Just Finished Reading 'Unintended Consequences'...

[Phydeaux642]

...and I am a bit conflicted. I found the history of our gun laws both interesting and disturbing. There was also a lot of very interesting commentary about different types of firearms and reloading. Mr. Ross knows his stuff. I did find some things a little disturbing, though. I realize that this is a work of fiction but I was a little disturbed buy how easy it was for Henry Bowman and the other characters to start killing folks. His character also seemed to be sort of a fringe dweller - never married, relationships with bi-sexual partners, only close to those in the gun culture, etc. I don't know, maybe I'm just a big ol' sissy. Anybody else enjoy the book but with reservations?

 

[taliv]

use search. there are many threads about that book here.

i love the book (read it 3 times), but felt it would have benefited greatly from a competent editor.

but to answer your question, it seems to me that the author spent dang near 1000 pages setting up the action. the point seems to be that it wasn't easy for them to start killing folks, and in fact took nearly a century of offenses to justify.

what could he have added to make you think it was hard for them to start killing folks?

 

[MatthewVanitas]

I've read it a couple times. At first I thought it was kinda fun but rather adolescent. On a later reading I found myself with much more mixed feelings, as the OP said.

A lot of it just feels like it was written as a teenage fantasy, where the hero is clearly the author, and gets all the hot bisexual girls and fast cars and motorcycles and big guns and everyone loves him and he's perfect... ad infinitum ad nauseum.

Plus I have real trouble identifying with a hero who castrates corpses, shoots bound prisoners in the head, etc. These are the sort of things we decry as inhuman when Al Qaeda does them, and then all of a sudden it's okay when a guy does them to ATF agents?

Plus there were some really tasteless bits, particularly the way black people were caricatured, with the ATF agent with long gemstoned fingernails who speaks in heavy Ebonics, and not to mention the other ATF agent whose backstory was the "stupid ghetto parents named her Gonorrhea because they thought it was a pretty name", which is pretty much just a 40yr old racist joke that the author thought would be funny to toss in as an actual plot point.

Overall I'd say the book was overly long, chock-full of adolescent fantasy at best. Though it might be somewhat enjoyable as wild fantasy for gun-buffs, anyone outside the gun culture reading it would be horrified and think we're all a bunch of racist, violent Walter Mittys. I'm really glad that book didn't get more press outside the gun community, as it does not make us look good to outside eyes.

 

[mb419]

Best book I've ever read. I've read it at least 8 times and I'm in the middle of it again.

 

[guernseyrifleman]

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.

 

[berettaprofessor]

Unintended Consequences is a good read regarding the history of gun laws. While Henry Bowman is not necessarily a sympathetic character, I don't think the premise of the book....where oppressed individuals start to act on their own against those bureaucrats who directly harmed them...is a completely far-fetched one. Every time I see a story where a really bad sex-offender type is freed by some permissive judge and then that individual turns around to murder somebody's little girl, I wonder how long it'll be until the fathers of those girls stop accepting that these things happen and start going after the judges and defense lawyers.

The reality of the book hinges on just how bad a situation it would take to cause the average citizen to take the step of revenge.

 

[Kind of Blued]

I just bought it online from Accurate Press, as well as Atlas Shrugged from Amazon. Studying the law doesn't leave much time for leisurely reading, but I'm excited the get them.

 

[Pitch]

Team Bowman's immediate zeal for wholesale slaughter is certainly an issue with what could have been an amusing "popcorn flick" of a novel. It's hard to admit you have any common interests with protagonists who execute prisoners; beat men to death in the street; force captives at gunpoint to denounce their government before beheading them; drug their opponents and plant evidence on or sexually assault the corpse to discredit them; or make it a habit of ending their sexual encounters with a murder instead of (or in addition to) an orgasm. By my estimates Henry Bowman and his followers have a higher body count than John Rambo. They're not trying to convince anyone they're correct, they just want to remind politicians that it's dangerous to disagree with an armed mob of the mentally instable. Most disturbing of all is when you realize that with only a handful of exceptions, every politician murdered over the course of the novel is a thinly-veiled pseudonym for a real person holding elected public office at the time it was published.

 

[BCCL]

I'm about half way through it for the first time.

Kinda scattered in it's storytelling, but interesting in a way.

Still not sure where it's going though???

 

[Phydeaux642]

what could he have added to make you think it was hard for them to start killing folks?

For me it was that there wasn't much of an "oh ****, what the heck just happened?" moment after the initial killings. His thoughts were "after the first one, the rest are free." It was a bit gruesome to me too with Henry dismembering the bodies afterwards. The other characters jump into action a bit to easily in my opinion.

And, even though there was a long setup outlining how gunowners have been weighed down with unnecessary legislation, Henry fell into fighting back purely by accident. He wasn't planning any of what happened until he was forced into it.

 

[mb419]

Where is Henry Bowman???

By the way, for you new members, John Ross is a member here. He may just come out and talk.

 

[Tommygunn]

I enjoyed the novel quite a lot.

Dismembering the corpses and the ... other disrespects was possibly a bit much. OTOH I have always had the concern ... or suspicion if you will, that if TSHTF then those who will be fighting it will be rather vicious. If it does wind up being guerrilla warfare, then taking prisoners might not even be an option.

"Those who would take up war cannot be otherwise than vicious," as Machiavelli said in his book, The Art of War. He might have meant it in a slightly different context .... but also consider The Civil War wasn't fought with civility.
What Bowman was involved in was guerrilla warfare on a smaller scale than what we would normally consider.
In this light, the dismemberments and ..."other things" were actually more cumbersome and inefficient than useful.
And consider that in reality such a guerrilla force would no doubt have to do something to win over popular support to some degree, as General Washington did in the Revolutionary War when he sent Nathan Green down to harass the British down south, and show the people down there the war was in their backyard and the Redcoats weren't the good guys.

 

[Geronimo45]

Dismembering the corpses and the ... other disrespects was possibly a bit much. OTOH I have always had the concern ... or suspicion if you will, that if TSHTF then those who will be fighting it will be rather vicious. If it does wind up being guerrilla warfare, then taking prisoners might not even be an option.

Look up the Philippine (sp) Insurrection sometime. The winning side sometimes goes overboard in killing, the losing side tends to be big on the torture/dismember/castrate business. The more men/battles your side loses, the more humanity some lose.
Look at Napoleon's invasion/occupation of Spain, and some of the nastier exploits of resistance groups.

 

[Tommygunn]

True Geronimo.
Although IMO war is a dehumanizing proposition to both the winners and the losers.

 

[MatthewVanitas]

Although IMO war is a dehumanizing proposition to both the winners and the losers.

Umm... sure, but the people Bowman was dismembering, having his supporters stab during intercourse, shooting in the back of the head while bound, etc. weren't out inflicting savage atrocities on him.

He shot some ATF agents who'd come to frame his friend (yes, that's a bad thing for government employees to do) and then he and his people murdered a bunch of bureaucrats who never physically harmed anyone. Not even just "ATF officers who ordered people framed", but "politician who voted against gun issues".

Seriously, and he even glorifies shooting an EPA inspector over a fine for polluting the water table. So some bureaucrat calls you out for dumping toxic chemicals into everyone's drinking water and suddenly it's a-okay to put a 45-70 slug into him at a stoplight?

 

[Tommygunn]

MathewVanitas, I was not trying to necessarily defend Bowman, I was simply trying to point out the war is nasty & dehumanizing.
During WW2, American tank crews in the Pacific would boil the flesh off dead Japanese soldiers and ... "decorate" their tanks with the naked skulls. Pretty vicious if you ask me.
To say nothing of using flamethrowers to clear the enemy out of tanks.

Eleanor Roosevelt talked about having American servicemen returning from war ..."decompress" before being allowed back into society. Maybe she had the right idea.
Shooting an EPA investigator?
Okay okay I get the point. Should we have another civil war, do we have it "ONLY" because our 2A rights are being TKO'd ... or do we use the war ... should it come to that ... to do a major "reset??"
Or maybe we should finish the 2A war and then start killing all over again when the EPA guys declare the mudpuddle in your backyard a "navigatable waterway" so you can't build the doghouse you wanted?

Take your pick.
It will be dang fortunate if we get it half right if it happens at all.
Sherman said "war is hell." It's pithy enough, and I think he meant it in all it's intensity ... but I sometimes wonder if others "get it."???

 

[DoubleTapDrew]

I thought the book was great and although it was gruesome and disturbing at times it was a story about fighting back outside the ballot box. Anyone who lives in an area overtaken by liberals knows the ballot box is a nice concept but is a competely useless way to achieve anything pro 2a.

The only demands made by the core group (who would undoubtedly be called terrorists in todays media) were that they just want to be left alone. It wouldn't be a very entertaining book if it was filled with groups of protesters walking around with signs or bills slowly moving through channels at the speed of government only to die on the desk of someone who thinks an AR-15 is an assault rifle.

I like how John Ross made sure to use other means than guns (particularly NFA weapons, by guys who have access to tons of them) to dispatch politicians who continually assaulted the bill of rights. Using suppressors, MGs, DDs, etc. to achieve the goals in the story would hurt the message.

You can argue that politicians never physically harmed anyone. The results of bills passed by politicians have killed plenty of people. Do you ever have to disarm (or do you not carry)? Taking away the most effective means of people to defend themselves is probably filled with good intentions, and we all know what the road to hell is paved with.

 

[larry_minn]

I have read it more then once. As I have said before. I feel it would have been better without some parts. Other parts added to story.
You do realize its a work of FICTION? Like many other stories thing happen that shouldn't or we wouldn't like to.

 

[Pitch]

DoubleTapDrew, you may recall that Henry Bowman killed twelve people with an NFA weapon, albeit unregistered. Aside from that, how do you suppose that shooting a man (and he does recommend shooting people) would harm "the message" in a way that deranged gun owners caving a man's skull in with a hammer on the sidewalk does not? Your beliefs are not given credence simply because you decide to act out some other other sociopathic fantasy. Perhaps Henry simply got didn't want to fall into a rut after shooting his first two dozen victims.

 

[Tommygunn]

I sort of thought the idea of Bowman using things other than guns was to demonstrate that guns weren't really necessary to accomplish the goals of a resistance fighter, therefor gun bans were not only offensive to individual rights, but pointless.

Your beliefs are not given credence simply because you decide to act out some other other sociopathic fantasy.

True, but sort of aside from the point ... IMHO.

 

[Pyruvate]

Here is a somewhat in-depth critique of UC, good for folks who don't have time to read the book.

 

[MatthewVanitas]

You do realize its a work of FICTION? Like many other stories thing happen that shouldn't or we wouldn't like to.

Certainly, but if you knew someone who was regularly listening to rap music with violent lyrics about killing cops, beating women, and selling drugs, wouldn't you find that a little off-putting?

Especially if they always mentioned "MC Such-and-Such is the most amazing rapper ever!" And then when you mentioned all the terribly content, would just claim they only liked "the beats" and weren't affected by the lyrics.

While Henry Bowman is not necessarily a sympathetic character, I don't think the premise of the book....

That's just the point: Bowman is an idealised figure, one step short of beatified. He's certainly not some troubled anti-hero that we're supposed to feel ambivalent about. He gets all the girls, he's perfectly calm under pressure, he's handsome, wealthy, has all the fun guns/motorcycles/cars everyone dreams about having, and is just generally perfect. The only "flaw" he has is that he was raped and became an alcoholic, but even that is just a cursory attempt to put some sort of negative into his backstory, and to make it as excusable as possible because it happened through no fault of his own.

I just can't dig an amazingly perfect character who also shoots bound prisoners in the head and dismembers their bodies with no qualms. I likewise have trouble with the implication that killing FAA inspectors for grounding elderly pilots is somehow justification for pulling out totalen krieg tactics.

 

[MaterDei]

Adolescent fantasy? I certainly hope that there aren't any adolescent's reading this.

I very much enjoyed the history and many of the characters but as the story progressed it became a pornographic snuff film of a book.

 

[Chill_Bebop]

Seems like a great book. I love the idea of a marginally abused tiny sgement of society brutally terrorizing and murdering federal agents using NFA weaponry, and shooting helpless captives. I think that speaks really well of the Gun owning society. If I could critique the book at all, I say it could have used just a little more women lezzing out.

 

[Rezin]

as well as Atlas Shrugged

OUTSTANDING book.