What seems like many years ago, I wrote an essay—the earliest reference I can find to it now is in an article published in 2000 by former The Libertarian Enterprise editor John Taylor, but I'm sure it's older—which, with a nod to one of my favorite scenes in Raiders of the Lost Ark, was called "Why Did It Have To Be ... Guns?". [Mr. Taylor reports the date on the original file is March 29, 1995—Editor]

Its thesis, essentially, was that you can learn everything you need to know about any politician if you find out where he stands with regard to your individual right to obtain, own, and carry weapons. If he won't trust you, you can't trust him. One politician I had in mind when I wrote it was then Arapahoe County (Colorado) Sheriff Patrick J. Sullivan.

Sullivan is a Republican, 68 years of age, a former Bill Clinton advisor who held local office 18 years, from 1984 until 2002. He was named National Sheriff of the Year in 2001. However at the moment, he has been arrested and is being held in a detention facility named after him for trading methamphetamines for sex, allegedly with young men and underaged boys, some of whom allege that they were coerced, and that the former sheriff, rumored to be HIV positive, himself, infected them with AIDS. It has been alleged he even went as far as checking young prisoners of the drug war out of jail, and setting them up in hotel rooms for days at a time to be visited by other powerful men.

During and after what happened at Columbine High School on April 20, 1999, there wasn't a TV camera or radio microphone he didn't cram his lying, dirty, hypocritical face in front of, to attack the concept of weapons ownership by private individuals. He became nationally associated with the crime as well as his false solution. But like many a man who brutalizes those he has sex with, we know now that he had another reason to make sure his potential victims couldn't defend themselves.

Here's the thing: creatures like Pat Sullivan believe that they are somehow superior—morally and intellectually—to the rest of us.

Creatures like Pat Sullivan believe their imagined superiority gives them some god-given kind of right to tell the rest of us what to do.

Creatures like Pat Sullivan believe they have a right to set the standards with regard to how the rest of us live, that they can tell the rest us what to wear, what to eat, what to drink, and what to smoke.