(C) 1993 by The Public Interest.
A NATION OF COWARDS
Jeffrey R. Snyder
OUR SOCIETY has reached a pinnacle of
self-expression and respect for individuality rare or unmatched in history.
Our entire popular culture -- from fashion magazines to the cinema --
positively screams the matchless worth of the individual, and glories in
eccentricity, nonconformity, independent judgment, and self-determination.
This enthusiasm is reflected in the prevalent notion that helping someone
entails increasing that person's "self-esteem"; that if a person
properly values himself, he will naturally be a happy, productive, and, in
some inexplicable fashion, responsible member of society.
And yet, while people are encouraged to
revel in their individuality and incalculable self-worth, the media and the
law enforcement establishment continually advise us that, when confronted
with the threat of lethal violence, we should not resist, but simply give
the attacker what he wants. If the crime under consideration is rape, there
is some notable waffling on this point, and the discussion quickly moves to
how the woman can change her behavior to minimize the risk of rape, and the
various ridiculous, non-lethal weapons she may acceptably carry, such as
whistles, keys, mace or, that weapon which really sends shivers down a
rapist's spine, the portable cellular phone.
Now how can this be? How can a person who
values himself so highly calmly accept the indignity of a criminal assault?
How can one who believes that the essence of his dignity lies in his
self-determination passively accept the forcible deprivation of that
self-determination? How can he, quietly, with great dignity and poise,
simply hand over the goods?
The assumption, of course, is that there is
no inconsistency. The advice not to resist a criminal assault and simply
hand over the goods is founded on the notion that one's life is of
incalculable value, and that no amount of property is worth it. Put aside,
for a moment, the outrageousness of the suggestion that a criminal who
proffers lethal violence should be treated as if he has instituted a new
social contract: "I will not hurt or kill you if you give me what I
want." For years, feminists have labored to educate people that rape is
not about sex, but about domination, degradation, and control. Evidently,
someone needs to inform the law enforcement establishment and the media that
kidnapping, robbery, carjacking, and assault are not about property.
Crime is not only a complete disavowal of
the social contract, but also a commandeering of the victim's person and
liberty. If the individual's dignity lies in the fact that he is a moral
agent engaging in actions of his own will, in free exchange with others,
then crime always violates the victim's dignity. It is, in fact, an act of
enslavement. Your wallet, your purse, or your car may not be worth your
life, but your dignity is; and if it is not worth fighting for, it can
hardly be said to exist.
The Gift of Life
Although difficult for modern man to
fathom, it was once widely believed that life was a gift from God, that to
not defend that life when offered violence was to hold God's gift in
contempt, to be a coward and to breach one's duty to one's community. A
sermon given in Philadelphia in 1747 unequivocally equated the failure to
defend oneself with suicide:
- He that suffers his life to be taken
from him by one that hath no
- authority for that purpose, when he
might preserve it by defense,
- incurs the Guilt of self murder since
God hath enjoined him to seek
- the continuance of his life, and Nature
itself teaches every creature
- to defend itself.
"Cowardice" and
"self-respect" have largely disappeared from public discourse. In
their place we are offered "self-esteem" as the bellwether of
success and a proxy for dignity. "Self-respect" implies that one
recognizes standards, and judges oneself worthy by the degree to which one
lives up to them. "Self-esteem" simply means that one feels good
about oneself. "Dignity" used to refer to the self-mastery and
fortitude with which a person conducted himself in the face of life's
vicissitudes and the boorish behavior of others. Now, judging by campus
speech codes, dignity requires that we never encounter a discouraging word
and that others be coerced into acting respectfully, evidently on the
assumption that we are powerless to prevent our degradation if exposed to
the demeaning behavior of others. These are signposts proclaiming the
insubstantiality of our character, the hollowness of our souls.
It is impossible to address the problem of
rampant crime without talking about the moral responsibility of the intended
victim. Crime is rampant because the law-abiding, each of us, condone it,
excuse it, permit it, submit to it. We permit and encourage it because we do
not fight back, immediately, then and there, where it happens. Crime is not
rampant because we do not have enough prisons, because judges and
prosecutors are too soft, because the police are hamstrung with absurd
technicalities. The defect is there, in our character. We are a nation of
cowards and shirkers.
Do You Feel Lucky?
In 1991, when then-Attorney General Richard
Thornburgh released the FBI's annual crime statistics, he noted that it is
now more likely that a person will be the victim of a violent crime than
that he will be in an auto accident. Despite this, most people readily
believe that the existence of the police relieves them of the responsibility
to take full measures to protect themselves. The police, however, are not
personal bodyguards. Rather, they act as a general deterrent to crime, both
by their presence and by apprehending criminals after the fact. As numerous
courts have held, they have no legal obligation to protect anyone in
particular. You cannot sue them for failing to prevent you from being the
victim of a crime.
Insofar as the police deter by their
presence, they are very, very good. Criminals take great pains not to commit
a crime in front of them. Unfortunately, the corollary is that you can
pretty much bet your life (and you are) that they won't be there at the
moment you actually need them.
Should you ever be the victim of an
assault, a robbery, or a rape, you will find it very difficult to call the
police while the act is in progress, even if you are carrying a portable
cellular phone. Nevertheless, you might be interested to know how long it
takes them to show up. Department of Justice statistics for 1991 show that,
for all crimes of violence, only 28 percent of calls are responded to within
five minutes. The idea that protection is a service people can call to have
delivered and expect to receive in a timely fashion is often mocked by gun
owners, who love to recite the challenge, "Call for a cop, call for an
ambulance, and call for a pizza. See who shows up first."
Many people deal with the problem of crime
by convincing themselves that they live, work, and travel only in special
"crime-free" zones. Invariably, they react with shock and hurt
surprise when they discover that criminals do not play by the rules and do
not respect these imaginary boundaries. If, however, you understand that
crime can occur anywhere at anytime, and if you understand that you can be
maimed or mortally wounded in mere seconds, you may wish to consider whether
you are willing to place the responsibility for safeguarding your life in
the hands of others.
Power And Responsibility
Is your life worth protecting? If so, whose
responsibility is it to protect it? If you believe that it is the police's,
not only are you wrong -- since the courts universally rule that they have
no legal obligation to do so -- but you face some difficult moral
quandaries. How can you rightfully ask another human being to risk his life
to protect yours, when you will assume no responsibility yourself? Because
that is his job and we pay him to do it? Because your life is of
incalculable value, but his is only worth the $30,000 salary we pay him? If
you believe it reprehensible to possess the means and will to use lethal
force to repel a criminal assault, how can you call upon another to do so
for you?
Do you believe that you are forbidden to
protect yourself because the police are better qualified to protect you,
because they know what they are doing but you're a rank amateur? Put aside
that this is equivalent to believing that only concert pianists may play the
piano and only professional athletes may play sports. What exactly are these
special qualities possessed only by the police and beyond the rest of us
mere mortals?
One who values his life and takes seriously
his responsibilities to his family and community will possess and cultivate
the means of fighting back, and will retaliate when threatened with death or
grievous injury to himself or a loved one. He will never be content to rely
solely on others for his safety, or to think he has done all that is
possible by being aware of his surroundings and taking measures of
avoidance. Let's not mince words: He will be armed, will be trained in the
use of his weapon, and will defend himself when faced with lethal violence.
Fortunately, there is a weapon for
preserving life and liberty that can be wielded effectively by almost anyone
-- the handgun. Small and light enough to be carried habitually, lethal, but
unlike the knife or sword, not demanding great skill or strength, it truly
is the "great equalizer." Requiring only hand-eye coordination and
a modicum of ability to remain cool under pressure, it can be used
effectively by the old and the weak against the young and the strong, by the
one against the many.
The handgun is the only weapon that would
give a lone female jogger a chance of prevailing against a gang of thugs
intent on rape, a teacher a chance of protecting children at recess from a
madman intent on massacring them, a family of tourists waiting at a mid-town
subway station the means to protect themselves from a gang of teens armed
with razors and knives.
But since we live in a society that by and
large outlaws the carrying of arms, we are brought into the fray of the
Great American Gun War. Gun control is one of the most prominent
battlegrounds in our current culture wars. Yet it is unique in the
half-heartedness with which our conservative leaders and pundits -- our
"conservative elite" -- do battle, and have conceded the moral
high ground to liberal gun control proponents. It is not a topic often
written about, or written about with any great fervor, by William F. Buckley
or Patrick Buchanan. As drug czar, William Bennett advised President Bush to
ban "assault weapons." George Will is on record as recommending
the repeal of the Second Amendment, and Jack Kemp is on record as favoring a
ban on the possession of semiautomatic "assault weapons." The
battle for gun rights is one fought predominantly by the common man. The
beliefs of both our liberal and conservative elites are in fact abetting the
criminal rampage through our society.
Selling Crime Prevention
By any rational measure, nearly all gun
control proposals are hokum. The Brady Bill, for example, would not have
prevented John Hinckley from obtaining a gun to shoot President Reagan;
Hinckley purchased his weapon five months before the attack, and his medical
records could not have served as a basis to deny his purchase of a gun,
since medical records are not public documents filed with the police.
Similarly, California's waiting period and background check did not stop
Patrick Purdy from purchasing the "assault rifle" and handguns he
used to massacre children during recess in a Stockton schoolyard; the felony
conviction that would have provided the basis for stopping the sales did not
exist, because Mr. Purdy's previous weapons violations were plea-bargained
down from felonies to misdemeanors.
In the mid-sixties there was a public
service advertising campaign targeted at car owners about the prevention of
car theft. The purpose of the ad was to urge car owners not to leave their
keys in their cars. The message was, "Don't help a good boy go
bad." The implication was that, by leaving his keys in his car, the
normal, law-abiding car owner was contributing to the delinquency of minors
who, if they just weren't tempted beyond their limits, would be
"good." Now, in those days people still had a fair sense of just
who was responsible for whose behavior. The ad succeeded in enraging a
goodly portion of the populace, and was soon dropped.
Nearly all of the gun control measures
offered by Handgun Control, Inc. (HCI) and its ilk embody the same
philosophy. They are founded on the belief that America's law-abiding gun
owners are the source of the problem. With their unholy desire for firearms,
they are creating a society awash in a sea of guns, thereby helping good
boys go bad, and helping bad boys be badder. This laying of moral blame for
violent crime at the feet of the law-abiding, and the implicit absolution of
violent criminals for their misdeeds, naturally infuriates honest gun
owners.
The files of HCI and other gun control
organizations are filled with proposals to limit the availability of
semiautomatic and other firearms to law-abiding citizens, and barren of
proposals for apprehending and punishing violent criminals. It is ludicrous
to expect that the proposals of HCI, or any gun control laws, will
significantly curb crime. According to Department of Justice and Bureau of
Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms (ATF) statistics, fully 90 percent of violent
crimes are committed without a handgun, and 93 percent of the guns obtained
by violent criminals are not obtained through the lawful purchase and sale
transactions that are the object of most gun control legislation.
Furthermore, the number of violent criminals is minute in comparison to the
number of firearms in America -- estimated by the ATF at about 200 million,
approximately one-third of which are handguns. With so abundant a supply,
there will always be enough guns available for those who wish to use them
for nefarious ends, no matter how complete the legal prohibitions against
them, or how draconian the punishment for their acquisition or use. No, the
gun control proposals of HCI and other organizations are not seriously
intended as crime control. Something else is at work here.
The Tyranny of the Elite
Gun control is a moral crusade against a
benighted, barbaric citizenry. This is demonstrated not only by the
ineffectualness of gun control in preventing crime, and by the fact that it
focuses on restricting the behavior of the law-abiding rather than
apprehending and punishing the guilty, but also by the execration that gun
control proponents heap on gun owners and their evil instrumentality, the
NRA. Gun owners are routinely portrayed as uneducated, paranoid rednecks
fascinated by and prone to violence, i.e., exactly the type of person who
opposes the liberal agenda and whose moral and social
"re-education" is the object of liberal social policies. Typical
of such bigotry is New York Gov. Mario Cuomo's famous characterization of
gun-owners as "hunters who drink beer, don't vote, and lie to their
wives about where they were all weekend." Similar vituperation is
rained upon the NRA, characterized by Sen. Edward Kennedy as the
"pusher's best friend," lampooned in political cartoons as
standing for the right of children to carry firearms to school and, in
general, portrayed as standing for an individual's God-given right to blow
people away at will.
The stereotype is, of course, false. As
criminologist and constitutional lawyer Don B. Kates, Jr. and former HCI
contributor Dr. Patricia Harris have pointed out, "[s]tudies
consistently show that, on the average, gun owners are better educated and
have more prestigious jobs than non-owners.... Later studies show that gun
owners are less likely than non-owners to approve of police brutality,
violence against dissenters, etc."
Conservatives must understand that the
antipathy many liberals have for gun owners arises in good measure from
their statist utopianism. This habit of mind has nowhere been better
explored than in The Republic. There, Plato argues that the perfectly just
society is one in which an unarmed people exhibit virtue by minding their
own business in the performance of their assigned functions, while the
government of philosopher-kings, above the law and protected by armed
guardians unquestioning in their loyalty to the state, engineers,
implements, and fine-tunes the creation of that society, aided and abetted
by myths that both hide and justify their totalitarian manipulation.
The Unarmed Life
When columnist Carl Rowan preaches gun
control and uses a gun to defend his home, when Maryland Gov. William Donald
Schaefer seeks legislation year after year to ban semiautomatic
"assault weapons" whose only purpose, we are told, is to kill
people, while he is at the same time escorted by state police armed with
large-capacity 9mm semiautomatic pistols, it is not simple hypocrisy. It is
the workings of that habit of mind possessed by all superior beings who have
taken upon themselves the terrible burden of civilizing the masses and who
understand, like our Congress, that laws are for other people.
The liberal elite know that they are
philosopher-kings. They know that the people simply cannot be trusted; that
they are incapable of just and fair self-government; that left to their own
devices, their society will be racist, sexist, homophobic, and inequitable
-- and the liberal elite know how to fix things. They are going to help us
live the good and just life, even if they have to lie to us and force us to
do it. And they detest those who stand in their way.
The private ownership of firearms is a
rebuke to this utopian zeal. To own firearms is to affirm that freedom and
liberty are not gifts from the state. It is to reserve final judgment about
whether the state is encroaching on freedom and liberty, to stand ready to
defend that freedom with more than mere words, and to stand outside the
state's totalitarian reach.
The Florida Experience
The elitist distrust of the people
underlying the gun control movement is illustrated beautifully in HCI's
campaign against a new concealed-carry law in Florida. Prior to 1987, the
Florida law permitting the issuance of concealed-carry permits was
administered at the county level. The law was vague, and, as a result, was
subject to conflicting interpretation and political manipulation. Permits
were issued principally to security personnel and the privileged few with
political connections. Permits were valid only within the county of
issuance.
In 1987, however, Florida enacted a uniform
concealed-carry law which mandates that county authorities issue a permit to
anyone who satisfies certain objective criteria. The law requires that a
permit be issued to any applicant who is a resident, at least twenty-one
years of age, has no criminal record, no record of alcohol or drug abuse, no
history of mental illness, and provides evidence of having satisfactorily
completed a firearms safety course offered by the NRA or other competent
instructor. The applicant must provide a set of fingerprints, after which
the authorities make a background check. The permit must be issued or denied
within ninety days, is valid throughout the state, and must be renewed every
three years, which provides authorities a regular means of reevaluating
whether the permit holder still qualifies.
Passage of this legislation was vehemently
opposed by HCI and the media. The law, they said, would lead to citizens
shooting each other over everyday disputes involving fender benders,
impolite behavior, and other slights to their dignity. Terms like
"Florida, the Gunshine State" and "Dodge City East" were
coined to suggest that the state, and those seeking passage of the law, were
encouraging individuals to act as judge, jury, and executioner in a
"Death Wish" society.
No HCI campaign more clearly demonstrates
the elitist beliefs underlying the campaign to eradicate gun ownership.
Given the qualifications required of permit holders, HCI and the media can
only believe that common, law-abiding citizens are seething cauldrons of
homicidal rage, ready to kill to avenge any slight to their dignity, eager
to seek out and summarily execute the lawless. Only lack of immediate access
to a gun restrains them and prevents the blood from flowing in the streets.
They are so mentally and morally deficient that they would mistake a permit
to carry a weapon in self-defense as a state-sanctioned license to kill at
will.
Did the dire predictions come true? Despite
the fact that Miami and Dade County have severe problems with the drug
trade, the homicide rate fell in Florida following enactment of this law, as
it did in Oregon following enactment of similar legislation there. There
are, in addition, several documented cases of new permit holders
successfully using their weapons to defend themselves. Information from the
Florida Department of State shows that, from the beginning of the program in
1987 through June 1993, 160,823 permits have been issued, and only 530, or
about 0.33 percent of the applicants, have been denied a permit for failure
to satisfy the criteria, indicating that the law is benefitting those whom
it was intended to benefit -- the law-abiding. Only 16 permits, less than
1/100th of 1 percent, have been revoked due to the post-issuance commission
of a crime involving a firearm.
The Florida legislation has been used as a
model for legislation adopted by Oregon, Idaho, Montana, and Mississippi.
There are, in addition, seven other states (Maine, North and South Dakota,
Utah, Washington, West Virginia, and, with the exception of cities with a
population in excess of 1 million, Pennsylvania) which provide that
concealed-carry permits must be issued to law-abiding citizens who satisfy
various objective criteria. Finally, no permit is required at all in
Vermont. Altogether, then, there are thirteen states in which law-abiding
citizens who wish to carry arms to defend themselves may do so. While no one
appears to have compiled the statistics from all of these jurisdictions,
there is certainly an ample data base for those seeking the truth about the
trustworthiness of law-abiding citizens who carry firearms.
Other evidence also suggests that armed
citizens are very responsible in using guns to defend themselves. Florida
State University criminologist Gary Kleck, using surveys and other data, has
determined that armed citizens defend their lives or property with firearms
against criminals approximately 1 million times a year. In 98 percent of
these instances, the citizen merely brandishes the weapon or fires a warning
shot. Only in 2 percent of the cases do citizens actually shoot their
assailants. In defending themselves with their firearms, armed citizens kill
2,000 to 3,000 criminals each year, three times the number killed by the
police. A nationwide study by Kates, the constitutional lawyer and
criminologist, found that only 2 percent of civilian shootings involved an
innocent person mistakenly identified as a criminal. The "error
rate" for the police, however, was 11 percent, over five times as high.
It is simply not possible to square the
numbers above and the experience of Florida with the notions that honest,
law-abiding gun owners are borderline psychopaths itching for an excuse to
shoot someone, vigilantes eager to seek out and summarily execute the
lawless, or incompetent fools incapable of determining when it is proper to
use lethal force in defense of their lives. Nor upon reflection should these
results seem surprising. Rape, robbery, and attempted murder are not
typically actions rife with ambiguity or subtlety, requiring special powers
of observation and great book-learning to discern. When a man pulls a knife
on a woman and says, "You're coming with me," her judgment that a
crime is being committed is not likely to be in error. There is little
chance that she is going to shoot the wrong person. It is the police,
because they are rarely at the scene of the crime when it occurs, who are
more likely to find themselves in circumstances where guilt and innocence
are not so clear-cut, and in which the probability for mistakes is higher.
Arms and Liberty
Classical republican philosophy has long
recognized the critical relationship between personal liberty and the
possession of arms by a people ready and willing to use them. Political
theorists as dissimilar as Niccolo Machiavelli, Sir Thomas More, James
Harrington, Algernon Sidney, John Locke, and Jean-Jacques Rousseau all
shared the view that the possession of arms is vital for resisting tyranny,
and that to be disarmed by one's government is tantamount to being enslaved
by it. The possession of arms by the people is the ultimate warrant that
government governs only with the consent of the governed. As Kates has
shown, the Second Amendment is as much a product of this political
philosophy as it is of the American experience in the Revolutionary War. Yet
our conservative elite has abandoned this aspect of republican theory.
Although our conservative pundits recognize and embrace gun owners as allies
in other arenas, their battle for gun rights is desultory. The problem here
is not a statist utopianism, although goodness knows that liberals are not
alone in the confidence they have in the state's ability to solve society's
problems. Rather, the problem seems to lie in certain cultural traits shared
by our conservative and liberal elites.
One such trait is an abounding faith in the
power of the word. The failure of our conservative elite to defend the
Second Amendment stems in great measure from an overestimation of the power
of the rights set forth in the First Amendment, and a general undervaluation
of action. Implicit in calls for the repeal of the Second Amendment is the
assumption that our First Amendment rights are sufficient to preserve our
liberty. The belief is that liberty can be preserved as long as men freely
speak their minds; that there is no tyranny or abuse that can survive being
exposed in the press; and that the truth need only be disclosed for the
culprits to be shamed. The people will act, and the truth shall set us, and
keep us, free.
History is not kind to this belief, tending
rather to support the view of Hobbes, Machiavelli, and other republican
theorists that only people willing and able to defend themselves can
preserve their liberties. While it may be tempting and comforting to believe
that the existence of mass electronic communication has forever altered the
balance of power between the state and its subjects, the belief has
certainly not been tested by time, and what little history there is in the
age of mass communication is not especially encouraging. The camera, radio,
and press are mere tools and, like guns, can be used for good or ill.
Hitler, after all, was a masterful orator, used radio to very good effect,
and is well known to have pioneered and exploited the propaganda
opportunities afforded by film. And then, of course, there were the
Brownshirts, who knew very well how to quell dissent among intellectuals.
Polite Society
In addition to being enamored of the power
of words, our conservative elite shares with liberals the notion that an
armed society is just not civilized or progressive, that massive gun
ownership is a blot on our civilization. This association of personal
disarmament with civilized behavior is one of the great unexamined beliefs
of our time.
Should you read English literature from the
sixteenth through nineteenth centuries, you will discover numerous
references to the fact that a gentleman, especially when out at night or
traveling, armed himself with a sword or a pistol against the chance of
encountering a highwayman or other such predator. This does not appear to
have shocked the ladies accompanying him. True, for the most part there were
no police in those days, but we have already addressed the notion that the
presence of the police absolves people of the responsibility to look after
their safety, and in any event the existence of the police cannot be said to
have reduced crime to negligible levels.
It is by no means obvious why it is
"civilized" to permit oneself to fall easy prey to criminal
violence, and to permit criminals to continue unobstructed in their evil
ways. While it may be that a society in which crime is so rare that no one
ever needs to carry a weapon is "civilized," a society that
stigmatizes the carrying of weapons by the law-abiding -- because it
distrusts its citizens more than it fears rapists, robbers, and murderers --
certainly cannot claim this distinction. Perhaps the notion that defending
oneself with lethal force is not "civilized" arises from the view
that violence is always wrong, or the view that each human being is of such
intrinsic worth that it is wrong to kill anyone under any circumstances. The
necessary implication of these propositions, however, is that life is not
worth defending. Far from being "civilized," the beliefs that
counterviolence and killing are always wrong are an invitation to the spread
of barbarism. Such beliefs announce loudly and clearly that those who do not
respect the lives and property of others will rule over those who do.
In truth, one who believes it wrong to arm
himself against criminal violence shows contempt of God's gift of life (or,
in modern parlance, does not properly value himself), does not live up to
his responsibilities to his family and community, and proclaims himself
mentally and morally deficient, because he does not trust himself to behave
responsibly. In truth, a state that deprives its law-abiding citizens of the
means to effectively defend themselves is not civilized but barbarous,
becoming an accomplice of murderers, rapists, and thugs and revealing its
totalitarian nature by its tacit admission that the disorganized, random
havoc created by criminals is far less a threat than are men and women who
believe themselves free and independent, and act accordingly.
While gun control proponents and other
advocates of a kinder, gentler society incessantly decry our "armed
society," in truth we do not live in an armed society. We live in a
society in which violent criminals and agents of the state habitually carry
weapons, and in which many law-abiding citizens own firearms but do not go
about armed. Department of Justice statistics indicate that 87 percent of
all violent crimes occur outside the home. Essentially, although tens of
millions own firearms, we are an unarmed society.
Take Back the Night
Clearly the police and the courts are not
providing a significant brake on criminal activity. While liberals call for
more poverty, education, and drug treatment programs, conservatives take a
more direct tack. George Will advocates a massive increase in the number of
police and a shift toward "community-based policing." Meanwhile,
the NRA and many conservative leaders call for laws that would require
violent criminals serve at least 85 percent of their sentences and would
place repeat offenders permanently behind bars.
Our society suffers greatly from the
beliefs that only official action is legitimate and that the state is the
source of our earthly salvation. Both liberal and conservative prescriptions
for violent crime suffer from the "not in my job description"
school of thought regarding the responsibilities of the law-abiding citizen,
and from an overestimation of the ability of the state to provide society's
moral moorings. As long as law-abiding citizens assume no personal
responsibility for combatting crime, liberal and conservative programs will
fail to contain it.
Judging by the numerous articles about
concealed-carry in gun magazines, the growing number of products advertised
for such purpose, and the increase in the number of concealed-carry
applications in states with mandatory-issuance laws, more and more people,
including growing numbers of women, are carrying firearms for self-defense.
Since there are still many states in which the issuance of permits is
discretionary and in which law enforcement officials routinely deny
applications, many people have been put to the hard choice between
protecting their lives or respecting the law. Some of these people have
learned the hard way, by being the victim of a crime, or by seeing a friend
or loved one raped, robbed, or murdered, that violent crime can happen to
anyone, anywhere at anytime, and that crime is not about sex or property but
life, liberty, and dignity.
The laws proscribing concealed-carry of
firearms by honest, law-abiding citizens breed nothing but disrespect for
the law. As the Founding Fathers knew well, a government that does not trust
its honest, law-abiding, taxpaying citizens with the means of self-defense
is not itself worthy of trust. Laws disarming honest citizens proclaim that
the government is the master, not the servant, of the people. A federal law
along the lines of the Florida statute -- overriding all contradictory state
and local laws and acknowledging that the carrying of firearms by
law-abiding citizens is a privilege and immunity of citizenship -- is needed
to correct the outrageous conduct of state and local officials operating
under discretionary licensing systems.
What we certainly do not need is more gun
control. Those who call for the repeal of the Second Amendment so that we
can really begin controlling firearms betray a serious misunderstanding of
the Bill of Rights. The Bill of Rights does not grant rights to the people,
such that its repeal would legitimately confer upon government the powers
otherwise proscribed. The Bill of Rights is the list of the fundamental,
inalienable rights, endowed in man by his Creator, that define what it means
to be a free and independent people, the rights which must exist to ensure
that government governs only with the consent of the people.
At one time this was even understood by the
Supreme Court. In United States v. Cruikshank (1876), the first case in
which the Court had an opportunity to interpret the Second Amendment, it
stated that the right confirmed by the Second Amendment "is not a right
granted by the constitution. Neither is it in any manner dependent upon that
instrument for its existence." The repeal of the Second Amendment would
no more render the outlawing of firearms legitimate than the repeal of the
due process clause of the Fifth Amendment would authorize the government to
imprison and kill people at will. A government that abrogates any of the
Bill of Rights, with or without majoritarian approval, forever acts
illegitimately, becomes tyrannical, and loses the moral right to govern.
This is the uncompromising understanding
reflected in the warning that America's gun owners will not go gently into
that good, utopian night: "You can have my gun when you pry it from my
cold, dead hands." While liberals take this statement as evidence of
the retrograde, violent nature of gun owners, we gun owners hope that
liberals hold equally strong sentiments about their printing presses, word
processors, and television cameras. The republic depends upon fervent
devotion to all our fundamental rights.
World-Wide-Web html format by Scott
Ostrander: scotto@cica.indiana.edu
