis, depends on what the media that calls itself unbiased wants us to think. The historical example is the Spanish American war. The media sent reporters to Cuba to show the tyranny, the reporters wrote back everything is peaceful here. The editors and magnates told them, you provide us with despotic pictures and we will provide the war… and they did.
Politically inconvenient gun crime goes unreported however. In the cities where gun crime is prevalent, and gun laws are the toughest, there is no national reporting on them at all. Detroit, Baltimore and Saint Louis sees multiple deaths from gang crime every weekend, yet the national news never reports it. This is because it doesn’t fit the narrative, those deaths undermine it. The most dangerous places to live in the US are those places with the toughest gun laws. No one, even the most ardently biased statistician can refute that. Moreover, the media that calls itself unbiased immediately reports the shooter, when they do run with it, is always a conservative. That claim is always found to be untrue but the narrative is out there anyway. Most mass shootings are done by young, depressed, progressive males, with an ax to grind against a society they have been convinced they have no stake in.
The snake oil salesmen immediately gets on camera and weep, gnash their teeth and become indignant on cue, like a good huckster should, every chance they get. They claim there is only one way to solve the problem, giving them total power over the people. They are careful never to suggest the root of the problem is of their own making, and their “random guy in the crowd” the media that calls itself unbiased, claim the solution saved them… and protects them from the truth. Anyone who does mention that the root of the problem is the government itself. But then again, that is what would be despots do, they create a problem, then claim the only solution is to give them more power. In the case of mass shootings the root of the problem is the removal of the founding American ethos from society, the classroom and the media. The ever growing government’s crushing of opportunity for young people, the sexualising of our culture and the switching from lionizing entrepreneurs to empty suited stars. All of which disheartens the youth, by telling them, if you are not beautiful, getting laid every ten minutes, rich and famous… you are a looser. The message is as constant as it is pernicious.
Like the snake oil salesmen of old, the hucksters don’t care a whit about their pidgins, they care about themselves. They know they are selling poison. What they seek is power and wealth. What is at stake is total control of the people. The reason the Framers put the Second amendment in the Bill of Rights… wasn’t to protect hunters, nor so that rich collectors could have huge collections of antique firearms, but so the people, under the auspices of the state governments, could defend themselves from snake oil salesmen undermining our Constitution, and restore the Constitution should the government abandon the ethos of limited government. Whenever a snake oil salesman would ride into town in the old west, his buckboard jingling with falderal, there would be some in the crowd warning that snake oil is poison. Many would so want to believe it would solve all their ills, they would buy it, then die of acute lead poisoning because of it. I wonder, are we any more wise? Or will we fall for the same trick? Sadly, many of us have…
Sincerely,
John Pepin
