Pro-Second Amendment Emily Miller Takes Aim at Politicians
By Rob Morse
Clash Daily Guest Contributor
Review: Emily Gets Her Gun … But Obama Wants to Take Yours — Emily Miller/Regnery Publishing/384 pages
Emily Miller wrote a book about politics and guns. She didn’t write it for D.C. policy wonks or for gun nuts; she wrote it for the average newspaper reader. In it, Miller explains why she wanted to arm herself with a gun in her Washington, DC home; she was afraid of being robbed a second time. She explains the frustration of getting a gun in a city that deliberately designed its gun control procedures to take months to navigate and cost hundreds of dollars in fees. This is far from the personal gun ownership, the “everyman self-defense tool” that most of us enjoy. As she said, “I didn’t have to pass a test to exercise my first amendment rights.” Some rights are less equal than others in the District of Columbia.
The book is about more than Emily Miller’s personal struggle to buy a gun. She knows this level of bureaucratic frustration is designed to disarm the average DC resident. She transforms the nameless victims of DC’s gun laws back into real people, giving us their names and showing their faces as she unfolds their story. She describes the force of the state falling on honest, non-violent gun owners as they face malicious prosecution. There is no justice for D.C plaintiffs who can’t afford a robust legal defense, or aren’t politically connected. Sometimes justice takes a few calls from congressmen. She tells the victim’s story unusually well.
In another sense, her story is absolutely ordinary. Miller discovered her need for armed defense like millions of other urban women at about the same time. The women’s empowerment movement and the terrorist events of 9-11 left a new generation knowing they must defend themselves. Miller represents that large change in American gun ownership. That is part of her story, too.
Being the senior editor at the Washington Times gives Miller a unique observation point for the other half of her story. She documents the political forces trying to disarm America, describing political machinations at the city, state and national level. She chronicles the politicization of school murders and her horror at imagining those children were her Sunday school class. Miller describes her reaction.
The tragic murders at the Sandy Hook Elementary School broke the heart of every American, and that includes gun owners. Those of us who live in the almost half of homes in the nation with a gun are mothers, fathers, sisters, brothers, grandparents, aunts, and uncles who thought of the precious children in our families when we mourned the terrible scenes from Newtown.
Her frustration is palpable as she watches Michael Bloomberg orchestrate and finance a war on gun owners. The attempted gun grab of 2013 was about disarming the average citizen rather than stopping the next insane murderer. Miller explains how the political contest was about press releases and campaign donations rather than public safety. Some of the political reasons are crass. Obama’s policies left the economy in a shambles, so the President appealed to his anti-gun political donors to boost his ratings.
Miller also documents the complicity and corruption of the mainstream media. She exposes their blatant anti-gun bigotry by presenting their words in stark black and white. There is no sound track. There is no styled and painted face to sell the biased point of view in our news-video-theater that passes for journalism. The words are damning when laid bare. An honest and objective media are nowhere to be found.
Did you hear about the alternative bills in the US Senate that would have funded treatment and reporting of those with mental health problems? The media largely ignored them. There was also a bill on the Senate floor that increased funding for armed school resource officers. The anti-gun politicians let these bills die in the Democrat controlled Senate. Those bills would probably save lives but they didn’t serve the politicians’ larger purpose. The mainstream media never told us about that.
Miller follows the money and documents what money can buy in politics. Money buys media advertising. Money buys promises of political contributions. It buys votes. She takes us through the vote-by-vote manipulations as the raft of anti-gun bills worked their way through the US Senate. She talks about the anti-gun bills brought forward in the anti-gun states; Massachusetts, Connecticut, New York, Maryland, New Jersey and Colorado. (The book went to press before she could add California.)
Miller almost steps from journalist to enraged activist as she writes about the increased regulation many gun owners will endure after these state gun laws take effect. Between the lines you can hear her fume that state legislatures are doing to the rest of America what the D. C. government did to her. I wish she’d lost her temper a few more times. Her book certainly left me enraged at my corrupt and tyrannical government.
She sets up an interesting question as she documents the money-men behind the anti-gun movement. She talks about Bloomberg, but there are other political players she doesn’t mention. I know about Soros, Broad and Gill and the political power they purchased. I hope there is another side to the story.
Miller shows us the billionaires working for more state control. Where are the billionaires working for freedom? Emily doesn’t say, but I hope they are out there. Common citizens like us will have to lead the way until the wealthy stand up. Miller ends her book with this line and it is true. “A gun is just a tool. The fight is really for freedom.” Read this book if you want to be informed and drawn into the struggle. America needs you.
Emily Miller’s book Emily Gets Her Gun… But Obama Wants to Take Yours is available from the usual outlets.
Rob Morse is slightly intelligent with a serious sense of humor. He has been driven crazy as a design engineer is several bleeding-edge high-tech companies. He remains faithful and committed to marriage with his wife of 29 years. His two children have successfully escaped into the wild. He writes about technology and society from his home in southern California.
