A
Nation of Cowards
Preface:
Jeff
Chan obtained reprint permission for the Internet for Jeffrey Snyder's "A
Nation of Cowards.” It may be reproduced freely, including forwarding copies to
politicians, provided that it is not distributed for profit and subscription
information is included.
I
especially encourage you to copy and pass on this strong statement about
firearms ownership to friends, colleagues, undecideds, and other firearms
rights supporters. Your grassroots pamphleteering can counter the propaganda
blitz now going on by introducing some reason to the debate. This essay is one
of our best weapons.
Jeff
Chan
------------------------------------------------------------------------
"A
Nation of Cowards" was published in the Fall, '93 issue of The Public
Interest, a quarterly journal of opinion published by National Affairs, Inc.
Single
copies of The Public Interest are available for $6. Annual subscription rate is
$21 ($24 US, for Canadian and foreign subscriptions). Single copies of this or
other issues, and subscriptions, can be obtained from:
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Public Interest
1112
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Washington,
DC 20036
(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
Moore, 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 combating 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.