Just Finished Reading 'Unintended Consequences'...

guernseyrifleman said:

If you liked Unintended Consequences then you will also like Neither Predator Nor Prey www.neitherpredatornorprey.com This novel takes place in Wyoming and the gun-grabbers find themselves in over their heads. Lots of action, good story line, realistic characters, good tactics, a plausible scenario, and lots of humor. A good cure for defeatism and post-Obama depression.

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Mark, from some of the replies to this thread, I'm not sure some of these folks would have the stomach for your book. In my opinion your book has UC beat in the way of "taking out the trash". I just got done reading NPNP for the third time and enjoyed every page...but I am a little biased...I live in the State where the story takes place.

If you had no qualms with some of the actions the main character in UC did, the you will love Neither Predator Nor Prey.

Jeff White said:

Last I checked the Germans won and the survivors who weren't executed on the spot went to the concentration camps. Shows what a small group of determined people can accomplish when they don't have popular support.

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That's what I got out of it, Jeff.

We saw essentially the same outcome in Pennsylvania with the Whiskey Rebellion, but instead of genocide, they either fled south or shut up and paid their taxes. And those were well-armed, former Revolutionary colonial regulars and militia fighting on their own ground against grouchy militia raised from bordering lands and states - whose salaries were in arrears.

John Locke said:

For if [tyranny] reach no farther than some private men's cases, though they have a right to defend themselves, and to recover by force what by unlawful force is taken from them; yet the right to do so will not easily engage them in a contest, wherein they are sure to perish; it being as impossible for one, or only a few oppressed men to disturb the government, where the body of people do not think themselves concerned in it, as for a raving mad-man, or heady malcontent to overturn a well-settled state; the people being as little apt to follow one, as the other[Emphasis in original].

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There endeth the lesson.


Pretty smart for an dead old, white guy, ain't he?

BullFrogKen said:

The only way to approach this book IS to conclude it's fantastical.

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"Fantastical" is a really good one word description, for sure.
As for Picard vs. Kirk, both had their good & bad points. I think Bowman's alcoholism didn't "quite" work is perhaps because it was Ross's first book. Making characters seem real is often tough -- believe me; I know, I've tried. I never really thought of Bowman as a "hero" in any classic sense of the world. At the time I read it, I wasn't all that bothered by his lack of emotional response to the killings he'd done, I attributed it to what he'd been through. After that it didn't surprise me he'd be a little sociopathic.
And it does now occur to me this was a product of the 1990s -- in the aftermath of Ruby Ridge and Waco, and the lame investigations congress did, UC would be one literary consequence.

Jeff White said:

Look at what happened to the Germans when they went after a small handful of people in Warsaw who truly had their backs to the wall. Those were people who didn't have any guns that they couldn't steal or get with their bare hands, and who'd had no training or experience with guns at all!

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Last I checked the Germans won and the survivors who weren't executed on the spot went to the concentration camps. Shows what a small group of determined people can accomplish when they don't have popular support.


Quote:

They may well get you but it can be unbearably expensive for them.

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It wasn't unbearably expensive for the Germans. They stayed in Poland until the Red Army threw them out.

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The only real lesson taken from the Warsaw resistors, from what I recall, is that it took the Germans longer to get them all than taking Warsaw in the first place -- and they atleast died resisting evil ... a better death than the concentration camps offered.

Jeff White Moderator
I can think of plenty more . . . with the added benefit of not feeling uncomfortable handing any of those over for the fencesitters to borrow.
I'd no more give a fence sitter a copy of Unintended Consequences then I would give them a copy of The Turner Diaries.

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I can agree with that . I read the turner book and it made me want to puke. UC however made me cheer. am i nutz?

Quote:
Look at what happened to the Germans when they went after a small handful of people in Warsaw who truly had their backs to the wall. Those were people who didn't have any guns that they couldn't steal or get with their bare hands, and who'd had no training or experience with guns at all!
Last I checked the Germans won and the survivors who weren't executed on the spot went to the concentration camps. Shows what a small group of determined people can accomplish when they don't have popular support.

Quote:
They may well get you but it can be unbearably expensive for them.
It wasn't unbearably expensive for the Germans. They stayed in Poland until the Red Army threw them out.

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Guess we'll have to agree to disagree then. What I saw were people who, no avoiding it, were going to die at the hands of the Germans, whether they cooperated or fought. But, those few of them that fought, died on their own terms at least, and took some Germans with them. They got a better deal out of it than did the ones who got on the trains.

The other point I think you're not seeing is that it took the mighty Wehrmacht a couple of weeks and burning down that part of the city to finally get rid of the last few of the fighting Jews. The lesson for others ought to be that if a few people with basically no guns or training can do that, think of what thousands of determined people could do to resist an oppressive government with what you have in your safe.

It's certainly been awhile since I've completed a literature course but here's my thoughts on Henry Bowman:

I think that he's the combination of "every gun owner in the country" sort of character. Meaning that each person who reads the book can identify with at least one to two aspects, traits, etc of Bowman (perhaps more). He's not supposed to simply be a single, perfect literary character with wonderfully emotive descriptions. Being the personification of the entire gun culture as a whole, to me, lends a bit of light on the issue of his being too good to exist in real life. In this way the reader provides the missing emotion such as shame, disgust, fear, what-have-you that Henry Bowman of the book is missing.

For example, I believe that the character of Napolean Dynomite is the same type of character described above. Each of us in highschool felt isolated, embarrassed, out of place, etc. And I suppose if you didn't you were either kidding yourself or you were the prick-type students/atheletes/cheerleaders who picked on the Napoleanesque kids. Therefore in that movie, you actually become the central character allowing the details you provide to fill in the gaps that (intentionally?) exist.

Hopefully that analogy helps explain some of the gripes/issues/etc most people have with Bowman. But then again that's just MHO...

Big Matt, you're giving the author a bit too much credit here. Henry Bowman reads like a Mary Sue character. It's Ross' self-insertion character made perfect.

Except maybe for that bit about murdering a senator and sexually assaulting the corpse.

Then again, I don't know what John Ross does in his spare time.

Holy Crap, I guess I finally got to the part some folks here are talking about in UC.

The personality change that Henry Bowman takes so suddenly is a little bizarre.

Holy Crap, I guess I finally got to the part some folks here are talking about in UC.

The personality change that Henry Bowman takes so suddenly is a little bizarre.

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It is just a book, too. When I read the part you're talking about, I was a little disturbed by what seemed like a sudden change there. However, after thinking about it, here's what I think rubs people as weird.

It's not what the character is doing. You could make an argument that if you were Henry Bowman in the book, going all out so to speak is the only possible way out of the situation. What makes the Bowman character seem almost sociopathic to people is how quickly (space of an hour or two) he realizes the enormity of the jam he's in, and comes up with the course of action he takes. A "more normal" person I suspect would go catatonic, or get really drunk and run around in circles gnashing his teeth and rending his garments with the weight of the government about to come down on him. Henry figures he's only screwed if he lets up, so he doesn't. Although it's rare, there are people with that kind of calm, self-assurance, and drive, just yesterday I read about a Canadian soldier awarded the Victoria Cross in WWII for singlehandedly fighting off a German armor and infantry attack. He faced "impossible" odds in the face of tremendous violence, and not only did he survive, he prevailed (and saved a great many Allied soldiers by doing so). There are people who can deal with being way behind the 8 ball.

Everybody loves a good "wronged gun-toting good guy snaps and starts killing bad-guys" story. That's why the Punisher franchise is so popular.

However, UC was an extreme instance of kind of plot, written for a very small segment of society.

Imagine yourself being terribly wronged (or your family)... like, say, someone did something terrible to your son/daughter/wife, etc... and I mean TERRIBLE. Where you no longer care about life, death, or the law. Only making the offender suffer. Sure, it's base and juvenile, but it's also human nature. We all cheer the guy who takes justice into his own hands. That's why we all love the old Charles Bronson "Deathwish" movies.

That said, what Bowman went through doesn't meet my criteria for giving up my life and attempting to kill every you-know-what that ever did me wrong. I reserve that for greivous bodily harm against a family member. Even then, I imagine it would be a bit more Samuel L. Jackson in "A time to Kill" than it would be Henry Bowman. But Bowman had some nice touches, adding insult to injury, so to speak.

Oh, and since Tremors was brought up, I agree, that is the perfect movie to justify gun enthusiasm. Not Graboids per se, but just being prepared.

Best line: Kevin Bacon, speaking about Burt and Reba "Well... I guess we can't make fun of their lifestyle anymore."

Thank you all for reminding me to re-read this book again.

There are big chunks of the book that seem entirely unnecessary. For example when a young Henry stumbles across a rape and just starts killing everyone. I really don't see why this scene is included other than just to have some action early on in the book.

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This scene had a very definite purpose. Henry came upon a situation where he had to take decisive action -- and fast. He did it without grandstanding and (much) speech making. This contributed to the ease at which he decided to take decisive and lethal action later in the story. Having already used lethal force in the past, even though it was in an urgent defense situation, the phrase "after the first one, the rest are free" made the later action easier for the character to rationalize.

Adding in how other agencies (FAA and EPA) were arbitrarily and capriciously destroying peoples' lives broadened the issue to "freedom" instead of just "gun rights."

The book is not perfect and it was much better (to me) the second time through. I better understood and appreciated the foundation laid in the first part of the book.


PS: My name is not really Henry Bowman.

Imagine yourself being terribly wronged (or your family)... like, say, someone did something terrible to your son/daughter/wife, etc... and I mean TERRIBLE. Where you no longer care about life, death, or the law. Only making the offender suffer. Sure, it's base and juvenile, but it's also human nature. We all cheer the guy who takes justice into his own hands. That's why we all love the old Charles Bronson "Deathwish" movies.

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Good comparison, and it re-enforces the point that the Bowman character makes the circumstances all the more disturbing.

Bronson's character in Deathwish had actual personality, flaws, doubts, and the like which made him human. Bowman, on the other hand, is a "Mary Sue" perfect fantasy figure, and a clear case of self-insertion by Ross.

Even setting aside the racist caricatures, ridiculous over-use of foreshadowing, creepy thinly-veiled representations of living people, etc. the simple fact that Ross' heroes are inaccessible beatified figures really reduces the reader's ability to sympathize or connect with them.

The only thing worse than John Ross's writing 'style' is the poorly written story itself, which is nothing more than often boring fap-fiction. One can almost pinpoint the exact moment he went completely insane.

Henry Bowman said:

PS: My name is not really Henry Bowman.

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Really? Damn. I was JUST about to ask you for the perfect powder to use with my .44 Magnum reloads that use 1/2inch styrofoam bar stock in extra-thick-walled adamantium cases with large shotgun primers and are fired from a custom five-inch-barrelled barrelled special-run-of-13 S&W model 29 prototype from 1937 with special target grips cut from the wood of the True Cross itself by a one-legged nun.

The only thing worse than John Ross's writing 'style' is the poorly written story itself, which is nothing more than often boring fap-fiction.

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I don't know, I personally think Ross is a good writer, but I did find the super short chapters to be highly annoying.

It was a lot better than "The Ox Bow Incident".
Less angst driven than "Catcher in the Rye"
Not as 'hoity toity' as Shakespeare.
Less bloody than C. S. Forester's 'Hornblower' series.
Longer than ALL of S. Hunters books, combined.
More believable than Shelley's "Frankenstein".

A decent snowy winter's read.

Meowhead said:

Really? Damn. I was JUST about to ask you for the perfect powder to use with my .44 Magnum reloads ...

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If you'd been paying attention you would already know that Hercules Bullseye was the answer.

Meowhead...

Really? Damn. I was JUST about to ask you for the perfect powder to use with my .44 Magnum reloads that use 1/2inch styrofoam bar stock in extra-thick-walled adamantium cases with large shotgun primers and are fired from a custom five-inch-barrelled barrelled special-run-of-13 S&W model 29 prototype from 1937 with special target grips cut from the wood of the True Cross itself by a one-legged nun

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You've got one of those too? Mine's number 0005. Which one do you have?

Matt, don't take what I'm about to type personally, ok? Its just a criticism.

Big Matt said:

I think that he's the combination of "every gun owner in the country" sort of character. Meaning that each person who reads the book can identify with at least one to two aspects, traits, etc of Bowman (perhaps more). He's not supposed to simply be a single, perfect literary character with wonderfully emotive descriptions. Being the personification of the entire gun culture as a whole, to me, lends a bit of light on the issue of his being too good to exist in real life. In this way the reader provides the missing emotion such as shame, disgust, fear, what-have-you that Henry Bowman of the book is missing.

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So I'm supposed to round out the character by inserting myself into his shoes? That's really not how good characters are developed, nor something any decent author strives for. Identifying with a character and connecting with him is a whole that different that saying, "Hey, you know, he sounds a little like me . . . except for these glaring blank spots . . . so I'll just insert my life experiences into the story and make him complete."

So I'm supposed to provide Bowman with a moral compass, some healthy relationships, and a whole bunch of sanity borrowed from my life experiences?

That character so far removed that me that there's no way I could even begin to connect with him. I don't think I'd even want to try. Nor do I begin to understand how Bowman represents a combination of the "everyday gun owner". He is about as much like me as my US Senator.

Bowman was independently wealthy. He did not fail at anything he ever tried to do; in fact his skill exceeded beyond any of his peers. He could get any girl he wanted. He hangs out with strippers, and manages to become friends with only the "really smart and stable one." Yeah. Every guy I knew that actually hooked up with a stripper thought "his girl" was just there dancing her way for money to complete her MBA, too. Six months and a wrecked life later . . . .

Bowman was among the top 2% of shooters in the country (but if you asked him he'd probably wink and say it's more like the top .005%), and he shot tens of thousands of rounds a season. He owned countless class 3 firearms, and multiple extremely rare, extremely expensive, unique guns. He went on African safaris, and amazingly killed several buffalo to protect himself and a guide who were caught in the middle of a stampede - once again he comes through with narry a scratch. He had no family of his own. He had no friends that I could tell outside of other equally hardcore gun owners.

Looking past all these things, I'm supposed to believe Bowman is representative of me because he was a gun enthusiast?

I'm not sure he represents much of the gun culture at all. But Bowman is a personification of Ross - and really a kinda creepy one at that.



Richard Kuklinski is of Irish (and Polish) decent. He grew up with an abusive, alcoholic father. He was raised Catholic, but gave up on religion at a young age. He was also very much a gun enthusiast, so knowledgable he could have answered a lot of technical questions here on this board.

But he also happened to be a sociopathic killer. Although his first killing contains elements of self-defense, he goes on to kill between 150 - 200 more. And as he viewed it . . . "the rest were free."

Am I supposed to identify with him, and look past some truly deep character flaws because we share some traits in common? Hell, using this logic why don't we "gunnies" glorify Timothy McVeigh?

Bowman represents me about as much as Charles Whitman or McVeigh did. And in case there's any doubt, that's not at all.

Tommygunn said:

The only real lesson taken from the Warsaw resistors, from what I recall, is that it took the Germans longer to get them all than taking Warsaw in the first place -- and they atleast died resisting evil ... a better death than the concentration camps offered.

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xsquidgator said:

The other point I think you're not seeing is that it took the mighty Wehrmacht a couple of weeks and burning down that part of the city to finally get rid of the last few of the fighting Jews. The lesson for others ought to be that if a few people with basically no guns or training can do that, think of what thousands of determined people could do to resist an oppressive government with what you have in your safe.

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May I suggest a different lesson? How about skiing.

Don't look at the tree. If you look at the tree, you'll ski into it. Every time. If you want to avoid the tree, look somewhere else. Focus your eyes and concentrate on where you want to ski to avoid the tree. And you will.


If we reduce ourselves to admiring valor in defeat, and fighting only to gain a few more weeks, or a "more glorious death" . . . that's what we'll get.

While people point to the Warsaw uprising as a great, last stand, remember - it was their last stand. They died. Their families died. Those who were left were horribly oppressed, stripped of their entire possessions, and exiled to slave labor camps. The Germans won. Only through the great efforts of the rest of the world were the Germans defeated.

And it still didn't bring back those "glorious dead" Jews. It didn't erase the fact that entire generations of families were shoved into ovens, and those who managed to survive had to rebuild their lives from nothing, with nothing, and sometimes completely alone.


Rather than reading through a poorly-written 850 page book for the ninth time, go read something new. Read Nation of Cowards, or bodies of work by our nation's founders. Learn through their struggles about how and when to resist with force. And when not to.

Get involved with your local gun club, and explore ways to reach new gun owners. Or make new ones. Acquaint yourself with some decent works that you can lend to a person with questions about gun ownership.


Otherwise, all we're going to do is ski right into that tree.

Unintended Consequences is ONE of the best books I have ever read. Not because it is a literary masterpiece, but because of the realism and almost headline robbing sequences that could be TODAY'S!!!!! As another poster stated, the events capture a century's worth of Gov't oppression and abuses. Those Laws and Regulations aren't fiction, for the most part. And frankly, the line of abuses aren't either. If you think the premise and actual events in this book aren't "realistic" given today's mess, you better dust it off and read it again. There may be hundreds, if not thousands of potential Henry Bowman's out there. Folks who have just about had enough. Think about it.

Yes, there certainly are parts of it that I would like to have been written differently. But, even those parts are fairly accurate. It IS a work of fiction, but damned it touches aweful close to home.

BullFrogKen said:

May I suggest a different lesson? How about skiing.

Don't look at the tree. If you look at the tree, you'll ski into it. Every time. If you want to avoid the tree, look somewhere else. Focus your eyes and concentrate on where you want to ski to avoid the tree. And you will.


If we reduce ourselves to admiring valor in defeat, and fighting only to gain a few more weeks, or a "more glorious death" . . . that's what we'll get.

While people point to the Warsaw uprising as a great, last stand, remember - it was their last stand. They died. Their families died. Those who were left were horribly oppressed, stripped of their entire possessions, and exiled to slave labor camps. The Germans won. Only through the great efforts of the rest of the world were the Germans defeated.

And it still didn't bring back those "glorious dead" Jews. It didn't erase the fact that entire generations of families were shoved into ovens, and those who managed to survive had to rebuild their lives from nothing, with nothing, and sometimes completely alone.


Rather than reading through a poorly-written 850 page book for the ninth time, go read something new. Read Nation of Cowards, or bodies of work by our nation's founders. Learn through their struggles about how and when to resist with force. And when not to.

Get involved with your local gun club, and explore ways to reach new gun owners. Or make new ones. Acquaint yourself with some decent works that you can lend to a person with questions about gun ownership

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1.) Why do you assume I am not involved in gun rights in some ways? Why do you assume I haven't read anything by our nation's founders.
2.) I'm sorry you think I'm admiring "valor in defeat," because I only said that it was better to "die on yur feet, than to live on your knees," to paraphrase Zapata. For the Jews their fate is sealed by history. Yes, they lost, they cannot any longer hope to prevail, or for salvation (outside of the purely spiritual kind) as they died at the hands of the Reich. Is it so wrong to admire people, though doomed, went down fighting? Perhaps they should have just given up, surrendered themselves over to the Nazis, and died as the Nazis chose rather than how they chose.
We are not now facing such consequences as the Warsaw Jews did, and I pray to God we never will. Should we have to take such a decision, perhaps we should pray to do as well.
As for skiing, there's no place in Northern Alabama I know that offers that sport, and I've had enough of snow in my life having spent a better part of it in New England, thank you very much. I shall look where I'm going, and check the corners as I pass.

I never said UC was Shakespeare. It isn't. So Bowman was a bazillionare with a ****load of full auto weapons. He's a "perfect" imperfect character, a cartoon image, a polished humonculous with an alcohol problem.
Woopdeedo.
You're free to dislike the book as you choose. Sure it isn't the best I've read. As I previously intimated, Where Freedom Reigns was a LOT better. UC still offered some interesting thoughts up to those of use who are concerned about where our country is going, and our second amendment rights. I think it is a "must read," but only if one is willing to follow it up with other books in the same vein. It would be nice if people would have (or would) read The Turner Diaries BECAUSE it is a vile book full of racism. People ought to know there are people in this country who think that's some kind of bible or something.
People should have read Hitler's Mein Kampf as well. If people had read that in the years prior to WW2, just maybe a chance would have existed to stop Hitler. Trouble is, of course, that Hitler wrote it from inside a jail cell, and no sane person would ever consider a wild, meandering scrib written by a jailed buffoon would ever be used as a template for the destruction of europe -- especially when the author of the book would be the author of that destruction as well.
And people will as easily dismiss UC ... which is written better than Mein Kampf was.
It's an interesting universe we live in ...... trees notwithstanding.

Tommygunn said:

1.) Why do you assume I am not involved in gun rights in some ways? Why do you assume I haven't read anything by our nation's founders.

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If the challenge doesn't personally apply to you, then don't take it so.

For every 100 shooters our community has, a handful actually involve themselves in doing things for our endeavour besides shooting. If you're one of those handful, I'll take the time now to publicly say thank you.

Tommygunn said:

Is it so wrong to admire people, though doomed, went down fighting? Perhaps they should have just given up, surrendered themselves over to the Nazis, and died as the Nazis chose rather than how they chose.

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I didn't suggest either of those positions. What I did suggest is focusing on something more constructive.

We have plenty of examples of people during our own nation's founding who were faced with similar circumstances. Rather than wage all-out war on England and any of her colonial supporters, they fought smartly. And judiciously. Those real life stories contain much more for us to learn from than UC's fantastical tale.

The problem, as I see it anyway, is no one comes here to regale those people, or their stories and the books written about them.


But to answer your question, when faced with the certainty of a terrible death, acts of defiance and resistence do serve to cause our oppressor to rethink his commitment to our destruction. But in the end, they're still dead. And when an entire movement, or an entire people are eradicated, they've lost. I'd like us to avoid that.


If you don't like my skiing analogy, ok.

During the Clinton Administration, when things seemed to look their darkest for gun owners, a quiet movement began across the US. When he took office, perhaps 10 or less states had what were considered "shall-issue" carry permit laws. During his tenure that number more than doubled, and continued to grow to the point where we now have roughly 36 states with "shall-issue" laws.

Had gun owners, and our movement, simply "holed up" and waited for the worst to come to pass, we'd not be in that position today. And we wouldn't have nearly 20 years of empirical data showing that ordinary people who carry guns with them about their daily activities can be trusted to do so without incident.

But if you told me in 1994 that in 15 years you'd be able to go into 2/3rds of the states and get a permit to carry a gun, without having to justify the reason to the state, I'd have looked at you like you were from Mars.

History is full of horrific events and injustices that human beings, through resiliency and courage, are somehow able to survive.

Nechama Tec's 1993 book "Defiance: The Bielski Partisans" is based on a true remarkable story of Jewish refugees in WWII Russia that band together into a brigade that hides in the forest, ambushes Germans and survives until war’s end, eventually 1200 strong.

The movie version of "Defiance" that came out last month has plenty of action -- including a scene in which the guerrilla fighters go up against a Nazi tank!



It took selfless, courageous men and women to confront the Nazis. "Defiance" is a tribute to their sacrifices.