On Sun, 09 May 2004 07:34 pm -0600 UTC, m II
posted: %MM

uncle arnie wrote:

Perhaps for the benefit of the rest of world you could describe these
ammendments. America has so much to teach the rest of the world. You
know, how to do things right. So they can understand America better and
love her more.

Paraphrasing Mencken: 'In America, it's pretty well impossible to heave
an egg out of your car window and not hit a gun owner'.


No, this is not the quote I was paraphrasing. The original had pullman cars
and fundamentalists.




You should note that Mecken was in fact quite PRO gun ownership. He was
complaionig about about harrassmnet by the government do gooders. The
full quote is below. Mencken was a genius and ahead of his time. Note
the date.

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"The new law that is advocated, indeed, is one of the most absurd
specimens of jackass legislation ever heard of, even in this paradise of
legislative donkeyism. Its single and sole effect would be to exaggerate
enormously all of the evils it proposes to put down. It would not take
pistols out of the hands of rogues and fools; it would simply take them
out of the hands of honest men.

"Here I do not indulge in theory. The hard facts are publicly on display
in New York State, where a law of exactly the same tenor is already on
the books the so-called Sullivan Law. In order to get it there, of
course, the Second Amendment had to be severely strained, but the
uplifters advocated the straining unanimously, and to the tune of loud
hosannas, and the courts, as usual, were willing to sign on the dotted
line. It is now a dreadful felony in New York to "have or possess" a
pistol. Even if one keeps it locked in a bureau drawer at home, one may
be sent to the hoosegow for ten years.

"With what result? With the general result that New York is the heaven
of footpads, hijackers, gunmen and all other such armed thugs. Their
hands upon their pistols, they know they are safe. Not one citizen out
of a hundred that they tackle is armed. For getting a license to keep a
revolver is a difficult business, and carrying one without it is more
dangerous than submitting to robbery."

H.L. Mencken, Baltimore Evening Sun, 1925

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-UA