Innocents Betrayed

"The supposed quietude of a good man allures the ruffian; while on the other hand, arms like laws discourage and keep the invader and the plunderer in awe, and preserve order in the world as well as property.  The same balance would be preserved were all the world destitute of arms, for all would be alike; but since some will not, others dare not lay them aside...Horrid mischief would ensue were one half the world deprived the use of them . . . ." ~ Thomas Paine, I writings of Thomas Paine at 56 (1894)  

"And therefore there be some rights which no man can be understood by any words, or other signs, to have abandoned or transferred. As first a man cannot lay down the right of resisting them that assault him by force to take away his life, because he cannot be understood to aim thereby at any good to himself . . . . For the right men have by nature to protect themselves when none else can protect them, can by no covenant be relinquished.” ~ Leviathan by Thomas Hobbes

I’ll begin this review of Innocents Betrayed with some disclosures: For almost twelve years, I’ve been an active and supportive member of Jews for the Preservation of Firearms Ownership - the organization that produced Innocents Betrayed. JPFO’s website is: www.jpfo.org.

One of my articles – my own personal story about living through gun confiscation in Jamaica in the early 1970s – is posted at JPFO’s web site. (See: How Gun Control “Worked” in Jamaica )

I helped edit the excellent book authored by Claire Wolfe and JPFO Executive Director Aaron Zelman and published by JPFO’s Mazel Press entitled The State vs. The People. I have distributed hundreds of JPFO’s Gran’pa Jack comic books to as many people as possible. I have used JPFO’s Bill of Rights Day tools to encourage the rural Arizona town where I live to officially recognize and declare Bill of Rights Day, and I have appeared on a talk show on our local radio station for going on four years to discuss and promote the Bill of Rights.

I count co-producers of Innocents Betrayed, Aaron Zelman and attorney and author Richard W. Stevens, both of whom appear at the end of the film, as two of my most valued personal friends. Richard and I appeared on my local radio station together for Bill of Rights Day, 2002, and will be doing so again on December 15^th, 2003 . Both Aaron and Richard appear in and provide essential insights at the end of Innocents Betrayed.  

The relevance of all of the above to my response to Innocents Betrayed is this: I’m not in any way a neutral reviewer of this film. For many years I have actively put my efforts into preserving the Bill of Rights, and most particularly the Second Amendment, and have found JPFO to be one of the most effective organizations in this regard.  

I believe from the bottom of my heart and soul that one simply cannot be anti-Second Amendment and pro-citizen-disarmament without being in utter denial – denial that is, as Innocents Betrayed reveals, mortally dangerous to oneself, one’s family, one’s community, one’s country and one’s planet.  

I believe all this to be true because of personal experience.  

For a couple of years during the 1970s I was actually a confused, deluded and misguided member of Sarah Brady’s Handgun Control, Inc.  For that short time, I bought the hysterical, irrational, emotion-driven, lying propaganda propounded by people like Mrs. Brady and many politicians and Hollywood celebrities, that - if only we could rid the world of “evil” guns - all human violence would somehow vanish from the planet. Even though HCI would and could never provide a single shred of truthful evidence to support this contention, they promote it to this day.  

What I discovered from my exposure to HCI and similar emotion-driven anti-Second Amendment organizations is this: Their members and supporters are self-anointed elitists, who lie so egregiously, consistently and chronically to themselves and others about facts, truth and basic human behavior that their propaganda rivals that of classic, master-manipulator elitists like Josef Goebbels, Adolph Hitler’s Minister of Propaganda, Josef Stalin, Mao Tse Tung, Pol Pot and countless other murderous, megalomaniacal, power-hungry tyrants – many of whose actions are examined in Innocents Betrayed.  

Brady et al lie about statistics. They lie about facts. They lie about history. They lie about cause and effect. They lie about their intentions and agenda.  

And their biggest lie of all: They tell us that all their efforts are “for the good of society” and, of course, “for the children.” They claim they only want “to rid the world of gun-violence” – using the sound-bite buzz-word “gun-violence”--as if the tool itself is responsible for whoever uses it for harm, and as if getting rid of all guns would somehow get rid of the innate violence in human nature.  

These anti-self-defense wonks don’t want to deal with events like 9/11/01 , in which box-cutters, not guns, in the hands of violent, murderous terrorists, killed several thousand people – some or all of whom could well have been saved had the pilots of the doomed planes been armed and able to defend their passengers and themselves.  

These liars publicly claim they only want “sensible gun laws,” but their true agenda is the total disarmament of America and the world. See: An Analysis of Handgun Control, Inc. and The Right to Be Armed: A Constitutional Illusion and Handgun Control, Inc. Five-Year Plan and Lies, Damned Lies and Statistics: How HCI Misleads American Voters. 

Dr. M. Scott Peck has a perfect name for this type of person in his book about human evil, the title of which is People of the Lie. Dr. Peck writes, “Evil is the exercise of power, the imposing of one’s will upon others by overt or covert coercion . . . . The core of evil is ego-centricity, whereby others are sacrificed rather than the ego of the individual.” According to Dr. Peck, egocentric persons are utterly dedicated to preserving and nurturing their own self-serving image, and to being right at all costs. This type of person carefully cultivates an image and public persona of being perceived as, variously, good citizen, good parent, good bureaucrat. They do all that they do, including lying about the truth, because they “only want the best” for society and their fellow citizens. Of course, they and they alone know what “the best” is for everyone concerned. They have no qualms about lying to maintain control over others.  

"The worst threat to liberty comes not from those who simply seek their own aggrandizement, but from those who seek the good of others, identifying opposition to their desires with harm to the nation." ~ Richard Goodwin, address at the national board meeting of Americans for Democratic Action, 1966.  

This is how the anti-self-defense crowd acts--as if any opposition to their desire to seize all guns--pushed upon us without truth, facts or evidence--will harm or destroy the nation and the world.  

These people of the lie try to silence anyone who calls attention to their lies and agenda, all the while ceaselessly working to effect legislation to make their lies into law. For a run-down on the pretzel-logic way these people “rationalize” their position, see: 40 Reasons for Gun Control       

"The right of self-defense is the first law of nature; in most governments it has been the study of rulers to confine this right within the narrowest possible limits . . . . and [when] the right of the people to keep and bear arms is, under any color or pretext whatsoever, prohibited, liberty, if not already annihilated, is on the brink of destruction." ~ St. George Tucker, Judge of the Virginia Supreme Court and U.S. District Court of Virginia in, I Blackstone COMMENTARIES St. George Tucker Ed., 1803, pg. 300 (App.)  

Here are some of the many reasons I consider Innocents Betrayed to be such an important film that needs to be as widely viewed as possible, by anti-Second Amendment and “still-undecided” people, but above all by gun-owners:  

For over 20 years - since I gave myself what I call the radical constitutionalist-conservative, pro-Bill-of-Rights brain-transplant - I have watched with fascination and horror as people of the lie Sarah Brady, along with her many victim-disarmament cohorts like Congressmen Charles Schumer and Ted Kennedy, singer Barbra Streisand, actors Michael Douglas and Ed Asner, and countless other anti-gun shills, have ramrodded their lies into a dangerous legal dismantling of not only the Second Amendment to the Bill of Rights, but also the fundamental G-d-given right of personal self-defense.  

I’ve watched the governments of Great Britain and Australia – two countries that formerly had fairly low crime rates – forcibly disarm their law-abiding populations – and, as a direct result, see their violent crime – including crimes committed with guns – skyrocket to record levels.  

I’ve watched Sarah Brady herself hypocritically dodge gun laws she helped pass by buying a hunting rifle for her son – while shamelessly continuing to use her disabled husband as a prop to create a comfortable career for herself working to disarm her fellow Americans. Unbelievably, no charges were ever filed against Sarah Brady for acting as a “straw man” for a gun purchase for her son, even though many other Americans have been prosecuted for the same action. 

(See: Sarah Brady skirted gun laws in buying her son’s rifle and Gun Owners of America embraces Brady’s son)  

I’ve seen the despicable hypocrisy exhibited by celebrity Rosie O’Donnell, who publicly excoriated actor Tom Selleck for belonging to the NRA, using her TV talk show to harangue him and all of us: "I don't care if you think it's your right. I say: Sorry, it's 1999. We have had enough as a nation. You are not allowed to own a gun, and if you do own a gun I think you should go to prison!". . . while at the same time employing her own private armed bodyguard to protect her and her children.  (See: Do As I Say, Not As I Do)  

I’ve watched Hollywood star Sylvester Stallone, who made his fame and fortune shooting more guns and firing more rounds of ammo than most people, and who built a shooting range in the basement of at least one of his many houses, proclaim in Great Britain that all guns should be banned in America, and that the police should “go door to door” to forcefully collect them. (See: Stallone diagnosis: Terminal “ACI”)  

I’ve seen the bald-faced Brady/media lies about the so-called “Million Mom March” – and helped to expose them. (See: Moms: Don’t Let This Lie Go Unpunished)  

I’ve seen the bogus “study” and book concocted by Emory University anti-gun “scholar” and “historian” Michael Belleisles called Arming America: The Origins of a National Gun Culture. I’ve watched anti-gun fraud-enablers like the New York Times and HCI fawn over Belleisles and his lies until true historians finally made it impossible for these lies to be sustained. (See: Disarming History and It’s Time to Sue the Gun-Lie Industry)  For more information on the New York Times’ egregious anti-gun bias, see Pattern of Deceit.     

I’ve seen the hysterical demonizing of law-abiding gun-owners, much as Jews were demonized by the Nazis before and during the Holocaust. I’ve seen the mass media be so consistently anti-gun in its reporting that it might as well be a mouthpiece for HCI. (See: Media Bias About Guns and Why The Media Suppress Good-News Stories About Guns.    

I’ve watched as shamelessly fraudulent and deeply flawed gun studies have driven media reporting and medical and legal policy. See: Gun Violence Studies Based On Flawed Methods, Political Agenda and Domestic Disputes: Bad Social Science and Bad Legal Policy and The Strange Role of Doctors in the Gun Debate and The “43 Times” Fallacy.  

I’ve watched the federal 9^th Circuit Court decree that the Second Amendment only protects a collective - not an individual - right to keep and bear arms – even though the word “people” in the Second Amendment is the same word “people” found in the First, Fourth, Ninth and Tenth Amendments, where it has never been interpreted as referring only to collective rights, not individual rights. See: 9^th Circuit Skirmish Over Second Amendment

For a few years during the early 1970s (before the brain transplant), I was also member of the National Organization for Women, and considered myself to be a radical feminist. Now I see the deep and pervasive damage that this brand of radical feminism has wrought – to the psychology of individual men and women, to the family, to personal freedom, to national security and to the Bill of Rights. See: Guns and Communism and Guns and Feminism.

The present collective level of chronic and intransigent ignorance, deliberate lying and cynical and manipulative propaganda regarding the Second Amendment and gun ownership and gun use is both revolting and frightening. There is so much more anti-gun propaganda from the people of the lie that I could provide that one could literally spend years reading it.    

But here’s what I believe to be the very worst – because it’s the most effective – anti-Second Amendment propaganda circulating at present:  

Morally bankrupt, openly socialist film-maker Michael Moore made a slick, smarmy anti-Second Amendment pseudo-documentary called Bowling For Columbine – and actually won an Academy Award for Best Documentary for this film - even though attorney David T. Hardy and others painstakingly revealed that Moore’s film was more fiction than fact (see: Bowling for Columbine – Documentary or Fiction?) and that it in no way met the Academy’s criteria for a bona fide documentary. Despite this fact, the Academy has refused to consider revoking Moore’s Academy Award.  

Every time I go to the video store and see Moore’s despicable movie being displayed for rental to the masses, I cringe at the damage to the truth and freedom that this film is causing. What I and other Bill-of-Rights-supporting truth-seekers have been wanting for a long time is a compelling and watchable movie that will use truth and facts to bust Moore and all the other victim-disarmament people of the lie, and show them up as the dangerous and manipulative prevaricators they are.   

I truly believe Innocents Betrayed is that movie.  

Various fictional films have provided small snippets of rebuttal to the lies of the pro-victim-disarmament crowd.  

In John Milius’ Red Dawn, in which America is conquered and occupied by Russians and Cubans, there is a passing reference to the federal government firearms dealer Form #4473 as the method by which the hostile invaders are able to easily locate and seize American guns, and disarm most of the conquered populace, because the American federal government kept a convenient central database of millions of gun-owners. (Form #4473 is also referenced in Innocents Betrayed – and the point is also made that this form is printed on yellow paper – an ironically appropriate color for tyrants who are afraid of their people being armed.)  

In Mel Gibson’s Braveheart, a passing reference is made to the British mandating “sword control” against the conquered and oppressed Scots.   

And in The Patriot, Mel Gibson tells his young sons – boys too young in some American jurisdictions to even lawfully touch a gun  – to “Aim small, hit small” as he and they stalk the convoy of murderous British soldiers who have just killed their older brother. (Apparently many Brady-ites had a fit about this scene, wanting desperately to suppress the fact that many young people around the time of the American Revolution and even today were and are proficient with, and responsible in handling guns. The Brady Bunch expressed melodramatic horror that The Patriot showed children having any access to any guns - despite the fact that their father had trained them in responsible gun use – something the anti-gunners want to outlaw - and that their brother had just been murdered, and there was no 911 to dial to deal with the murderers. (That last comment is my feeble attempt at sarcasm, as well as a effort to urge everyone reading this to buy and read Dial 911 And Die! by Richard W. Stevens.  Innocents Betrayed deals with the murderous result of gun laws in California that prohibited a family of youngsters trained in gun use from defending themselves against a madman, who pitch-forked to death several children in their family because all the guns were “safely locked up” according to law.)  

Sadly, however, for the most part movies are schizophrenic about guns. All too many films – particularly those from Hollywood - incorporate innumerable stupid, dangerous and false representations of guns and their use. (See: Lethal Weapon 4: A Review)  

However, now we have about the strongest antidote imaginable to the many attacks against the right to personal defense - strong medicine to counter the poison of the people of the lie: Innocents Betrayed.  

Innocents Betrayed, through graphic and poignant visual images and a well-crafted script, sets out the stark truths about the true evil of “gun-control.” The film deals in depth and detail with the historical aspects of government gun-control as it has been repeatedly used in Germany, Russia, China, Cambodia, Rwanda and many other countries to render people defenseless as a prelude to government mass-murder. It tracks in the millions all of the people who have been slaughtered by their governments after having self-defense and guns being outlawed.  

Innocents Betrayed also addresses the direct and murderous effect that gun-control laws have had in countries like Britain, Australia and the United States. Interestingly, the movie even describes how some governments, after taking guns away from their populations, have also banned their citizens from owning sharp and blunt instruments – in today’s England, it is for all intents and purposes against the law to defend oneself. See: Self-Defenseless in Britain: Spreading Epidemic  

Of course, the logical conclusion to this type of madness would be to require citizens to keep their fingernails cut short, and to pull all their teeth out by the roots.  

"No kingdom can be secured otherwise than by arming the people. The possession of arms is the distinction between a freeman and a slave. He, who has nothing, and who himself belongs to another, must be defended by him, whose property he is, and needs no arms. But he, who thinks he is his own master, and has what he can call his own, ought to have arms to defend himself, and what he possesses; else he lives precariously, and at discretion." ~ James Burgh, Political Disquisitions: Or, an Enquiry into Public Errors, Defects, and Abuses [London, 1774-1775]

  Innocents Betrayed also reveals and explores the ugly racist history of gun control in America – the very first “gun-control” laws were passed to prevent black slaves and freed blacks from being armed. What I find significant about this is that the more that the anti-gun people of the lie try to disarm free citizens, the more obvious it becomes that their true goal is to turn free people into government chattel.  

Along with this goal, I find it significant that governments and big corporations, both in the U.S. and elsewhere, often refer to citizens as “human resources.” Innocents Betrayed shows us in detail how dehumanizing and then “managing” human resources is much easier when these “resources” are first disarmed and helpless. Black slaves in America were the first “human resources” in this country – they were legally defined as property - and we all know that mere property can have no G-d-given rights, including that of self-defense.  

Innocents Betrayed drives home the fact that, the more free citizens in America and around the world are stripped by their governments of their rights of self-defense, the more blatantly they also become helpless slaves – property of their armed government masters. Just replace the words “slave” and “slaves” in the following excerpt from A Bill Concerning Slaves with the words “person” and “persons,” and you will see what the Brady Bunch have in mind for you and yours:  

"No slaves shall keep any arms whatever, nor pass, unless with written orders for his master or employer, or in his company, with arms from one place to another. Arms in possession of a slave contrary to this prohibition shall be forfeited to him who will seize them."   A BILL CONCERNING SLAVES (CHAPTER 51), VIRGINIA ASSEMBLY, 1779.  In: Albert Fried (Ed.), The Essential Jefferson (New York: Collier, 1963), p. 140.

As Dr. Andrew Johnson, a member of Doctors for Sensible Gun Laws put it in a letter to the Des Moines (Indiana) Register:

Worldwide for the past 100 years, over 4,000 citizens per day have been murdered by their own police and military, dwarfing "terrorism" as a cause of death, yet a clamor for the same "reasonable" gun registration laws which enabled such genocide goes largely unopposed by our politically correct media. I hope the Des Moines Register will explore this issue further, and earn its First Amendment freedoms by enlightening the public as to the Second Amendment.    

Many of the atrocities and genocides depicted in Innocents Betrayed are against women and children. Samuel Colt referred to his excellent invention as “the equalizer,” and many armed women owe their lives and safety to having a gun and not being afraid to display or shoot it. If we are to protect the rights of women - who despite the absurd bio-lies of the radical feminists - are NOT as a group anywhere near as strong as men – as well as the rights of the weak and the helpless, we simply must guard their right to be armed.  

"People who object to weapons aren't abolishing violence, they're begging for rule by brute force, where the biggest, strongest animals among men were always automatically 'right.' Guns ended that, and social democracy is a hollow farce without an armed populace to make it work."  ~ L. Neil Smith, The Probability Broach (L. Neil Smith is also the co-author of Hope, published by JPFO’s Mazel Press.)

For an excellent article on what a world without guns would REALLY be like, see: Imagine a World Without Guns 

It is obvious to any reasonable person that people who object to, and work to abolish, guns and other weapons, are living in a dangerous and deluded fantasy world – one that inevitably leads to genocide and murder. See: Raging Against Self-Defense: A Psychiatrist Examines the Anti-Gun Mentality.  

I consider it essential that all who support the American Bill of Rights and the G-d-given right of self-defense buy and watch Innocents Betrayed and share it with as many people as possible – particularly those who are still deluded by the alleged “goodness” and “benefits” of gun-control. By doing so you may very well help to prevent future genocide and murder.

This film would make an excellent Hanukah, Christmas and/or Kwanzaa present. If you order it before December 15^th – Bill of Rights Day – JPFO will even waive the $4.95 shipping and handling charge.

See www.jpfo.org for purchase information.

So . . . if you really care about truth and freedom, and victory over the people of the lie, here’s what you can do: Buy as many copies of this film as you can. Show it to as many people as possible – particularly gun-owners. Give copies to your local gun store, or tell them to get copies, and have them rent the movie out to gun-owners. Give a copy to as many people in law enforcement as possible. Offer copies to your local video store for them to rent out – you could even tell the management to suggest the film to everyone who rents Bowling For Columbine – they could offer a two-for-one rental, and tell people to watch Innocents Betrayed AFTER they watch Moore’s movie. Give copies to schoolteachers, or offer to bring a copy into classes – particularly high-school classes – and show it and lead a discussion afterwards. Offer a copy to churches, synagogues and temples, and tell them you’d like to lead a group discussion of the movie. Send a copy to your congressional representatives, to talk-show hosts on radio and TV, to media columnists. Donate a copy to your local library.  

And be sure to watch the film with your family and loved ones.  

I know in my heart and soul that the men quoted below, as well as the millions of innocents betrayed, enslaved, tortured and slaughtered by the people of the lie, would tell you to do all these things and more . . . if only they could.

"Enlighten people generally, and tyranny and oppressions of body and mind will vanish like evil spirits at the dawn of day."  ~ Thomas Jefferson  

"The right of the people to keep and bear arms shall not infringed; a well armed, and well regulated militia being the best security of a free country: but no person religiously scrupulous of bearing arms shall be compelled to render military service in person."  ~ James Madison, I Annuals of Congress 434 (June 8, 1789) [This was Madison's original proposal for the "Second Amendment"]  

"The prohibition is general. No clause in the Constitution could by rule of construction be conceived to give the Congress the power to disarm the people. Such a flagitious attempt could only be made under some general pretense by a state legislature. But if in blind pursuit of inordinate power, either should attempt it, this amendment may be appealed to as a restraint on both."  ~ William Rawle, 1825; considered academically to be an expert commentator on the Constitution. He was offered the position of the first Attorney General of the United States by President George Washington.  

"Who are the militia? Are they not ourselves? Is it feared, then, that we shall turn our arms each man against his own bosom?  Congress shall have no power to disarm the militia. Their swords, and every other terrible implement of the soldier, are the birth-right of an American . . . . The unlimited power of the sword is not in the hands of either the federal or state governments, but where I trust in G-d it will ever remain, in the hands of the People." ~ Trench Coxe, Pennsylvania Gazette, 20 February 1788.  

“False is the idea of utility that sacrifices a thousand real advantages for one imaginary or trifling inconvenience; that would take fire from men because it burns, and water because one may drown in it; that has no remedy for evils, except destruction. The laws that forbid the carrying of arms are of such a nature. They disarm those only who are neither inclined nor determined to commit crimes. Can it be supposed that those who have the courage to violate the most sacred laws of humanity, the most important of the code, will respect the less important and arbitrary ones, which can be violated with ease and impunity, and which, if strictly obeyed, would put an end to personal liberty--so dear to men, so dear to the enlightened legislator--and subject innocent persons to all the vexations that the guilty alone ought to suffer? Such laws make things worse for the assaulted and better for the assailants; they serve rather to encourage than to prevent homicides, for an unarmed man may be attacked with greater confidence than an armed man. They ought to be designated as laws not preventive but fearful of crimes, produced by the tumultuous impression of a few isolated facts, and not by thoughtful consideration of the inconveniences and advantages of a universal decree.” ~ (Cesare Beccaria, 1764, On Crimes and Punishments, found copied into Thomas Jefferson's Common-Place Book which served as a repertoire of his ideas on government)

Author’s notes and postscript:  

1-    In respect for the Jewish religion’s prohibition on writing out the full name of the Divine Lord of the Universe, His name is written as G-d in this piece.  

2-    For a convenient link to a website where one can find out which pro-victim-disarmament individuals and organizations to boycott – and I encourage everyone who cares about liberty and the Bill of Rights to do this whenever possible.  See this . . . and HCI’s hand-wringing, hyperbolic reaction to this.  What I love about this is that HCI actually links to the boycott list site directly from their home site, making it really easy to find and use. I’d write and thank them, but I don’t want them to change this. What used to be a useful, but pretty obscure boycott website (I found it at least five years ago, and have been merrily boycotting ever since) is now getting all kinds of free publicity from the people of the lie.  

3-    I can be reached at tinatheterryble@yahoo.com.  Any other email addresses in articles I’ve written are pretty much now defunct.