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A Matter of Trust
A MATTER OF TRUST
by Michael Mitchell
Webster's dictionary defines "trust" as "a
firm belief or confidence in the honesty, integrity, reliability,
justice, etc. of another person or thing." To have
confidence in the reliability of another is to trust. To believe
that another individual is responsible is to trust. To believe an
individual's veracity is to trust.
In the United States,
we entrust our elected officials with running our government. We
send them to the state or federal legislature with a mission: to
support and defend the Constitution, and to look out for our
interests and desires. The responsibility is enormous. Not only
are these men and women in control of national or state policy -
thus affecting millions of lives in very real ways - but they
also hold the trigger of a massive military machine, including
the world's foremost nuclear arsenal. As justification for our
trust, the government offers rules and regulations designed to
prevent abuse. We have no recourse, however, to enforce these
rules should they be broken. Such enforcement can only come from
other government officials. Not only are we required to trust
government officials to manage their awesome power responsibly,
we are required to trust them to police themselves to avoid abuse
of that power.
By contrast, what do our elected
officials entrust to us? Objectively speaking, very little. We
are regulated and controlled down to the most minute levels. We
can't be trusted to drive a car without passing a government
test. We can't be trusted to educate our own children without the
approval of the state educational systems. We can't be trusted to
build structures on our own property without the approval of
government zoning boards and code inspectors. And, these
requirements carry with them the force of law. Should we fail to
comply, we can be arrested and imprisoned by government
officials. Clearly, the government does not trust the people.
Nowhere is this lack of trust more evident than in the area
of private firearm ownership. Not only are gun owners strictly
regulated throughout the country, there is a strong movement on
the part of many in government to restrict the ownership of guns
even further, even to the point of prohibition. Apparently, the
government feels that you cannot be trusted not to go insane and
begin killing at random. (Of course, you could still do so with
your car or a bottle of gasoline, but I digress.)
If the
government is trusted with massive responsibility and power, and
the people are trusted with very little, from where did the gap
emerge? Why is it 'natural' for the people to trust the
government, but not for the government to trust the people? At
some point, the government must have proven itself trustworthy,
and the people must have proven themselves manifestly
untrustworthy, right?
Incredibly, the opposite is true.
There are approximately 83 million lawful firearm owners in the
United States. Combining accidents and homicides, approximately
18,000 Americans die each year as a result of firearms-related
injury. Even when you consider that 2,000 - 3,000 justifiable
homicides (by civilians and police) are included in that number,
the death rate per firearm owner per year is 0.0002. To put that
into perspective, each gun owner in America will be involved with
one firearm death every 5000 years. That's an incredibly
successful record for any group of people handling a dangerous
technology. And even that number is inflated, since it includes
police shootings and homicides by felons, who are not included in
the 83 million. Considering these facts, it is patently obvious
that American gun owners behave very responsibly. And isn't
responsibility a key component of trustworthiness?
Contrast this with government behavior. How many times has the
government assaulted its own citizens with little or no
provocation? Ask Randy Weaver, whose wife was shot in the head by
a government sniper while she was nursing their infant, and his son shot in the back by government
agents as the boy fled to the house. What was Weaver's crime?
Sawing off two shotguns to the length specified by government
undercover agents - a length which was less than 1/2"
shorter than the legal limit--a "fact" that was also never even
proven.
Ask the Branch Davidians,
who openly invited government agents to come and inspect their
guns prior to the raid that cost over 80 men, women, and children
their lives. Ask the government why they injected pyrogenic tear
gas into an enclosed wooden building, against the recommendations
of the manufacturer. And, ask why they have never been able to
produce the illegal guns they said they were there to seize.
Ask Kenny Ballew, shot and permanently paralyzed in his own
bathtub by ATF agents who had the wrong address. Ask HUD housing
residents in Chicago, as their homes were systematically searched
without warrants, looking for illegal guns and drugs. (Why
doesn't that constitute "unreasonable search and
seizure"?) Oh, and these are the same HUD housing residents
who are forced to live in buildings that don't meet basic code
requirements the government imposes on any other landlord.
Ask the Japanese-American citizens who were imprisoned
during the Second World War for no reason other than their
genetic heritage. Ask the victims of asset forfeiture laws, their
property seized and never returned merely because they were
accused of a crime, even if they were acquitted or the charges
were dropped. (You have to file suit to get your property back in
such a case.)
Ask California and New York owners of
"assault weapons", who complied with the law and
registered their guns on the government promise that the
registrations would never be used to facilitate confiscation.
This promise, of course, was promptly broken, and the government
demanded that these citizens surrender their politically
incorrect guns or take up residence in a jail cell.
Consider the expenditure of millions of
taxpayer dollars on research to analyze, for example, what gases
cows belch. Consider the use of taxpayer funds to file lawsuits
against manufacturers of products unpopular with the government -
after legislative efforts to control those products have
failed.
Consider the radiation exposure experiments
conducted on US soldiers in the 1950s without their knowledge or
consent. Consider the US Marines training to operate checkpoints
to search for guns in North Carolina, pointing machine guns at
people not involved in or knowledgeable of the exercise.
Consider Watergate, Filegate, Paula Jones, and Chinese espionage.
Consider the promises made to Elian Gonzales' American family
that they could keep him until the court hearing, only to have
their doors kicked in at 5:00 AM and the child taken by
government agents brandishing machine guns - machine guns banned
from private ownership. (Why are government officials trusted
with automatic weapons, but you aren't? How many doors have you
kicked in lately?)
Consider the insulation of government
officials from the people and from accountability for their
actions. In what other realm do you require the permission of a
company's president to file suit against an employee? (Suits
filed against agents of the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, and
Firearms must be approved by the Director of the agency.)
Consider the massive network of government agencies, each
empowered to create regulations of their own accord - regulations
which carry the force of law, even though they are created by
unelected government bureaucrats, accountable to no one. What
happened to the Constitution's expectation that legislation was
the sole province of Congress?
Consider Dianne
Feinstein, US Senator from California, who recently demonstrated
egregiously unsafe gun handling habits at a press conference
calling for more gun control. (Sweeping the crowd with the muzzle
of an AK-47 with her finger planted firmly on the trigger,
magazine inserted, bolt closed, Feinstein horrified gun owners,
who instinctively know never to do such a thing.) Consider that
she holds a concealed weapons permit for California - a rare
commodity to say the least. Why is she, with her demonstrated
disregard for basic gun safety rules and her vocal outcry to disallow citizens
to carry a gun, worthy to be trusted with a
loaded, concealed weapon, but the rest of us, who have
demonstrated ourselves to be extremely responsible, are not?
Consider the ongoing refusal of Janet Reno's Justice
Department to open inquiries into government abuses. Consider the
fundamental disregard for the Constitution, as the President
issues Executive Orders banning gun exports to Canada and
encourages lawsuits against gun manufacturers, bypassing Congress
and ordering his staff to "find a way around the
Constitution." Isn't that the same Constitution the
President swore to uphold, protect and defend?
We trust the
government with massive control of our lives and the potential to
wipe out human life on Earth, despite the fact that they have
repeatedly violated that trust. They won't trust us with small
arms - even though we've proven ourselves worthy. You have to ask
yourself: who should be trusting whom?
Copyright 2000
Michael A. Mitchell. Permission is hereby granted to reproduce
this article in its entirety, including this copyright notice.
Mike writes for http://www.KeepAndBearArms.com.
You can contact him at mmitch6121@aol.com.
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