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--Robert D. $utton "For the first time, a civilized nation has full gun registration! Our streets will be safer, our police more efficient and the world will follow our lead to the future!" So said Hitler in 1935. Six decades later, we are following his lead. Riding on the hysteria caused by two school shootings, the Senate has passed, 51-50, the juvenile justice bill. Looked at in isolation, its main components--background checks at gun shows and pawnshops, safety locks on new handguns, restrictions on "automatic" weapons--do not appear that controversial. However, events do not happen in isolation, and they cannot be detached from their full context. This bill is just one more step on a "gun control" staircase, leading downward to complete disarmament. Both parties know this. The Democrats are saying: "Disarm America!"--to which the Republicans (and the NRA) have replied: "Okay, okay, in a minute!" One side wants to drive us down the road to disarmament at full speed; the other side simply wants to obey the speed limit--both are agreed on the final destination. A change in direction requires a change in basic principles. So far, "public safety" has been the only guiding principle in the gun control debate. It is precisely this principle which must be blasted, and replaced with a rational alternative. One cannot attack the idea of "public safety" by arguing that guns result in public safety. Yes, an armed victim stands a greater chance of survival than an unarmed one (especially in the case of women, children and the elderly). Yes, even if you don�t own a gun, the possibility that you MIGHT is a strong deterrant to most criminals. And yes, just about every blood bath in a public area could have been minimized or averted altogether if the victims had not been made to face their executioners unarmed. One can even back all this up with studies. The Lott and Mustard study shows that allowing people to carry concealed weapons actually decreases violent crimes by 5-10%. A little-known government study shows that kids who receive guns from their parents are less likely to commit crimes than kids who either don�t get guns or who get them illegally. Other studies show that the number of innocent lives guns save far outweighs the number they cost through accidents and murders. And then there�s the fact that less than .1% of the guns (236 million) and gunowners (about half the populace) in America are involved in gun-related crimes� You can give arguments and statistics galore, but even if you prove that guns are good for "public safety" and thereby win the battle, you still lose the war. The reason? You�re playing by the enemy�s rules. By agreeing that "public safety" is the justification of the right to bear arms, you are saying that rights can be infringed if and when the "public safety" requires it. And those who would deprive us of our rights can always concoct some "national emergency" to justify taking them away. The only way to preserve freedom for tomorrow, is to take an unequivocal stand for it today. The justification of the right to bear arms is not "public safety." (Nor is it the 2nd Amendment. The Constitution doesn�t "give" us any rights--rights come from Nature. It simply prohibits the government from infringing on them. The 2nd Amendment can be repealed--the right to bear arms cannot.) The justification of the right to bear arms is the right to self-defense--whose justification is the inalienable right to life. The right to life implies the right to defend it, which in turn implies the right to the means of defending it. We don�t lose that right by joining society. We merely delegate certain aspects of it (e.g., tracking down and punishing criminals, enforcing contracts, and defending against foreign invaders) to the government. We retain the right to forcefully defend ourselves from immediate threats to our lives and property. (The task of objectively defining what constitutes an "immediate threat" belongs to the philosophy of law.) This right would be necessary even if the police had a duty to protect us. The Supreme Court ruled, in South v. Maryland (1856)--and has since upheld the ruling--that local law enforcement has no duty to protect individuals, only "a general duty to enforce the law." But even if it were otherwise, the police couldn�t be everywhere at once. They�re always too late in the movies--in real life, sometimes, they don't even show up! While you�re waiting to be protected in the future, you have the right to protect yourself in the present--using any tools at your disposal. Your right to bear arms is absolute--within the context of immediate self-defense. That context is crucial. It defines which arms you may bear (weapons appropriate to immediate self-defense, e.g., handguns, rifles and shotguns) and which you may not (weapons of mass destruction, e.g., machine guns, rocket launchers, tanks and nuclear weapons). It ensures you the ABSOLUTE RIGHT to those arms you can bear--whose use, purchase, ownership and sale the government may not tax, monitor or regulate. (The only candidates for "gun control" are convicted violent felons. In terms of wielding private arms responsibly, the rest of us are innocent until proven guilty.) The right to bear arms in self-defense does not apply only--or even primarily--with respect to private criminals. It applies preeminently to the greatest potential violator of an individual�s rights: his own government. A few words from the Founders: "As civil rulers, not having their duty to the people duly before them, may attempt to tyrannize, and as the military forces which must be occasionally raised to defend our country, might pervert their power to the injury of their fellow citizens, the people are confirmed by the next article [the Second Amendment] in their right to keep and bear their private arms" (Coxe). "Firearms stand next in importance to the Constitution itself. They are the American people�s liberty�s teeth and keystone under independence" (Washington). "And what country can preserve its liberties, if its rulers are not warned from time to time, that this people preserve the spirit of resistance? Let them take arms. ... The tree of liberty must be refreshed from time to time, with the blood of patriots and tyrants" (Jefferson). "If the representatives of the people betray their constituents, there is no recourse left but in the exertion of that original right of self-defense which is paramount to all forms of positive government" (Hamilton). Don�t be fooled into thinking that the 2nd Amendment applies any less today than it did two centuries ago, or that its current application is limited to hunting and shooting contests. Times have NOT changed. The government still is, and always will be, the biggest threat to liberty--as the bloodshed of the 20th century attests. The 2nd Amendment was, and still is, nothing less than the implementation of the right to revolution mentioned in the Declaration of Independence. When the Constitution, separation of powers, federalism and popular elections fail, Private Arms are the last and greatest contraceptive against the birth of tyranny. In a sense, this debate is about safety. The choice is: YOUR safety--or that of the armed thugs sent to "help" you, and of the bureaucrats who send them. Whose safety is served by gun control? Just ask Hitler! "History shows that all conquerors who have allowed their subjected peoples to carry arms have prepared their own fall." Guess what else history shows? Disarmament may not always be followed by tyranny and genocide--but tyranny and genocide are always preceded by disarmament. Hitler, Lenin, Stalin, Mao, Pol Pot, and Milosevic--each had his own "final solution," and DISARMED victims were always part of the equation. They started by confiscating guns in the name of safety--and ended by killing everyone foolish enough to believe that "safety" could be purchased at the price of liberty. Those who resisted were likely to be killed one by one--those who did not were even more likely to end up in a mass grave. Yes, it CAN happen here--and anyone who thinks otherwise better drink a nice big glass of wake-the-hell-up. Listen to your "President": "[Today] there�s a lot of irresponsibility. And so a lot of people say there�s too much personal freedom. When personal freedom�s being abused, you have to move to limit it." Hmmm�sounds an awful lot like what the Germans were hearing just before the Nazis took over! "We can't be so fixated on our desire to preserve the rights of ordinary Americans," says Comrade Clinton. WE damn well better be "fixated" on preserving our rights--our paternalistic leaders are fixated with a child molestor�s lust on violating them. They view the "body politic" as (to borrow Roshan Shah�s apt phrase) "nothing but a set of t1ts and ass"--and, like all rapists, they are deterred only by the point of a gun. If and when they disarm us, they can and will dispense with any pretense at "democracy," locking us up for good in cells we have long since taken for granted. Our leaders know full well that the road to disarmament merges with the Road to Serfdom (apologies to F.A. Hayek). As gun-grabber-in-chief Sarah Brady puts it: "Our task of creating a Socialist America can only succeed when those who would resist us have been totally disarmed." (Former) Senator Howard Metzenbaum knows his own motives--"I don�t care about crime, I just want the guns." It�s time the rest of us woke up and smelled the gunpowder. Notes Notes |
