Quote of the day—Wallace Carroll

Can’t we Americans here at home do something to lift the gun terror from our schools, playgrounds, parking lots, malls, post offices, housing projects, highways and the grim reaches of our cities where the police must risk their lives to uphold the law?

Of course we can. What we have to do now is to free ourselves from one of the great hoaxes of the 20th century.

This mighty country stands paralyzed in the face of an ever-spreading plague of guns. This national calamity we owe to the leaders of the National Rifle Association in Washington. With a tenacity and ferocity worthy of a better cause, they have fought every proposal, however moderate, to bring the menace under control.

In this endeavor, their principal weapon has been the Second Amendment to the Constitution — or, rather, their version of the Second Amendment.

That amendment, they have insisted, gives everyone an absolute constitutional right to have every kind of firearm. Brandishing that “right,” spending millions in lobbying and legal maneuvers and threatening doom to politicians who would oppose them, they have killed or stalled gun control initiatives in Congress, state legislatures and city governments.

At last, however, the nation is on the move.

Now the great Second Amendment hoax can be nailed once and for all if the rank-and-file of the NRA and other responsible citizens will master one simple truth: The Second Amendment means what the courts say it means. It does not mean what the NRA leaders have been telling the nation all these years.

Wallace Carroll
July 4, 1993
To End the Gun Terror, End the Second Amendment Hoax
[Those were the dark days of gun rights activism. That was the attitude nearly everywhere in the media and many of the politicians. Guns were a terror, a plague, a menace, and a national calamity. The standard view of the Second Amendment was a hoax, a lie, and a fraud.

I agree with one thing he said. The Second Amendment means what the courts say it means.

The problem for Mr. Carroll is that he was, probably deliberately, misreading the Miller decision and ignoring the Cruikshank decision. The Heller decision made things much more difficult for people like Carroll to distort. The question is now that the courts have agreed with the NRA on the meaning of the Second Amendment does Carroll still insist that the meaning of the Second Amendment is what the courts say it is? Or does he now insist that the Supreme Court has perpetuated a fraud on the American people as well?

Or does Carroll now admit it was he that was the hoaxer or at least the one that fell for a fraud?—Joe]

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9 thoughts on “Quote of the day—Wallace Carroll

  1. Joe,
    How did we get to that point in the 90’s? I can’t figure out or fanthom how this country went from shooting guns on high school teams in the 30’s to the cluster of the 90’s. Can you do an article on that please?

  2. Even in the sixties it wasn’t that bad. When I was in high school (graduated 1969), we had a big buck contest every year, and the winner won a new 30-30, which presented to the winner at an assembly where the whole student body was in attendance to congratulate the winner, who would go on stage and be handed the new rifle. No one fretted or panicked at a teen being handed a rifle in front of everyone.

  3. Heck, it wasn’t that bad in the early 80’s! I graduated in 1980, and almost every pickup truck in the lot had a rifle rack in the back window with rifle and a shotgun on it. We went hunting on the way to school and on the way home.

    At breaks we often went out to the parking lot to look at someones new rifle or shotgun, and half the time at least one teacher went with us to see it too!

    I made gunpowder for a demonstration speech, and got the ingredients from the chem lab!

    From there to what happened in the 90’s was crazy!!

  4. Bill is right, it wast that bad in the 80’s. I was in my mid teens, graduated High school in ’84. I can remember walking down the street with a .22 rifle in my hands (unloaded, bolt open of course) to a friends house to go to the range, I was about 16 maybe 17. Nobody in our neighborhood thought twice about it to my knowledge. His dad was Los Angeles PD and saw saw nothing wrong with it either. Just a few short years later and its the Peoples Republic of California.
    Now we have Heller, but its gonna be a long long road back to our rights as they are supposed to be I believe.
    Sam

  5. Ruby Ridge, Columbine, and Waco all happened within a few short years of each other, and the Anti-Gunners and their Friends in the Media kept harping on Gun Control as the “Solution.” Of course, Bush the Elder’s backing of the ATF and the FBI didn’t help, especially when Wayne LaPierre called him out on how it was the Government who instigated the Tragedy, not the Armed Citizen. And Clinton’s Waco Siege sure was spun into being the Branch Davidian’s Fault, not the ATF’s.

    But isn’t it funny that the last President who got shot, Ronald Reagan, refused to do anything about Gun Control? The Media and the Anti-Gunners sure hated him because he refused to back up the Brady’s.

    Of course, with the Internet, more and more people get to see how Gun Control is a Failure, every time they watch Gang Bangers having a Shoot Out, or robbing a Convenience Store, or a SWAT Team shoots up the wrong house. Hard to spin that a bunch of people getting shot in a Gun Free Town and the use of Firearms for Self-Defense is Banned into “We need more Gun Laws!”

  6. Ruby Ridge was ’92, Waco ’93, Moses Lake ’96, Columbine ’99.

    BUT…most of the gun control stuff was in place before Waco, and maybe before Ruby Ridge.

    It happened fast, why were we all so asleep?

  7. I think at some point it became “fashionable” to hate guns and eventually much of the country followed. I graduated high school in ’03 and guns were something “those people” did. I knew people who had them, but it was never talked about and my parents didn’t even like my shooting the .22 rifles at Scout camp. It never came up as an issue, but I suppose technically I should have had a FOID before I even touched them, or even the ammo. I suppose the forbidden aspect added to the allure for me. Gun people in IL tended to keep a *very* low profile, and from what I can tell they still do. It’s only in the last couple of years, after I left the state (that wasn’t why, but it *is* part of why I’m reluctant to go back), that any real sort of conversation has started to happen on the issue.

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