Let's get the complaints out of the way up front: At a suggested retail price of $15.95 (Amazon = $12.44), and at 4-1/2 x 6-3/8 inches hardbound, this is not exactly the back-pocket carry-along that Wayne LaPierre intends it to be. I'd suggest a true softcover chapbook format and price, and perhaps even a low-cost ebook version to make sure the word gets out to everyone who needs to know the truth about the Second Amendment to the US Constitution. And that audience amounts to every citizen of the United States.
I am a middle-aged Caucasian male who has never owned a gun, hasn't fired one in ages, and who, until recently, lived in a suburb of Baltimore where our doors were only locked a handful of times in 23 years. My teenaged son and a friend were accosted at gunpoint several years back, and though nobody got physically hurt, he was pretty well traumatized. The teenaged - admitted - assailant got off, due to police incompetence, and having to face him in school was bad for my son.
Other than that, when I thought about guns at all, it was in the form of platitudes. There were too many of them; too much gun violence; too many domestic assaults; too much suicide; and an arms industry that was out of control. I saw "Columbine," and think Charlton Heston was a colossal jerk.
I say this as preamble to a glowing review of Wayne LaPierre's The Essential Second Amendment Guide. It is a little gem. It belongs on your bookshelf, and in your local public library.
The Guide is not about guns. It is about The US Constitution: how it reads; its history; its writers and interpreters. It is about the meaning of personal liberty, individual rights, and what is required to preserve them.
LaPierre has written a short, highly readable, and extensively sourced guide to the most controversial of the first ten amendments to our Constitution, also known as the Bill of Rights. The Second Amendment, guaranteeing our right to keep and bear arms, is subject to constant attack. Yet, "it is the one freedom that gives common men and women uncommon power to defend all freedoms."
Simply put, when guns are outlawed, only the government [and outlaws] will have guns. That's not freedom, and it is as intolerable today as it was in 1776. LaPierre, of the National Rifle Association, makes a very strong, well-supported case for our Second Amendment rights.
He has hit what he was aiming at in writing a book everyone should read and keep close at hand. Please buy an extra copy for your local library; read it; read the suggested readings; above all, read, discuss, and defend our Constitution.
In addition to reviewing books, Rick Ostrander writes about 21st Century homesteading on the Santa Fe Trail, and building resilient communities in post-Peak Oil America. You're invited to visit his new blog, http://taylorsprings.blogspot.com/.
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