Best Book I ever read: Unintended Consequences

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Would you really die for your right to own a gun?
Would you die for the right to worship God as you see fit? To marry the woman you love? To keep the product of your labor, rather than hand it over to the local nobility? To insure that your children grow up free?

Rights, man. Rights and freedom. If you value life more than you value liberty...
 
Rephrase this

How do you sell this book or another book to people who have no clue they should trust in the state or fed less than they do. Realy scare them with documentable fact that will never get promotional or even mention in media circles they may consider for sources. NYT would never recognise this book in large bold print. Correct me if I am wrong.

hehe guess this was a good thread to bump for this subject.
 
Best Book

The first time I read it in one sitting. It took me about 19 hours but there was no way I was going to stop. I've read it half-a-dozen times since then and last weekend I gave it to a guy I met in the hospital. I told him to read it a few times and pass it on. I suppose John Ross would prefer it if he bought his own, but what the heck-- now I have to buy another copy, so it all works out the same.
 
Just curious...is there anyone on the board here who thought this book sucked? Devil's advocate and all that...

Edit: I have *not* read the book...just looking for possible alternate views.
 
I have my personal copy on order right now. A local library has a copy and I read it on the recommendation of a friend. A truly excellent story that reads so close to reality, you question how much of it is actually fiction. I highly recommend it to everybody I know, although few have taken my advice (it's amazing how few people actually have the stamina to tackle a good sized book these days).
 
I think the author had issues defining a "line in the sand" as well, hence the ATF mistaken for terrorists while trying to plant counterfeit money and drugs on the premises while using a blank warrant -- so over the top no-one in the audience would fault the protagonist for it.
 
Why does everyone seem to think this book is a piece of great literature?
 
Why does everyone seem to think this book is a piece of great literature?

Because it portrays the cure for a growing cancer that sickens all red blooded americans and patriots. :cuss:
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Would you really die for your right to own a gun?

The second assures the rest!!! :D
 
I read it just this week - OUTRAGEOUS, a must read. Could not put it down.

It made me think:

1. Is all the history in there correct?

2. Does anyone have a time line on this stuff? Viewed together linearly it is some seriously scary stuff.

Edisted to add: The book is:
Title: Unintended Consequences
Author: John Ross
Hardcover: 863 pages
Publisher: Accurate Press (January 1, 1996)
ISBN: 1888118040

Author's web site: http://www.john-ross.net/

On Amazon: http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/t...104-9868522-4208755?v=glance&s=books&n=507846
 
I swear by my life and my love of it that I will never live for the sake of another man, or ask another to live for the sake of mine. Ayn Rand Atlas Shrugged.

Yes I would die for the right to own a gun!! Wouldn'd you?

Keith unhappy.gif
 
I just finished finals for this semester, Unintended Consequences is the first on my list to read over the break! Enemies Foreign & Domestic next, followed by Atlas Shrugged, and More Guns, Less Crime after that. I have quite a schedule eh?

not a split second delay in answering that yes I would die for liberty, guns are liberty's teeth. George Washington
 
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First off, excellent book. I'm reading it for the second time now.
Secondly, yes I would die for my rights. Just look at all you have to loose if you let that one right go.

jojo
 
I just finished up finals week, so my goal is to finish the last two hundred pages of UC this weekend. I love it so far, and find it to be well written and riveting. It makes me want do some independent research and check some of the history in the book. I would like to confirm some of the activities and get some more information on them.
 
OK, next assignment...

If you've read Unintended Consequences you now HAVE TO read Enemies Foreign and Domestic by Matt Bracken. He also posts here regularly under "Travis McGee". I'm not finished yet, but I'm glued to the book every spare minute I get.

Great book, but I'm now a little suspicious of my cell phone... ;)

It's my understanding that both of these fine authors have sequels in the works.
 
Great Literature?

A good read but not the point. This is the novel that transformed so many of us. Gave us understanding and historical perspective and a glimpse to the future. I also provides for a way back.....
CT
 
Great Literature?

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

A good read but not the point. This is the novel that transformed so many of us. Gave us understanding and historical perspective and a glimpse to the future.

End quote.

Thank you for the kind words. I can't count the number of times I've received letters or emails like the following. The first one I thought was tongue-in-cheek. After about the fifth, I realized they were real:

Dear Mr. Ross,

I just wanted to tell you that you have changed my life. A year ago, I had never owned a gun. Then a friend gave me your book to read. All of a sudden I felt ashamed at what I had allowed to happen on my watch. It's about freedom, and guns are the tip of the spear. I now own seven rifles and twenty-one handguns.

I have become a life member of the NRA. What other organizations do you advise supporting? My friend told me that he heard you at a gun rights speech saying JPFO did the most with the least. He also mentioned you said local grassroots groups had the greatest potential. We don't have any here. How should I start one? Any advice?

Thank you once again.

XXXXXX XXXX




I don't claim UC is a masterpiece of literary writing, and I won't quarrel with those who don't like the style or the content.

Some think the characters, their actions, sexual proclivities, etc. are not believeable. To those critics I can only say that you and I have had different life experiences, and leave it at that. My mail has run 20-1 in favor of letters saying things like "I felt like you were writing about my life!".

On an amusing note, a lot of letters say "Your book was so believable except for one thing, (insert scene here.) Why did you put that in? That was totally unrealistic."

I get this question a lot. The funny thing is, no two people list the same scene. An example is the part where Max lets young Henry drive his car on a rural road. One reader thought this was ludicrous. Several others told me that was exactly what their dads had done when they were kids, and I was the first author they’d read who put it in a novel. My favorite complaint was the reader who regularly worked with the federal government. He thought the government agents in my story were much too well-organized!

Anyway, thanks for all the kind words.

JR
 
Would you really die for your right to own a gun?

Here's the short answer:

"The right to own weapons is the right to be free."
-- A.E. Van Vogt, The Weapon Shops of Isher

Here are a couple of others:

"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 limits possible. Wherever standing armies are kept up, 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."
Henry St. George Tucker, in Blackstone's 1768 "Commentaries on the Laws of England."
"A free people ought not only to be armed and disciplined, but they should have sufficient arms and ammunition to maintain a status of independence from any who might attempt to abuse them, which would include their own government."
-- George Washington

The mere ownership of a material object is not the point - LIBERTY is the point. At the moment when you concede that government has the right to regulate the possessions of the average individual in society (as opposed to criminals), you have conceded that government is the Master of all of society. Once that power is granted by the concession, or seized by force, nothing stands in the way of a near-omnipotent power held by only a few individuals, i.e. a dictatorship.

BTW, here is the source of the above quotes (among many others):
http://202.80.33.17/nas/gunquote.htm
 
John Ross

Thanks for writing UC, for Ross in Range [ http://john-ross.net/ross_in_range.htm ] and for your many comments on this website and elsewhere - you have contributed greatly to my knowledge of guns, the gun culture, our society and the psychology of the gun controllers, and I'm sure that many thousands of others would echo my thoughts.

True enough, UC isn't great literature in the traditional sense of being a great work of literary art, but it is great literature to me: informative, thought-provoking, timely and maybe even prophetic. If it wakes up a few thousand or tens of thousands of people, and they themselves spread the word (and it HAS done that), then I'm sure that you will be more than satisfied that you had accomplished your mission. Congratulations on a job well done, even if it is only Job One on a long list, and THANKS again.

...now hurry up with that sequel!
 
Literature is defined as the preserved writings of a people (as opposed to those writings that are discarded). This writing is likely to be preserved well into the future.

Is is great? Well my screen name is an indication of my opinion, even if the foreshadowing was just a bit heavy handed here and there when read for the third time et seq.
 
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