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L. Neil Smith Article Archive

Why Did it Have to be ... Guns? Over the past 30 years, I’ve been paid to write almost two million words, every one of which, sooner or later, came back to the issue of guns and gun-ownership. Naturally, I’ve thought about the issue a lot, and it has always determined the way I vote. People accuse me of being a single-issue writer, a single-issue thinker, and a single-issue voter, but it isn’t true. …… Read more

Follow the Law I've been holding back for a long time, readers and friends. This subject makes me angrier than any other and raises my blood pressure, which, at my age, I can ill afford. However, now that we're well into the process of seating another Supreme Court Justice -- one who declares that she upholds the law as originally written -- it is long past time to apply a little of this originalism, this textualism, where the Second Amendment is concerned. …… Read more

For Want of a Nail If it seems like I'm angry, it's only because I am. Unless you've been living under the same rotting log inhabited by the slimy, multilegged leadership of the Democrat Party, you know that a St. Louis couple's legally-owned AR-15 rifle was stolen by the police after the couple's lives and property were more than credibly threatened …… Read more

Stop and Frisk The first ten Amendments to the United States Constitution, commonly known as the Bill of Rights, is the highest law of the land. If for some reason you happen to disagree with me about that (probably because of your public "education"), and with the Founding Fathers and the Supreme Court, there's no point in your reading further. …… Read more

Never Again Again Politicians, for reasons that would require another whole essay -- identify with criminals and killers, and not with you. They are the enemy, as much as any rapist or home invader. Politicians don't want you to be armed and are doing everything they can to stop it. …… Read more

The Red Flag Council The Bill of Rights is not simply a laundry list of things that government generously allows its humble subjects to do. (Go to Canada, if that's the kind of society you prefer, go to disarmed and prostrate Australia) It is a list of things that government is absolutely forbidden to do by the people, who were meant own and control it. …… Read more

With Friends Like These, Who Needs Democrats?
"Like many another lifelong weapons "expert" (I am a retired ballistician), I have no use for bump stocks, myself, which destroy accuracy and achieve no useful effect. For that reason, the bad-guys are counting on me and my kind not to defend their ownership and use. But" -- …… Read more

The False Red Flag
We're up against the worst threats we've ever faced and we need each other's help to fight what looks to me like a homegrown communist revolution. …… Read more

Enough is Enough
The twenty-seven simple, easily-understood words of the Second Amendment to the United States Constitution have not proven clear and forceful enough to protect and defend the right it concerns, especially given its ideological enemies who willfully misunderstand it. …… Read more

Maybe Even Trilobites
Animals, especially predators, are all pretty good at risk assessment. I'm absolutely certain, as an enthusiastic student of evolution, that dinosaurs had different kinds of threat display mechanisms, too. Maybe even trilobites. They do their thing and they stay alive. …… Read more

The Gun Culture's Dirty Little Secret
Does the United States Constitution mean what it says? Does it say what it means? Was it written as some kind of obscure code that can only be interpreted into English by individuals with special education and credentials? …… Read more

This is where I came in
Again and again and again. Goblins and mutants of various descriptions and apparent motivations invade a public school or some other unprotected crowd somewhere, with whatever the politically incorrect Gun-of-the-Month happens to be, killing or wounding pupils, teachers, or others by the dozen. …… Read more

YOKO -- OHNO
Yoko Ono apparently celebrates the 36th anniversary of John's death, by calling for (even) more 'gun control'... or more precicely, 'victim disarmament'. …… Read more

A Matter of Princely Pull
Neil suggest some solutions for the likes of Bloomberg and others of similar ilk. Obviously, only gun control advocates should be disarmed, which would result in confiscation of a surprising number of guns …… Read more

ID or not ID -- that is the question
Once upon a time no such thing existed as a license but over time things have changed - now permits, licenses and a IDs are common place. Neil dissects the whole picture in some detail. …… Read more

Two Grand to be True
Indian women are suffering, just now, from a tremendous epidemic (if that's the proper expression) of gang-rape in their streets. An Indian Ordnance factory has been making a hand-made self protection pistol - trouble is only 10 have been sold at the equivalent of $2,000! Neil investigates and has some solutions. …… Read more

I Read The News Today, Oh Boy
We seem to see more and more the erosion and attacks on basic privacy rights -- the NSA's stealthy data mining, executive orders enabling prying into medical records and, rather like last year when a newspaper published lists of gun owners, now a plan to expose state by state, a list of CCW permit holders (unwillinging registrants). Neil comments. …… Read more

An Open Letter to Meryl Streep
Following a declaration by film producer Harvey Weinstein to make a movie to try and hurt the NRA, with Meryl Streep involved - Neil writes an open letter to Ms Streep explaining many things. …… Read more

GRAND-CORPS against "Zero Tolerance"
The whole business of "zero tolerance" in schools is analyzed by Neil, along with some thoughts as to just how the whole absurd process could be controlled and stopped -- "nothing will change unless we change it". …… Read more

Pot And Kettle Projection
Neil looks at the "projection" phenomenon whereby the gun-haters, who demonize and distrust the gun lobby, have to project their poisonous hatred towards all gun owners. If we were like them, then most left oriented people would be denied obtaining or carrying guns. …… Read more

Bad Colonel! No Eagles!
Following a report about a certain Lieutenant Colonel Robert Bateman - who single-handedly promotes the disarming of our civilian population, we have a blazing open letter to him by our own Neil Smith. …… Read more

The "Economics" Of Individual Liberty And The Second Amendment
Neil takes a deep look at some 'economic' fundamentals when related to the 2A and our liberties - what few we may feel we still have left. .. …… Read more

Happy 222nd Birthday, Bill Of Rights
December 15 is the anniversary of the ratification of the highest law of the land -- the first ten amendments made to the United States Constitution -- commonly known as the Bill of Rights. Neil explores aspects of this vital document. .. …… Read more

America's Secretest Weapon
Neil takes a look at the very popular .22LR ammunition, and while it is probably the favorite 'plinking' ammo, it has also been used for lethal purposes over a wide spectrum. He goes on to point out that with the vast numbers of shooters and hunters in the U.S., would anyone really want a dust-up against them all, whatever caliber they might be using!. .. …… Read more

Jim Crow Rides Again
Restrictions popularly known as "Jim Crow" laws, were named for yet another ugly epithet that white bigots reserved for black people. Today, Jim Crow laws are making a comeback, and they aren't just for black people any more. . .. …… Read more

Suppose you were fond of books
Neil Smith draws a cynical comparison between firearms control and the control of books. Similar parodies can be made using automobiles and even everyday objects like kitchen knives, carpenter's tools and more. .. …… Read more

"Being Necessary ..."
"It's likely that no sentence has ever received as much scrutiny as the twenty-seven words of the Second Amendment, one of the first ten amendments to the United States Constitution, collectively known as the Bill of Rights and, as such, representing the highest law of the land" .. …… Read more

Is civil argument possible with a gun-grabber?
Neil outlines many aspects of what some might call "population control" -- leading up to how achieving this would require a disarmed populace. In the United States a 100 million gun-toting civilians however, just might present an obstacle. …… Read more

Hitler was a Piker
L. Neil Smith writes about the 20th Century genocides and even the possible plan buried within "Agenda 21" to reduce global population. He couples all that with the under-current of "gun control" that is seen these days, with particular reference to the U.N. …… Read more

Hillary's Small Arms Treaty Swindle
We welcome back L. Neil Smith with this new article, which deals with many aspects of the proposed U.N. small arms treaty. Read Neil's entire intriguing analysis and see if you don't find his logic decidedly stimulating.…… Read more

L. Neil Smith remembers Aaron
Neil has written an exclusive salute to our late founder, Aaron Zelman. We would like to share this with you.…… Read more

A "High Cap Freedom" Tactic: The Coffee Can Revolution
"Whenever I find myself subjected to victim disarmament drivel disguised as "news" or "entertainment", I drop a quarter (or a dime, nickel, or penny) into a coffee can I keep beside my TV watching chair. Given the rate at which propaganda fills the air, it's no time at all before the can fills up. Funds quickly accrue, thus enabling purchases of "unpopular" items such as high capacity magazines! …… Read more

Popgun Parade
It says here that the Second Amendment Foundation, in cooperation with Smith & Wesson, is going to have a fancy, embellished revolver made to mark the legal and historical milestone they feel that the Supreme Court's recent District of Columbia versus Heller decision represents …… Read more

The They Poll Herefords, Don't They - Victim Disarmamentand The Productive Class.
For decades, politicos, bureaucrats, and their corporate buds have been living it up at your expense. If you object, they treat you like unruly cattle, and to make sure that you're not a threat, they even trim your horns -- denying and violating your right to own and carry weapons. When ranchers do it to cattle, it's called "polling" them …… Read more

The Kimber Kiss-up
For those of us who make the transition from gun owner and shooter to Second Amendment activist, the most disillusioning phenomenon we have to face is that not everyone we might expect to be an ally in the fight for the right to own and carry weapons can actually be relied on. Neil Smith exposes unfriendly inconsistencies within the firearms industry …… Read more

Setting a "LEO" Straight
L. Neil Smith takes on a retired "law enforcement officer" who mistakenly believes that he is a friend of the Second Amendment, but wrote to the Liberty Crew at JPFO complaining that a previous column by Neil ("With Friends Like The NRA ...") is "too radical". Neil answers numerous points in a response letter form …… Read more

With Friends Like The NRA ...
The shameful truth about the National Rifle Association, for example, is that there seems to be some kind of mutually beneficial -- symbiotic -- relationship between that group, which would like you to believe it was created to protect the Second Amendment right of the people to keep and bear arms, and the agency that enforces federal gun laws, the notorious Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms, and Explosives …… Read more

What will you do with your funny money?
As almost everybody knows by now (the hairspray-intoxicated news media are all agog over it) the United States government, in its infinite wisdom, has decided to cure the mess it's made of our once healthy and vibrant economy by sending every taxpayer a check for about six hundred federal reserve notes, freshly-printed, just for you. Neil Smith suggests you invest in some JPFO viewing and reading - making for good value with your "funny money"! …… Read more

Michael Bloomberg, Serial Killer
If gun control kills, doesn't that mean that gun-controllers are killers? That's the legal and moral question that award-winning novelist and columnist L. Neil Smith explores in his latest essay for Jews for the Preservation of Firearms Ownership, "Michael Bloomberg, Serial Killer" Take a look at the arrogant, patrician face of of Michael Bloomberg and ask yourself, is this a man who cares how many deaths his politically fashionable policies cause? …… Read more

Letter from a Critic
As Rod Serling used to say, we present for your approval an e-note sent to Jews for the Preservation of Firearms Ownership by -- let's call him "David Schlemiel" ("Schlemiel" is a Yiddish word for "fool") -- who may well have broken the Guinness (or somebody's) record (in the Brief Message Category) for packing more socialist lies, victim disarmament mythology, and statist propaganda into one communication than anybody we know of, possibly excepting Abe Foxman, Diane Feinstein, Carolyn McCarthy, and Charles Schumer. Read more

Of Pharaohs and Firearms
Suddenly, it all makes sense. We mean the obscene gas prices, the seemingly deliberate wreckage of the American dollar and of America itself, from the inside, at the hands of politicians, bureaucrats, and corporate leaders. Five hundred years ago, people who lived on the central plateau of Mexico believed that to keep the Sun burning in the sky they had to murder as many people as they could in as gory a manner as possible …… Read more

A Few More Opened Eyes
Neil Smith examines an astonishing Eric King article in The Forward, a news magazine that Leon Trotsky once wrote for, which tries to make sense, in light of the historic persecution of Jews over the centuries and throughout the world, of the "typical" Jewish attitude toward guns …… Read more

Engraved Invitation -- To Steal
Second only to lying on the witness stand, if that's what's necessary to get a conviction, "Always Think Forfeiture" is the advice that the high muckity-mucks of the federal Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms, and Explosives want to impart to their minions out in the field ……Read more

There Oughta be Three Laws
Jews for the Preservation of Firearms Ownership is concerned deeply. Both the military and your local police are showing more and more interest in robots to sent into "harm's way". They want to put guns into the "hands" of these machines, and eventually they want them to be "autonomous" -- not even remote-controlled by a human being who can be held morally and legally responsible for any carnage they may wreak ……Read more

The Canadians are Coming! The Canadians are Coming!
Inflicting perhaps the most insulting and injurious wound on American sovereignty so far, George W. Bush has signed a formal agreement with Canada allowing their troops on our soil in an emergency, and allowing our troops on theirs. Anybody who watched what went on in New Orleans, when various uniformed thugs relieved flood victims of their only means of self-defense, knows exactly what that portends. Read more

H.R.1955: The Snake is Rattling
Take note of this - H.R.1955 is a bill recently passed by Congress that will eventually lead to government control over everything we see, hear, and write over the Internet. L. Neil Smith, who understands the political process of incrementalism takes a different view: if you drop a frog into boiling water, he'll simply hop out. But if you put him into cool water and slowly heat it up, he won't notice he's being cooked until it's too late ……Read more

The Kevlar Klass
Why is it that the victim disarmament industry -- which cares so little for human life that they'd rather see a women raped in an alley and strangled with her own pantyhose than see her with a gun in her hand -- only pretends to care about what happens to individual police officers when pretending to care can do the most damage to the Bill of Rights? ……Read more

Another Shocking Miscarriage
Under brand new ruling by a federal judge, U.S. v. Olofson held in Milwaukee Wisconsin, if you take your great-granddaddy's double barrel shotgun out, pull just one trigger, and both barrels go off, it's a machinegun. That ancient side-by-side damascus-barreled blackpowder-only smokepole becomes a machinegun -- and you become a felon -- if it just gets worn or broken enough.   —   What?! …… Read more

Catch Twenty-Three
Imagine you're a fireman in a small town where you know everybody. You rush into a burning hotel, and there, unconscious on the floor of one of the rooms lie a pair of people you know to be a politician and a prostitute. You're by yourself, and you can only rescue one of the two.   —   Question: which one do you save? …… Read more

Sheep From Goats
in the third installment of "What's It Gonna Take?" author and essayist L. Neil Smith offers historical evidence and common sense facts to help JPFO's readers avoid popular misconceptions about the Bill of Rights in particular and freedom in general. Neil discusses what the Second Amendment is really all about, why the Founding Fathers included it in the Constitution, and how certain gun laws make no sense in that context …… Read more

How Bad Does it Have to Get?
In the second part of his new three-part essay for Jews for the Preservation of Firearms Ownership, "What's It Gonna Take?", novelist and columnist L. Neil Smith lays out some pretty ugly examples of what almost certainly awaits us -- what may be done by the government to the American people -- unless enough of us begin to act effectively now ……Read more

What's it Gonna Take? (Part One)
In his latest opus -- a three-parter, this time -- here at Jews for the Preservation of Firearms Ownership, award-winning author and essayist L. Neil Smith asks his readers an old, familiar question: "When a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably the same object, evinces a design to reduce them [meaning us] under absolute despotism," what will it take to get you and your fellow Americans to rise up and put an end to the police state we all live in? …… Read more

Celebrate The Bill of Rights Every Day
December 15, 1791 marks the most momentous day in human history. On that day, the first ten amendments to the then-new United States Constitution were ratified, placing severe limits -- for the first time in in thousands of years -- on the power of government over the individual. Neil explores the true meaning and significance of this document to every American and how it is so important we do everything to protect it, and so our freedoms …… Read more

Contemplating Mass Murder in Omaha
Is there a reason -- aside from the hardware politicians and the mass media always love to put the blame on -- that violent atrocities like this week's bloody shopping mall shootings keep occurring? In his most recent observations on history and human nature, "Contemplating Mass Murder in Omaha", novelist and essayist L. Neil Smith suggests three -- one that almost every gun owner in America has already thought about (but with a twist that may take your breath away) -- and two that don't seem have occurred to anybody else before ……Read more

Gun Control and the Supremes
Despite the pathetic lies of ideological opponents to individual weapons ownership and the act of self-defense, what the Founding Fathers intended the Second Amendment to express is abundantly clear. All that anybody needs to understand it is to put himself in their position. Would it even occur to you -- especially since the Revolution started when the government attempted to confiscate privately-owned weapons -- to write a Constitutional amendment guranteeing to the government, not the individual, the right to keep an bear arms? Precisely how stupid or crazy do gun prohibitionists think everybody is? …… Read more

Is it too Late for America?
That's the question novelist and columnist L. Neil Smith asks about the monetary cost of this administration's undeclared wars in Iraq and Afghanistan in his latest essay for JPFO, "Is It Too Late For America?". And that's before other, higher costs are accounted, such as the loss of individual liberties in America, and the ugly rise of fascism. Happily, there's more than just gloom and doom to report. The bad news, Neil observes, is forcing a kind of convergence to occur between people on the right, like Patrick Buchanan, and people on the left, like Naomi Wolf, whose highest value turns out (surprisingly) to be freedom …… Read more

The Big One
Because they live on the unstable surface of a planet with an energetic atmosphere and an even more energetic interior, human beings sometimes find their circumstances violently altered by things like hurricanes, earthquakes, tsunamis, hailstorms, volcanos, and meteoric impacts. What will it be like when "The Big One" finally happens and half of California suddenly leaps fifty feet northward, as most geologists expect it to do any day now, or a hunk of space-rock slams into the middle of Ohio, creating a new Great Lake (we're 15,000 years overdue for that one)? …… Read more

Global Warming, and Gun Control
Global warming has been totally and thoroughly discredited as the shameless, heartless fraud that most of us knew it was from the very beginning. That's not really what this article is about. A lot of otherwise politically savvy gun owners have believed until now that we have no interest in all of that global warming malarky. They couldn't be more mistaken. The individual right to own and carry weapons is among its primary targets …… Read more

Justice Not Just Miscarried, But Aborted
The word "infringe" also carries a connotation of sneaking up, of gradually violating, or taking something away just a little bit at a time -- sort of like what's happened to the right to keep and bear arms. I mention all of this so that you will understand, right from the beginning of this essay, why I insist that the entire structure of federal, state, and local weapons law is itself illegal, making those who have passed it and those who enforce it criminals. Never forget that …… Read more

Another Glimmer of Hope
More than six years have passed since Aaron Zelman and I wrote Hope, a novel about the first libertarian president of the United States. In our book, Alexander Hope, Vietnam veteran, retired computer magnate, history professor, and author, was elected in 2008 after the incumbent Republican Vice President, running for the presidency, was arrested for child pornography, and the Democratic candidate, a United States Senator and former First Lady, was killed in a horrible highway
accident. Since that time, as the playwright Edward Albee put it, there's been a lot of blood under the bridge …… Read more

A Glimmer of Hope
Over the thirty year course of my career as a novelist so far, I have made a good many predictions about the future that have come true. Those predictions include computer imaging in criminal forensics, wall-sized television and computer screens, laptop computers, handheld devices like the PDA and iPod, the Internet as we now know it, the popularity of .40 caliber handguns, the effect of civilian weapons carry, concealed and otherwise, on the crime rate, and the collapse of communism …… Read more

NI4D: Dangerously Stupid or Stupidly Dangerous?
They (the bowtie and propellor beanie types, not the coyotes) call themselves the "National Initiative For Democracy" or "NI4D" (add a dot com to that to find their website for yourself) when they aren't calling themselves "Philadelphia II", and it appears that they got their big idea from former United States Senator Mike Gravel of Alaska, one of the few in recent political history who makes Al Gore -- or Jerry Brown, for that matter -- look like a staid conservative statesman. Or a model of sanity …… Read more

Toward an International Bill of Rights Union
The internet is an interesting thing. You can be communicating with somebody across town today, somebody in another state tonight, and somebody on the other side of the world tomorrow, all with equal ease. In fact if their e-mail address doesn't show it, and you don't know how to read that routing gobbledygook at the top of the message, you can be doing one of those three things and not know which one it is …… Read more

"I Need My Pain!"
[W]hat I discovered during my stint on this particular radio station, is that many conservatives aren't interested in solving their problems. In fact, they actively resent anybody who is foolish enough to present them with ideas useful in defeating the enemies of liberty …… Read more

Wouldn't It Be Nice? Part III: A Time for Choices
Timothy Daniel "Big Tim" Sullivan, sometimes called "King of the Tenderloin" was a man who was allowed to live longer than he should have. It could never have happened in a Bill of Rights Culture …… Read more

Wouldn't It Be Nice? Part II: Living Off The Interest
Depending on who you happen to listen to, some two-thirds, or three-fourths, or nine-tenths of the United States government is illegal -- meaning that what it is and what it does it falls outside the limits prescribed by Article I, Section VIII of the Constitution, listing the powers of Congress and, therefore, of the government as a whole ……Read more

Wouldn't It Be Nice? Part I: The Rule of Law
Has it ever struck you as a little odd that in a country with a Thirteenth Amendment that outlaws "involuntary servitude of any kind",there's also a "Selective Service" system that forces men, on pain of imprisonment or death, to join the military whether they want to or not? …… Read more

Compromise: Political Poison
When I was growing up, people around me -- public school teachers, national and local political leaders, the broadcast and print media, other useless busybodies -- were very enthusiastic about the idea of compromise ……Read more

Bringing the "Boys" Back Home
More and more these days, one hears that the best way to support our troops in Iraq, Afghanistan, and the hundred and umpty-odd other countries they're stationed in around the world is to bring them all home.It's very difficult to disagree with that sentiment, or with the thinking behind it. However for me, at least, it's equally difficult to agree without some amount of trepidation …… Read more

The NRA Disgraces Itself -- Again
One of the most unexpected and disheartening discoveries I made as a youth is that there are different kinds of courage. A man who shows admirable valor on the battlefield, for example, may be paralytically unable to talk to women. Similarly, in a world where people often say they would rather die than make a speech, and the terror invariably first or second on their list is of personal confrontation, the same warrior-type may be unable to stand up to the pressure of political processes …… Read more

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