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A com­pan­ion to L‑3, this lec­ture ana­lyzes gun con­trol, an issue that has helped fuel the growth of the mili­tia move­ment. Gen­er­al­ly viewed as a lib­er­al polit­i­cal issue, gun con­trol has roots firm­ly plant­ed in the his­to­ry and method­ol­o­gy of inter­na­tion­al fas­cism. Pre­sent­ing con­crete facts refut­ing many of the pop­u­lar argu­ments for gun con­trol, the dis­cus­sion high­lights the fact that the pres­ence of firearms in soci­ety is not con­nect­ed to the crime or homi­cide lev­els. In addi­tion, the pro­gram points out that bicy­cles, bath­tubs, swim­ming pools, match­es and auto­mo­biles each rep­re­sent an expo­nen­tial­ly greater threat to the lives of chil­dren than firearms.

After explod­ing many of the myths about gun con­trol, the pro­gram delin­eates con­nec­tions between inter­na­tion­al fas­cism and gun con­trol. Much of the dis­cus­sion cen­ters on for­mer Sen­a­tor Thomas Dodd, one of the most impor­tant fig­ures in the Amer­i­can gun con­trol move­ment. A mem­ber of the U.S. pros­e­cu­to­r­i­al staff at Nurem­berg, this for­mer FBI agent was close to the Amer­i­can Secu­ri­ty Coun­cil (ASC), a domes­tic fas­cist group.

With its roots in the Hitler-Goebbels Anti-Com­intern, the Amer­i­can Secu­ri­ty Coun­cil was a key Amer­i­can link to the for­mer World Anti-Com­mu­nist League or WACL. Cre­at­ed by for­mer FBI agents dis­grun­tled at the demise of Sen­a­tor Joseph McCarthy’s “inves­ti­ga­tions,” the Amer­i­can Secu­ri­ty Coun­cil coa­lesced around the files of Har­ry Jung’s Amer­i­can Vig­i­lance Intel­li­gence Fed­er­a­tion. (Vir­u­lent­ly anti-Semit­ic, Jung’s orga­ni­za­tion was part of the Anti-Com­intern pri­or to World War II.) Count­ing among its ranks some of the most promi­nent names on the far right, the orga­ni­za­tion kept track of peo­ple it con­sid­ered “sub­ver­sive,” shar­ing polit­i­cal intel­li­gence with prospec­tive employ­ers (par­tic­u­lar­ly defense con­trac­tors.)

The ASC hat­ed Pres­i­dent John F. Kennedy and it is not, there­fore, alto­geth­er sur­pris­ing that Dodd helped to dis­sem­i­nate the dis­in­for­ma­tion that Lee Har­vey Oswald had been trained in assas­si­na­tion by the KGB. With CIA assis­tance, Dodd insert­ed this dis­in­for­ma­tion into a Sen­ate Sub­com­mit­tee report. This dis­in­for­ma­tion, with roots in the same WACL milieu as the ASC, led lib­er­als to cov­er-up the assas­si­na­tion out of fear that pub­lic per­cep­tion that a com­mu­nist killed the Pres­i­dent would lead to a Third World War. Dod­d’s role in this affair is all the more inter­est­ing when one con­sid­ers the pos­si­bil­i­ty that Oswald may have ordered his weapons while work­ing for Dod­d’s Sub­com­mit­tee.

Inves­ti­gat­ing the mail-order firearms busi­ness, the Dodd com­mit­tee focused on the two firms from which Oswald alleged­ly pur­chased his weapons. Oswald was appar­ent­ly extra­or­di­nar­i­ly inter­est­ed in mail-order guns, a strange way for a prospec­tive assas­sin to acquire weapon­ry. In 1963, he could have pur­chased his guns over the counter with no trace of the trans­ac­tion. Manuel Pena, an intel­li­gence-con­nect­ed Los Ange­les Police offi­cer involved with the “inves­ti­ga­tion” of Robert Kennedy’s assas­si­na­tion, also worked with the Dodd sub­com­mi­tee. Pena helped to trace Oswald’s mail order gun pur­chas­es.

Dodd was instru­men­tal in craft­ing 1968 gun con­trol leg­is­la­tion that bor­rowed from the Nazi weapons con­trol act of 1938. It should be not­ed that the assas­si­na­tions of both Kennedys and Mar­tin Luther King con­tributed to the pas­sage of the 1968 Gun Con­trol bill. None of those killings would have been pre­vent­ed by gun con­trol. After detail­ing Dod­d’s career and involve­ment with the gun con­trol move­ment, the lec­ture under­scores the role of “ex” CIA offi­cer William O. Wells in the gun con­trol move­ment.

The founder of one and deeply involved with the the oth­er (sup­pos­ed­ly com­pet­ing) hand­gun con­trol orga­ni­za­tion, Wells’ oppo­si­tion to firearms own­er­ship is all the more sur­pris­ing con­sid­er­ing that Wells him­self owns two hand­guns and a rifle. After dis­cus­sion of Wells, the dis­cus­sion ana­lyzes some of the “lone nuts” whose mas­sacres have spurred recent calls for gun con­trol.

In par­tic­u­lar, the lec­ture presents dis­cus­sion of Patrick Edward Pur­dy, whose mas­sacre of Stock­ton school chil­dren in 1989 was the first of school­yard mas­sacres that have plagued the coun­try. In addi­tion to his con­nec­tions to the Aryan Nations, Pur­dy had been involved with the Uni­fi­ca­tion Church of Rev. Sun Myung Moon, a fas­cist mind con­trol cult.

The lec­ture con­cludes with rumi­na­tion on the pos­si­bil­i­ty that some of the mas­sacres may be intend­ed to help pre­cip­i­tate a fas­cist polar­iza­tion of soci­ety. Since firearms are an intrin­sic part of life in many parts of this coun­try, out­law­ing them will have an alien­at­ing and polar­iz­ing effect on much of the pop­u­la­tion in those areas, dri­ving them in the direc­tion of fas­cism and blind reac­tion. (Record­ed in San­ta Mon­i­ca in May of 1996.)