The American Spectator

Reader Mail

GUN SHOWS:
Re: John Tabin's When an AK47 Is Not an AK47:

It is amazing how much out-gassing you get about semi-auto rifles from people who are either clueless or deceitful about their nature. I have fired full-auto rifles, and the AK47; I am not impressed with either. By the start of World War One, American sportsmen had at least 5 different models of center-fire autoloader rifles to choose from; when exactly did those semi-autos become a problem? I have a 35 caliber Remington Model 8, built in 1915, that will out-shoot any AK ever made. My state of Maine is generally acknowledged to be the second most heavily armed state in the nation; we had 21 homicides last year, and the percentage of victims slain annually with guns runs 10% lower than the country as a whole. If guns are the problem, then why are the states with the most guns the safest places? How 'bout it, Seattle -- how many murders did you have last year?
-- Bruce Abbott

John Tabin asks :...what are we to make of someone who calls himself a conservative, and even poses as a savior of the conservative soul -- while aligning himself with a guy like Feit on an issue so central to both the libertarian and traditionalist strains of American conservatism?"

Uhh...David Brock? et al.?
-- Reid Bogie
Waterbury, Connecticut

Tabin's "When an AK47 is Not an AK47" article brings to mind an analogy.

Every kid with any awareness of cars who doesn't want to be thought a fool understands that the Nascar cars are not the same as the cars at the local car dealer.

"Big city" reporters seem to figure that out as well about cars. Perhaps someone should tell them that the rubes are laughing at their ignorance on look-alike guns as well.
-- Andy Freeman

Tabin's article is the most comprehensive one I've yet seen on the subject of gun control.

Ugly, lethal looking semi-automatic guns are no more deadly than the weapons we hunt with. In fact "spraying bullets" most of the time is not very effective. Remember those bank robbers, with actual Machine guns and Body Armor, who were spraying bullets at pistol packing cops?

Using my 7MM deer rifle, I could have taken out each bandit with one shot between the eyes. Any normally equipped hunter could have done so. Hunters routinely kill with a single shot. Hitting the target where you aim is the name of the game!

Kudos to Tabin, he got it right.
-- G.B. Hall (WW2 vet)
Marietta, Georgia

It is all about what was convenient at that moment. These guys don't know a AK-47 from a shotgun. Look at Kerry , he was against guns but he accepted one as a gift while on the campaign trail.

Ever since the age of Kings and Peasants there has been gun control. It is all about the rich and powerful over the middle class and lower class. The rich want to rule everything....

Sick of double standards
-- Clayton Boutian

Please, Mr. Tabin, don't try to confuse the gun control advocates and their supporters with facts, their minds are completely made up -- unto eternity.
-- Ken Shreve
You want my gun, Pilgrim? Well.......

NO MERCY
Re: William Tucker's Peace Be Unto Him:

William Tucker and Robert Spencer are correct: Moslem values are incompatible with ours. Going a step further -- in the correct direction, I believe -- is Defeating Jihad by Srdja Trifkovic.

Trifkovic's proposal for fighting the war on terrorism goes like this: "The victory will come not by conquering Mecca for America but by disengaging America from Mecca and by excluding Mecca from America."

This means, at home here, Muslim activity must be scrutinized as, say, the activities of the Communist Party was. Mosques should have to register with the Attorney General and submit to government supervision like other hate groups. Trifkovic recommends the active profiling of Muslims and fast deportation of Muslims activists whether they are "citizens" or not.

Trifkovic thinks that the Constitution empowers us to treat Islam this way because of Islam's politics. (We don't permit modern Aztecs to cut out human hearts, do we?) He says, in fact, Islam is innately seditious.

The general lesson is that even in open societies, if the societies are to remain open, they must be closed to others. Make sense to me. The specific lesson is that, if America is to be open and free to average Americans, it must be close to the cancer that is Islam. The Constitution is not a suicide pact, is it?
-- Peter Skurkiss
Stow, Ohio

Mr. William Tucker's review of The Truth About Muhammad by the estimable Robert Spencer provides the facts about the life of a man and a lunatic "religious" legacy of vicious conquest, intolerance, foul mass murder, deceit and undeserved arrogance. It is becoming increasingly clear that, because of books like this, more and more of the world -- even those who wish it were not so -- sees that Muslim fascism threatens not only Western Civilization, but the rest of the planet also.

Although Old Europe, some Americans and the weaker-minded elsewhere are willing to accept dhimmitude to avoid the necessary fight, it is hard to imagine that powerful civilizations such Japan, Israel, Russia, China, Canada, Italy, Great Britain, Australia and most of the United States are simply going to hand over the keys and turn out the lights on personal liberty, women's rights and religious freedom.

The single-minded qualities of Islam that make it a threat also blind it to certain historical and modern realities that may well lead to the undoing of its most virulent forms. Accordingly, a prediction...

The totally blind misfit of a medieval desert philosophy in the modern world suggests that someone, somewhere in the Muslim world will some day soon commit an atrocity or an act of aggression that will so shock the world that the previously mentioned civilizations AND those now on the fence (yes, I mean Spain, France and Germany) will rise up and end this nonsense once and for all. Watch it happen. The world has seen enough killing and intolerance.
-- Deane Fish
Altamont, New York

I've just received my copy of Robert Spencer's The Truth About Muhammad from the American Compass Book Club, and, having already covered 1/3 of it, I find William Tucker's review to be dead-on. I've been a long-time fan of Mr. Spencer, have a number of his books (including The Myth of Islamic Tolerance) and am a daily reader of his "Jihad Watch" column. Spencer's knowledge of Islam and its dangers are extraordinary and his explanations are lucid and compelling. Islam poses a serious danger to Western civilization, and the sooner we learn about these dangers from Spencer, Daniel Pipes and others, the sooner we will be able to mount a defense of the West.

I would like to recommend to my fellow Spectator readers a recent column from Dr. Jack Wheeler, found at BrookesNews.com and also www.tothepointnews.com. His column, "Allah Is Dead," is a valuable and illuminating discussion of Pope Benedict XVI's recent speech on Faith and Reason at the University of Regensburg in September, the same speech that caused Islamists to get their burkahs in a bunch. Tied in with Spencer's work (I also recommend Father J.L. Menezes' classic book The Life and Religion of Mohammed), you will have no doubts as to the disaster Islam means to wreak upon us.
-- Jim Bjaloncik
Stow, Ohio

I guess the problem is encapsulated very well by the author of this article: Moses and Jesus are detailed in 11 and 12 words, respectively, Confucius, Brahmin Scholars, Buddha and Mohammed by long, flowing, laudatory sentences.
.
Hmmm.
-- Wolf Terner
Fair Lawn, New Jersey

GOING TO THE SOURCE
Re: Jed Babbin's Outside Agitators:

Positive features of BEING an Outside Agitator (Jed

NRO Online passed along the info that North Korea is murdering disabled children (born and unborn), those with a Chinese parents, and others considered inferior. Meanwhile, North Koreans are significantly shorter than South Koreans, because of malnutrition. North Korea is producing a supra-race!

The first person I ever heard say that sovereignty is limited was the top bishop in Panama, who defended the US overthrow of the government in Panama. Thomas Aquinas, of course, defended regicide in some cases. He provides possible support for the overthrow of tyrants in places like Iraq, Sudan, Iran, Korea, etc., of leaders who murder their people or support murder elsewhere -- such as Iran's interventions in Israel and Lebanon or Venezuela's Chavez's training of Hezbollah people to be fake Hispanics with Venezuelan passports to get into Mexico and then into the U.S. to do their terrorist work The UN and the U.S. should BE outsider agitators and execute Thomas Aquinas' advice. I wouldn't object if someone added Castro to the list of targets also. Particularly in the case of North Korea, one could argue that it is immoral for the international community NOT to dethrone the ruling government.
-- Richard L.A. Schaefer
Dubuque Iowa

BEGGED QUESTION
Re: Christopher Orlet's reply in Reader Mail's Freedom to Threaten:

Christopher Orlet, in his response to an Islamist apologist, wrote:

"I am certain that freedom of speech and Islam can co-exist, but freedom of speech and fundamentalist Islam cannot."

Seems to me this begs the, ah, fundamental question: can Islam exist without spawning fundamentalism ?

I know of nothing in the record of the past fourteen centuries that suggests this is a likely prospect.
-- Paul Kotik
Plantation, Florida

NOT BUYING
Re: Jay D. Homnick's House Floor Plan:

This article about how well the Republican Congress has done lately is a joke, right?
-- Paul Martell

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Sports, Religion, Islam, Books, Constitution, Law, Iraq, Iran, Russia, Israel, North Korea, Fascism, Conservatism