The People's Right to Bear Arms

[Carl Remick]

> I'm surprised that American radicals should fail to understand the
> importance of the right to bear arms. Didn't the black 
> panthers struggle
> to maintain this very right? ... A shame that the Panther's were 
> beaten, or that
> shooting [in New York City] could have been prevented.

(Double over-quota)  Sorry to be so gabby today, but I couldn't this
(rare) lapse of good sense on Jim Heartfield's part pass.  For all the
romanticizing, the Black Panthers were a joke -- posturing with
firearms, scaring the bejesus out of Middle America and helping to
ensure that the left would remain a marginal force in American society.
Thank God the Panthers *aren't* around in NYC these days -- their
self-defeating "mau-mauing" (in Tom Wolfe's phrase) would be a *gift* to
Mayor Rudy Giuliani, and the NYPD now would probably number 80,000 or
more heavily armed cops instead of 40,000.

Carl Remick