Things I would do if I were an Evil Overlord.

There's a fun list called "Top 100 things I would do if I were an Evil Overlord." It's actually quite a bit longer than 100, but as you'll see after the jump, it was started to poke some fun at the common movie cliches. You know, since the hero often sneaks into the evil genius's lair through a ventilation duct, #2 on the list is "My ventilation ducts will be too small to crawl through." Since bombs and other destructive devices in movies have a digital countdown timer that the hero usually manages to either stop or just barely escape from with a second or two to spare, rule #15 is "I will never employ any device with a digital countdown. If I find that such a device is absolutely unavoidable, I will set it to activate when the counter reaches 117 and the hero is just putting his plan into operation."

So, on a more serious note, what would I do if I planned to enslave an entire region as an Evil Overlord/Tyrant?

Well, the first thing I would do is ban anyone from having guns but my police and military. Adolf Hitler (one of the biggest Evil Overlords of all time) gave some good advice when he said,

"The most foolish mistake we could possibly make would be to permit the conquered Eastern peoples to have arms. History teaches that all conquerors who have allowed their subject races to carry arms have prepared their own downfall by doing so."
- Adolf Hitler, April 11, 1942, quoted in Hitlers Tischegesprache Im Fuhrerhauptquartier 1941-1942

Obviously, I don't want the people under my control to have a means to rise up and overthrow me and my minions of evil, so I must not allow them to have guns.

Now let's say I've taken over a region that already HAD guns. Where the people value their freedom and where a widespread confiscation would cause instant rebellion. How can I get them to a disarmed state?

Here is where I have to get sneaky and use some very evil, very detailed planning.

First, an analogy, called "boiling the frog." If you throw a frog into a pot of boiling water, it will instantly freak out and try to jump out of the pot. However, if you put a frog into a pot of cool water, and slowly increase the temperature, the frog will sit happily in the water and not even realize he is being boiled to death until he has actually boiled to death.

What needs to be done with these free people is to boil the frog slowly, and engage in some trickery to get public support for me to to actually keep turning the temperature up.

First, find something moral that the majority would agree with, but that many would still want even if it was illegal - such as making recreational drugs illegal. This not only justifies adding more police to enforce the laws, but crime will skyrocket, as whenever you make something illegal, it becomes lucrative for criminals.

Then, you have to use the media into tricking people to believe that the police are there to protect them, even though no laws actually SAY they have a duty to protect anyone. That way, when crime continues to rise because of the illegal drug trade and distribution, the people will cry for MORE police, getting them more and more used to a "police state" state of mind.

Now at this point, the media is happily reporting all the violence these criminals are perpetrating with firearms amongst themselves as they fight amongst themselves for turf to sell their illegal drugs, and people addicted to the drugs are committing violent crimes with guns to get money to buy more drugs... People want a solution.

Enter gun control.

I propose to the people that the GUNS are to blame for all the "gun violence" and that the solution is to ban guns - but not all at once, because that would turn up the heat under the frog too quickly. You have to do it a little bit at a time.

First, target cheap firearms, claiming that they're what's used by violent criminals. Give them a scary name that elicits an emotional response, like "Saturday Night Special" Give reports to the media about how they're used by drunkards on weekends to settle drunken arguments and suppress the fact that they're actually mostly used by low-income citizens to protect themselves.

Then, find the next firearm I can get public support for. Say, semi-automatic firearms. I couldn't get public support for banning ALL semi-automatic firearms, but I can suggest that the public has no need for such "Assault Weapons" (hey, catchy name!). Have the media confuse the issue by showing footage of fully-automatic weapons while talking about the semi-automatic assault weapons. Even though they're used in only 1% of crime, claim they're the "weapon of choice" and even though no cops had ever been killed with one, suggest that gangs with "Assault Weapons" are out-gunning our police on the streets.

The next nibble is "Sniper Rifles," which since the public is already supporting itself down the slippery slope, shouldn't be much trouble. The .50 calibers will be easy, just claim they can shoot down aircraft (total BS, I know, but the public will believe it by this point). For the rest of the "Sniper Rifles," the hunters won't like their deer rifles being taken away, but they're a minority by now.

Next, "Street Sweepers," which is of course just semi-auto and pump action shotguns... Nobody needs more than a double-barrel or single-shot shotgun to shoot birds.

Of course none of these will decrease violent crime any, so we'll point out that most violent crime is perpetrated by criminals with handguns. We may need to take this in two bites, semi-autos first, and revolvers second. We might have to come up with a catchy scary name for semi-auto handguns, maybe something like "Cop Killers" or "Mini-Death Machines." I may need to have marketing work on that when the time gets near.

By the time we get to this point, we're pretty much golden. Citizens no longer have anything but weak rifles and shotguns, hardly able to put up any resistance to my tyranny. I figure the plan might take 15-20 years, during which I can put other pieces of my infrastructure in place, such as government control of all commerce, including the auto industry and healthcare, get the whole "nanny state" mentality deeply ingrained into the public consciousness, and a really cool cult of personality going for me.

If I wanted to be a tyrant, I would have to ban guns, and yeah, that's just about the best way to go about it. Boil the frog slowly so it doesn't know what's happening to it.

...Orygunner...