Former 'Brain Dead Liberal' Filmmaker Pens Scathing Column on Gun Control: 'A Political Appeal to the Ignorant

David Mamet, writer/director/executive producer of the film "Phil Spector," addresses reporters during the HBO Winter TCA Press Tour at the Langham Huntington Hotel on Friday, Jan. 4, 2013, in Pasadena, Calif. (Photo: AP)

Pulitzer Award-winning author, producer and director David Mamet has been extremely open about his conversion from "brain dead liberal" to conservative, and in the wake of President Obama's latest push for stricter gun control measures, Mamet has penned yet another column setting the record straight as he sees it.

In an article for Newsweek, the writer of "Glengarry Glen Ross" and "Hannibal" begins with a cutting analysis of centralized government (all subsequent emphasis added):

Karl Marx summed up Communism as “from each according to his ability, to each according to his needs.” This is a good, pithy saying, which, in practice, has succeeded in bringing, upon those under its sway, misery, poverty, rape, torture, slavery, and death.

For the saying implies but does not name the effective agency of its supposed utopia. The agency is called “The State,” and the motto, fleshed out, for the benefit of the easily confused must read “The State will take from each according to his ability: the State will give to each according to his needs.” “Needs and abilities” are, of course, subjective. So the operative statement may be reduced to “the State shall take, the State shall give.”

Mamet proceeds to tackle gun control head-on, writing:

The Left loves a phantom statistic that a firearm in the hands of a citizen is X times more likely to cause accidental damage than to be used in the prevention of crime, but what is there about criminals that ensures that their gun use is accident-free? If, indeed, a firearm were more dangerous to its possessors than to potential aggressors, would it not make sense for the government to arm all criminals, and let them accidentally shoot themselves? Is this absurd? Yes, and yet the government, of course, is arming criminals.

Violence by firearms is most prevalent in big cities with the strictest gun laws. In Chicago and Washington, D.C., for example, it is only the criminals who have guns, the law-abiding populace having been disarmed, and so crime runs riot.

Cities of similar size in Texas, Florida, Arizona, and elsewhere, which leave the citizen the right to keep and bear arms, guaranteed in the Constitution, typically are much safer. More legal guns equal less crime. What criminal would be foolish enough to rob a gun store? But the government alleges that the citizen does not need this or that gun, number of guns, or amount of ammunition. 

Mamet then compares the logic of gun control advocates to tales from his grandmother's native country:

Its residents, for example, once decided that there was no point in having the sun shine during the day, when it was light out—it would be better should it shine at night, when it was dark. Similarly, we modern Solons delight in passing gun laws that, in their entirety, amount to “making crime illegal.”

After discussing the benefits of having armed guards in schools, Mamet brings the article full circle:

The police do not exist to protect the individual. They exist to cordon off the crime scene and attempt to apprehend the criminal. We individuals are guaranteed by the Constitution the right to self-defense. This right is not the Government’s to “award” us. They have never been granted it.