I read it four years ago. Altough I was familiar with it from reviews in gun magazines for several years, it wasn't until a friend recommended it to me that I finally got around to reading it.
1. I wish that Mr. Ross had included an appendix, or notes of some kind to a) seperate fact from fiction, and b) back up some of the claims that he made.
2. Like Tom Clancy, Mr. Ross is great at weaving many threads together into a single plot. Also like Mr. Clancy, the book seemed as much of an excercise in stoking the author's ego as telling a story.
3. Unlike
Enemies Foreign and Domestic, the bad guys in
Unintended Consequences were not scary. It was obvious that John Ross^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H Henry Bowman was going to walk across water and save us all.
4. The media were too sympathetic to the cause of gun owners. Yeah, right. Read
EFAD for a more likely scenario of how the media will be (are being?) manipulated.
5. When I got to the following passage, I realized that the author was spending too much time with like-minded people (much like reporters do, which is why Dan Ra
ther thought he could get away with what he recently did):
August 2
...
"They're getting grim. San Antonio, Texas. Somebody set fire to an ATF agent's house at 2:00 this morning. Obvious arson job. Accelerants all over the front of the house, especially the front door. When the firemen got there, they find the whole family in their pajamas, in the back yard. The agent, his wife, and three kids. All dead. Each one shot at least three times, and all of them once behind the right ear."
...
"Yeah." The agent looked away from Alex for an instant, then turned back to face him. "Guys from the San Antone office questioned four sets of neighbors."
"And?"
"And nobody knows nothin' about nothin'. One old guy with a walker came to the door, told the San Antonio SAC he wasn't about to talk to him, and to get a warrant if he wanted to come inside. The wife's behind the old guy, and she's sitting in a wheelchair, so the SAC asks her for a statement. Did she hear anything, see anything out the window? She says, 'You want a statement? Okay, Mister FBI man. People who play with fire sometimes get burned.' Then she laughs and shuts the door in his face." The agent took a deep breath. "Sir, cooperation was low before that tape got aired, but now it's nonexistent."
Jesus F. Christ!!!!!! Are we supposed to believe that the average person is soooooo outraged by what happened at Waco that they would condone the murder of children??!!! Mr. Ross -- and the rest of us, for that matter -- should get out of the echo chamber once in a while.
I found
Unintended Consequences entertaining enough to finish (unlike
Atlas Shrugged). But the "near future" scenario is pure fantasy. It pales next to
Enemies Foreign and Domestic, which is a
much better story that should keep you up at nights.
(As I put on my Nomex suit....)
