Dennis A. Henigan

Lethal Logic, Exploding The Myths That Paralyze American Gun Policy

By John Longenecker
Wednesday, July 1, 2009

Lethal Logic, Exploding The Myths That Paralyze American Gun Policy.
(Potomac Press, $29.95)
by Dennis A. Henigan.

America should never even have a gun policy any more than it should have a policy in favor of owning another human being for neighborhood safety. This is because some things in our way of life and law are long settled.

Presuming that the subject is still open to discussion is only to have another chance at bat against the law of the land, and another and another, long after the Founders (and the people) have spoken. Imagine any committee seeing a Congressman to lobby for the ownership of another human being in America for neighborhood safety. One of the wonderful things about the armed citizen is how it discredits many silly policies on their face, when the armed citizen is not disrespected as a part of the electorate. The very idea of a so-called gun policy is like having a ‘policy’ in favor of owning others. We shouldn’t even have one.

The second mistake Mr Henigan makes is in the Acknowledgments where the author gives the background of the book: a summary of experiences in his headquarters company The Brady Center and its history of persuading lawmakers, policymakers, judges and the people that there should be gun regulation and such a purpose of a non-profit organization. Non -profits are tax exempt when they state as their mission education in the public interest of a civil right secured by law. Gun control organizations do not operate in the public interest this way when they work so hard to take down a civil right and deny it.

These alone would make the case against non-profits and activists who are so against a piece of iron with wood trim instead of being against the criminals who will grab anything – prohibited them or not – in order to commit crime.

Another early mistake is in basing the mission of ‘gun policy’ on so-called ‘gun violence’. There is plenty of violence which has nothing to do with a gun, and the idea of trying to prevent violence by more takings which will never take from the criminals does not ring true.

A third basic error in the book is the indictment of a so-called gun lobby for engaging in sloganeering. Much of the thesis of Lethal Logic seems to be based on the idea that the American People are fools, and that sloganeering can work on them like jingles in America’s commercials get you to buy oatmeal, or worse, that the people are stupid. One of the truths criticized by Henigan is that guns don’t kill people, people kill people. But isn’t that so? To combat the carping, some liberty organizations have a camera set on a revolver to watch it 24/7 (a GunCam) to see when it wakes up and shoots someone. Henigan addresses most of the slogans gun owners reply with, but the response is a mocking and lacks any real edifying response for those waiting to hear a comparison and contrast.

If it is true that only killers kill people with whatever they happen to have, whether it be a gun or a knife, then it’s a decent answer to support the slogan that guns do not have a will of their own and kill folks. Henigan’s mocking this reminder as sloganeering is hardly persuasive on the issue of confiscating guns from the millions who do not go shooting people. There are more than 300 million guns in the hands of some 90 million people, and 90 million are not doing the criminal shootings. The criminals are.

It is important to understand that Lethal Logic places a great deal of its case on the concept of preventing gun violence, a purely unattainable goal. Gun owners are society’s best friend on this issue, because law enforcement and gun owners are allies. Certain things are not subject to what we might call prevention, but they can be managed. Gun owners, trainers, and law enforcement agree that the best thing is to avoid trouble by being alert, having a plan (of resistance) and being armed with superior force. Gun owners understand that citizens often elect to carry a gun because they know they already have the legal authority to use up to lethal force in a crime’s most dangerous moment – when they are alone and without police – and that disarming the victim makes about as much sense as refusing CPR training to someone likely to see a heart attack before the paramedics arrive.

Lethal Logic carps at the NRA and urges officials to stand up to the NRA. One does not stand up to the NRA and blame a so-called gun lobby: The liberty lobby stands up to officials in the interest of making public service needs known to their servants. 
Do gun control activists realize what they are saying? Gun control advocates consistently fail to understand how they have told their intimate partners with every anti-gun protest (or book) just how they personally cannot ever be counted on to protect their loved ones.

Speaking in general terms, the predictions of the gun control activists as described in Henigan’s book have never come true in decades, while the fears of the liberty culture continue to come true with every new crime and every new gun law. If gun control worked, then we would not see prohibited persons obtaining them, making news killing someone, and with a long record of recidivism. The idea that one can prevent this is ludicrous.
In short, it is not the evidence of the liberty culture which is lethal, it is the unrelenting regulation, confiscations and bans which have proven to be lethal every year, with every violent crime.

In grousing over sloganeering and dissecting them, Mr. Henigan forgets another truth gun owners would like to say to the public, and that is that your police have no duty to protect individuals from the criminal acts of others. Any book that wants to stop gun violence proceeds on a defective notion that such a concept is even possible. Lethal Logic does this, not by educating the public in what will save lives (such as realizing your own authority and of being on your own), but in what will take more lives: surrender, while a criminal population grows from encouragement.

Lethal Logic is filled with such errors and omissions the public needs cannot use in order to be safest, and implies that the liberty organizations and liberty-oriented citizens are somehow furnishing defective logic which will get you killed.

On Page 208, the author criticizes the Heller decision and writes that ‘supermajorities’ of the American People support gun control. [This is why millions are buying more guns since the election; they want more gun control!] Henigan then goes on to say in the next paragraph that the people support the right short of a ban, since they believe that “...the Second Amendment is concerned with individual rights and not militiasâ€