Now He Has To Weed Out The Nuts

I’m pretty sure I know how I got on this mailing list.

I had some brush to clear last summer, so I sent away to a catalog company for a machete. The catalog company must have sold my name and address. Now I’m getting catalogs you wouldn’t believe.

The most recent to arrive is from an outfit in Arizona that peddles books through the mail. You open the thing up, and the first thing you see is an ad for “The Anarchist Cookbook” - a text on making weapons, bombs and drugs at home. And for just $25.95, too.

Then there’s a book for $12 on building claymore mines. You never know when that’ll come in handy. There’s a $4.95 book on making a mortar out of an empty beer can and black powder, a manual for $14 on creating C-4 explosive in your own basement and a little text for $10 on building a homemade machine gun for less than $20 in materials.

Oh, it gets better: There’s a $14 book on building booby traps and $12 tomes on improvised land mines and something called “Poor Man’s TNT.” You can buy “Improved Radio Detonation Techniques” for $12 and another book on building flamethrowers - which, the ad points out, are “legal, cheap to build, maintain and operate and use fuel that is plentiful.”

You can buy something titled “A Guide to Home & Recreational Use of High Explosives.” The “Vigilante Handbook” can be yours for just $11.95. For only $3.95, you can buy a book on turning an ordinary Zippo cigarette lighter into an assassination device.

Then there are the books on poisons - even one on how to build a nuclear bomb. Of course, you’ll have to steal some plutonium first. I couldn’t find an ad for a book on that.

All of which raises some interesting questions. What the hell is going on out there? Who are the nuts peddling these books? Who are the nuts buying them? And, most crucial, do any of them live near me?

I wouldn’t at all mind knowing who in my neighborhood is buying books on sniper technique ($5.99), “Selective Assassination” ($11.95) or converting legal rifles into automatic weapons. I’d like to know just who among my neighbors is somebody with whom I want to avoid disagreement at all costs.

I know better than most people that it’s Loon City out there. When you write a newspaper column, you hear from countless loons every week, babbling paranoia and general insanity into your voicemail number. And you’ll look long and hard before you’ll find anybody more dedicated than I am to the First Amendment and to free expression of ideas, even repugnant ones.

But the customer base for this outfit has to be compiled from lists of released mental patients, parolees and guys who send hate mail three days a week to Gloria Steinem. How else do you explain the ad for “Screw The Bitch” - a primer for men in the throes of marital difficulties? Or “Clear Your Record and Own a Gun,” an upbeat little $14.95 guide for criminals to buy weapons legally?

In and amongst all the book ads, are ads for posters of John Wayne and Arnold Schwarzenegger, waving automatic weapons and glaring threateningly out at you from the pages of this catalog.

I’ve looked at all this stuff, page by page, and I’ve come to a decision: The next time I need brush cleared, forget the machete. I think I’ll just hire somebody.