From  1938:

“Concealed Weapons”

By Richard L. Evans

Life must have been a very simple and delightful affair when a man’s only weapon was a cudgel. Both his friends and his enemies then had some chance of knowing when, where, how, and why he would strike. Living could then be reduced to a simple formula. One could either keep out of the way of his neighbor’s club or get a bigger one and learn to use it more quickly and effectively.

It’s a far cry from that day to the currently popular system of using all manner of “concealed weapons” on so-called friends, neighbors, and enemies alike — without warning before striking and without admission or remorse or punitive liability. And by the reference to “concealed weapons” there is no thought of the thug who carries a gun on his hip and shoots when he thinks he has to. He’s a gentleman compared with the users of another class of “concealed weapons” — heaven help their guilty souls!

You know what to do to a man with a club or a gun. The practical effectiveness of common law provided for such situations long before the modern legislative treadmill began turning out its mystifying multiplicity of laws with loopholes big enough for the “protected” criminal to slip through. But what are you going to do with a man who robs you and your generation of its property, principles, rights, health, morals, faith, hope, and freedom, through graft, subtle propaganda, false advertising and untruthful teaching, and who feigns a smile and an interest in your welfare while serving only the cause of his own unholy ambitions.

The fact is, and history will bear it out eloquently and adequately, that no race or civilization was ever overpowered from without until it had been bored through and through from within — by the users of just such “concealed weapons” as those suggested above, all of which practices come under the general classification of mental, moral, economic, and spiritual pollution.

Some specific examples of these “concealed weapon” wielders are:

Those who, without regard to truth, and with the profit motive uppermost in mind, use our homes, our public facilities, our avenues of communication, and the purchased statements of our celebrities, to induce us and our children to become addicted to the use of those things which undermine health, dull the senses and weaken the morals of our generation.

Those who, with our money and our children, teach for truth those things which no man knows to be true and which many have much cause to believe untrue — and who go outside the province of their teaching commission to do it.

Those who, under the guise of serving the common good, take from us a sizeable portion of the real value of our holdings, and hide the theft by the fact that the face value remains unchanged.

Those who, by innuendo, half truth, or flagrant falsehood, inflame us to set our hands against our brothers.

Those who use our money to support our privileged neighbors in idleness.

Those who, under the guise of patriotism and the common good, decry the very foundations on which we are standing, and prepare the way for a crumbling beneath our feet.

Those who use our money to support, subsidize, and encourage our competitors, our enemies, and our would-be destroyers.

Those who appeal to human weakness rather than human strength, who capitalize on human suffering and misery, who perpetrate a fear psychology.

Countless other types of “concealed-weapon” wielders could be described — they who “draw near” to the truth “with their lips” but “whose hearts are far from” it — who “teach for doctrines the commandments of men.”

Hasten the day when we will know at least as well what to do with those who use such “concealed weapons” as we now do with the man who wields a gun or a club. — R.L.E.