Long ago, I started reading a famous book called “Atlas Shrugged.”
All over the United States, people would ask each other, “Who is John Galt?” The land of the free had spiraled into profound mediocrity. Apparently, John Galt was and still is an urban legend symbolizing rugged individualism.
Now I am asking, who is Mark Pursley? Pursley is not an urban legend. According to Danny Westneat, a Seattle Times columnist, Pursley is the Seattle mayor’s gun adviser. Knowing Seattle the way I do, I would have assumed he is a pusillanimous and puerile purveyor of elitist propaganda to deprive the unwashed masses of the means to survive the coming collapse of civilization.
In other words, a liberal political hack.
But according to Westneat, Pursley’s experience in “gun violence prevention coordination” began because he was worried about shootings when he was a director of a Boys and Girls Club in White Center. The club suffered so many shootings that a local deputy advised Pursley to buy a shotgun. That was in the 1990s. I am sure Pursley was just as worried about the safety of the boys and girls as he was about his own safety. Pursley is allegedly a member of the NRA because “they believe in the same fundamental right I believe in.”
Pursley just wants to ensure that criminals, the mentally ill and kids should not have access to guns. Journalists seem to love advocates that are hated by both sides. Being hated from the left and the right confers credentials of a sort. The lofty mantle of objective and nonpartisan spokesperson for the public’s well-being. In fact, exactly the sort of advocate that our local readers have come to know as your Federal Way Firearms Lawyer!
I even aspire to guide my readers’ tastes in literature and movies. After you finish reading “Atlas Shrugged” and write a letter to Seattle’s newly-elected mayor to commend him for still employing a Nickels appointee with the audacity to actually protect children with a gun, you should go and watch the film “Avatar.”
“Avatar” is anti-American, anti-military and antithetical to free enterprise. According to some critics, the movie indulges a puerile (my word of the day) fantasy of guilt and superiority by depicting a white boy that rescues another race without ever leaving the comfort of his tanning bed.
Despite such faults, the story is tight, the acting is credible and the special effects are to die for. A greedy American military-industrial complex is trying to excavate all the Unobtanium — a mineral that is worth 1,000 times more than gold in 2010 dollars — on a planet inhabited by a charming species that rides around with bows and arrows on gorgeous birds. Thus, you will learn to appreciate primitive naturalism and come away knowing about why we need guns even if we someday obtain Utopia.
Incidentally, this may be my last column in The Mirror. If I get a call from Al Gore, I am out of here.
