JUST SAY 'NO'.

AuthorTuccille, J.D.

NO IS AN underrated word. When properly deployed, it has the potential to bring many extended and pointless conversations to an end. Conversations, for instance, over the merits of restrictions or policies that you would never obey in a thousand lifetimes.

But that means it must be a definitive no, not an ambiguous French non.

"Answering 'non' gives you the option to say 'oui' later," explains the comedian Olivier Giraud about his countrymen's often squishy refusals.

An ambiguous non isn't a line in the sand; it's a bargaining position for a better offer or a more generous bribe. That's not the sort of no we're discussing here. We're talking about a hard no that offers a clear border defining the limits of what you're willing to tolerate, beyond which you'll resist by every means at your disposal.

When you're invoking this sort of no, you shouldn't get bogged down in debates over terminology, or effectiveness, or constitutional interpretations.

"The definition of what you want to ban is incoherent. You need to refine...."

"What does the research show about...?"

"Your take on the amendment ignores the long history of...."

When the stakes are high and you're dealing with a non-negotiable matter of principle, what do you care about the opinions of social scientists, legal scholars, or expert nitpickers? You've already decided that compliance with this latest bit of presumptuous stupidity is out of the question. You're not going to obey it, even if it makes it through the legislative or administrative process and even if it survives judicial review. Moreover, you plan to throw sand into the gears of the machinery of enforcement. Say so!

That no can be a matter of individual resolve, committing yourself to a course of refusal and noncompliance, or it can be a collective statement, which has the potential to magnify its clout. It might be a bit of both when great minds--or at least shared values--come together.

CANADIAN GUN OWNERS were largely on the same page when they refused to cooperate with their government's effort starting in 1998 to register every long gun in the country. Officials spent years nagging recalcitrant citizens to fill out the required paperwork, even as the cost of the new bureaucracy--following the tradition of government expenditures worldwide--soared past original estimates of C$2 million to exceed C$1 billion by 2005, according to the government itself. In 2012, the registry was abolished amid questions as to why...

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