The Smallest Minority on earth is the individual. Those who deny individual rights cannot claim to be defenders of minorities. – Ayn Rand
Kim ran National Ammo Day last year, and was disappointed in the result.
So, as he says in this post, if he’s going to fail, he’s going to fail BIG! And he needs our help to do it. I suggest that all of us gun-bloggers go sign up and go spread the word.
Now it will be National Ammo WEEK, and involve two weekends in the fine political tradition of stretching the facts.
Let’s get moving!
I can’t compete with that. Go read it. Now.
(Nod to the Blogfather for the link. Who else?)
ACLU President Nadine Strossen recently gave an interview to Reason magazine. In it, she was asked about the ACLU’s position on the Second Amendment:
Reason: So why doesn’t the ACLU challenge gun-control laws on Second Amendment grounds?
Strossen: We reexamine our positions when people come forward with new arguments. On the gun issue, I instituted a reexamination a few years ago in response to a number of things, but the most important one was an article by Sanford Levinson at University of Texas Law School that summarized a wave of new historical scholarship. Levinson’s argument was that in the 18th century context, a well-regulated militia meant nothing other than people in the privacy of their homes.
So we looked into the historical scholarship there and ended up not being persuaded. The plain language of the Second Amendment in no way, shape, or form, can be construed, I think, as giving an absolute right to unregulated gun ownership. It says, “A well-regulated militia being necessary to the security of a free state, the right to bear arms shall not be infringed.” Certainly, when you have the notion of “well-regulated” right in the constitutional language itself, it seems to defy any argument that regulation is inconsistent with the amendment.
Putting all that aside, I don’t want to dwell on constitutional analysis, because our view has never been that civil liberties are necessarily coextensive with constitutional rights. Conversely, I guess the fact that something is mentioned in the Constitution doesn’t necessarily mean that it is a fundamental civil liberty.
Pardon the hell out of me, but why the hell do you think they put it in the Bill of Rights? What this means is “We’re the ACLU – WE define what is and what isn’t a civil liberty.”
Strossen: So the question becomes, What is the civil-liberties argument of those who would say we should be opposing all gun control? What it comes down to is the very strong belief that having a gun in your home is something that can ultimately fend off the power of a tyrannical government. I find that really unpersuasive in the 20th-century context. Maybe it made sense in the 18th century. I would hope that’s the kind of thing we do through words rather than through guns and that, to me, is the function that the First Amendment serves, not the Second Amendment.
Reason: Would you support a total ban on gun ownership?
Strossen: We might very well oppose that. I would think that our present policy would not foreclose opposing that the way we oppose many other kinds of prohibition, such as drug prohibition.
Let’s go back to that statement: “What it comes down to is the very strong belief that having a gun in your home is something that can ultimately fend off the power of a tyrannical government. I find that really unpersuasive in the 20th-century context. “
I’ll tell you what the civil-liberties argument of those who would say you should be opposing all gun control is, Nadine: It’s the same reason you fight each new attempt to infringe the First Amendment – to keep it from coming to the point where you have to defend elimination of the right in its entirety. So you never have to fight a “total ban on ownership.” If it comes that far, it’s too late.
Her quote reminded me of something I wrote a while back, so I’m going to dredge that up, too. I wrote the original piece back in December of 2000 on the ThemeStream site (now long gone) because of the ACLU of Massachussetts defending NAMBLA in a First Amendment case, but no ACLU chapter has ever (to my knowledge) defended a Second Amendment case. I wondered why that was, so I looked:
It has been said that if the ACLU defended the Second Amendment with the same vigor that it defends the remainder of the Bill of Rights, gun ownership in America would be mandatory. I respect the ferocity with which they defend unpopular causes. I do not always agree with the ACLU position, but I understand the idea of the “slippery slope” – that any infringement on a right makes the next infringement easier. They protect every word of the Bill of Rights with the tenacity of a pit bull, regardless of the odiousness of those groups who bring the cases.
Every word except for these:
“A well-regulated militia, being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear arms, shall not be infringed.”
I have been somewhat at a loss to understand that lack. I recently visited their web site and found their explanation for it. Let me quote:
“We believe that the constitutional right to bear arms is primarily a collective one, intended mainly to protect the right of the states to maintain militias to assure their own freedom and security against the central government. In today’s world, that idea is somewhat anachronistic and in any case would require weapons much more powerful than handguns or hunting rifles. The ACLU therefore believes that the Second Amendment does not confer an unlimited right upon individuals to own guns or other weapons nor does it prohibit reasonable regulation of gun ownership, such as licensing and registration.”
Think about that position for a moment. I did, and it made me angry. Very angry. The ACLU has just shown itself in a few words to be completely hypocritical. They didn’t even try to hide the fact in their language, it’s out there for anyone with a sixth-grade level of reading comprehension to pick up.
Primarily a collective one.
Intended mainly to protect the rights of the states.
Reasonable regulations.
Somewhat anachronistic.
However, the ACLU has no problem defending the North American Man-Boy Love Association in what they consider to be a First Amendment case of free speech. NAMBLA was named in a lawsuit as an accomplice in the rape and murder of a young boy by a member of the organization who, just before committing the crime, accessed the groups web site for mental reinforcement. No, the ACLU claims that there is no such thing as a “bad idea”. Their press release on this case states:
“The principle is as simple as it is central to true freedom of speech: those who do wrong are responsible for what they do; those who speak about it are not. It is easy to defend freedom of speech when the message is something many people find at least reasonable. But the defense of freedom of speech is most critical when the message is one most people find repulsive.”
No wishy-washy weasle words here. The freedom of speech isn’t primarily a collective one. It isn’t there mainly to protect the rights of individuals. It isn’t subject to reasonable regulations. Freedom of speech can’t be licensed or registered. It is treated as an unlimited right.
And apparently those who do wrong with a firearm aren’t responsible for what they do, for the ACLU won’t defend firearms manufacturers in similar lawsuits.
No, the primary reason the ACLU declines to defend the Second Amendment is clearly expressed in the sentence “…that idea is somewhat anachronistic and in any case would require weapons much more powerful than handguns or hunting rifles.” Sanford Levinson, in his essay “The Embarrassing Second Amendment” addresses that position:
“…if one does accept the plausibility of any of the arguments on behalf of a strong reading of the Second Amendment, but, nevertheless, rejects them in the name of social prudence and the present-day consequences produced by finicky adherence to earlier understandings, why do we not apply such consequentialist criteria to each and every part of the Bill of Rights?”
Yes, why don’t we? And why does the ACLU feel comfortable doing it to the Second Amendment? How do they justify to themselves defending all other “rights of the people” as individual rights, and ignoring only one as “primarily a collective right”?
UPDATE: As of August 8, 2013 due to the herculean efforts of reader John Hardin, the original JS-Kit/Echo comment thread for this post is now available (for reading only) here.
And the ACLU STILL hasn’t changed its tune, ten years later.
In Part 1 I used the transcript of the Warren v. District of Columbia decision to illustrate that the courts have uniformly held that the State (municipal, county, State or Federal) has no obligation to protect individuals, just the community at large.
Were you shocked? (Well, if you’re a gun nut like me, probably not. But John and Jane Q. Public probably would be.)
“Why,” you might ask “would the state not be liable for failure to protect?” The answer might be uncomfortable, John & Jane. First, it’s logistically impossible for the police to be everywhere. According to the Bureau of Justice Statistics there were about 650,000 police officers nationwide in municipal, county, and state forces in 1996. Of these, approximately 64% are “responding officers”. Divide that by three shifts, and it means that there are about 140,000 police natiowide available to respond to a call at any time. And things haven’t changed that much in the intervening years. The U.S. population is about 280,000,000. That’s one cop on the beat for every 2,000 of us. Not good odds.
And because the state can’t afford to be. If the State was liable for not protecting every individual from crime, the lawsuits would bankrupt the State in no time. But this brings up a really ugly reality – one that is well illustrated in the dissenting opinion in Riss v. New York, which I will quote in whole from:
“Linda Riss, an attractive young woman, was for more than six months terrorized by a rejected suitor well known to the courts of this State, one Burton Pugach. This miscreant, masquerading as a respectable attorney, repeatedly threatened to have Linda killed or maimed if she did not yield to him: “If I can’t have you, no one else will have you, and when I get through with you, no one else will want you”. In fear for her life, she went to those charged by law with the duty of preserving and safeguarding the lives of the citizens and residents of this State. Linda’s repeated and almost pathetic pleas for aid were received with little more than indifference. Whatever help she was given was not commensurate with the identifiable danger. On June 14, 1959 Linda became engaged to another man. At a party held to celebrate the event, she received a phone call warning her that it was her “last chance”. Completely distraught, she called the police, begging for help, but was refused. The next day Pugach carried out his dire threats in the very manner he had foretold by having a hired thug throw lye in Linda’s face. Linda was blinded in one eye, lost a good portion of her vision in the other, and her face was permanently scarred. After the assault the authorities concluded that there was some basis for Linda’s fears, and for the next three and one-half years, she was given around-the-clock protection.” (My emphasis)
A lot of good that did her.
“Linda has turned to the courts of this State for redress, asking that the city be held liable in damages for its negligent failure to protect her from harm. With compelling logic, she can point out that, if a stranger, who had absolutely no obligation to aid her, had offered her assistance, and thereafter Burton Pugach was able to injure her as a result of the negligence of the volunteer, the courts would certainly require him to pay damages. (Restatement, 2d, Torts, § 323.) Why then should the city, whose duties are imposed by law and include the prevention of crime (New York City Charter, § 435) and, consequently, extend far beyond that of the Good Samaritan, not be responsible? If a private detective acts carelessly, no one would deny that a jury could find such conduct unacceptable. Why then is the city not required to live up to at least the same minimal standards of professional competence which would be demanded of a private detective?”
“Yeah! Why not!?”
Because as I pointed out, the City couldn’t afford to pay for all those lawsuits. They have a hard enough time making the budget as it is.
“So why,” you might ask yourself, “didn’t Linda do something to defend herself?” And here’s the answer, from that same decision:
Linda’s reasoning seems so eminently sensible that surely it must come as a shock to her and to every citizen to hear the city argue and to learn that this court decides that the city has no duty to provide police protection to any given individual. What makes the city’s position particularly difficult to understand is that, in conformity to the dictates of the law, Linda did not carry any weapon for self-defense (former Penal Law, § 1897). Thus, by a rather bitter irony she was required to rely for protection on the City of New York which now denies all responsibility to her.“ (My emphasis)
She was denied the means to defend herself, by a City that had no legal responsibility to defend her.
And that, boys and girls, is what the practical result of “gun control” is. Denial of the means to defend yourself, while not providing any other layer of real protection.
St. George Tucker in his 1803 book Blackstone’s Commentaries – a review of American law – said this about the Second Amendment:
This may be considered as the true palladium of liberty. . . . The right of self defence is the first law of nature: in most governments it has been the study of rulers to confine this right within the narrowest limits possible. Wherever standing armies are kept up, and the right of the people to keep and bear arms is, under any colour or pretext whatsoever, prohibited, liberty, if not already annihilated, is on the brink of destruction. In England, the people have been disarmed, generally, under the specious pretext of preserving the game: a never failing lure to bring over the landed aristocracy to support any measure, under that mask, though calculated for very different purposes. True it is, their bill of rights seems at first view to counteract this policy: but the right of bearing arms is confined to protestants, and the words suitable to their condition and degree, have been interpreted to authorise the prohibition of keeping a gun or other engine for the destruction of game, to any farmer, or inferior tradesman, or other person not qualified to kill game. So that not one man in five hundred can keep a gun in his house without being subject to a penalty.” (My emphasis)
St. George Tucker called the right of self-defense “the first law of nature,” and he was not alone. Yet the State (in all its forms, not just the one we live under) has always worked to ensure that the general public has as little ability to defend itself as possible, rendering the populace supplicant to the State for protection that it may or may not bestow at its whim.
The Second Amendment isn’t about hunting, or target shooting, or even primarily about self-defense against the average criminal. It’s about self-defense against government tyranny. But so long as it exists, the others follow logically.
YOU are responsible for your protection. No one else can be made to be.
So what am I advocating? That the government make a public announcement that they aren’t capable of protecting people, and besides, it isn’t their job anyway, and that everybody would be well-advised to start carrying guns in a big hurry? (I was asked that question, verbatim, once.)
No.
Let’s take a few minutes and discuss “the proper role of government.”
In all my reading, at one time I found this link having to do with that very question. It’s an essay on the subject by Ezra Taft Benson, Eisenhower’s Secretary of Agriculture. He has a lot to say on the matter, some with which I concur, some I don’t, but thought-provoking nonetheless:
“It is generally agreed that the most important single function of government is to secure the rights and freedoms of individual citizens. But, what are those right? And what is their source?
“There are only two possible sources. Rights are either God-given as part of the Divine Plan, or they are granted by government as part of the political plan. Reason, necessity, tradition and religious convictions all lead me to accept the divine origin of these rights. If we accept the premise that human rights are granted by government, then we must be willing to accept the corollary that they can be denied by government.
“…Frederick Bastiat, phrased it so succinctly,
” ‘Life, liberty, and property do not exist because men have made laws. On the contrary, it was the fact that life, liberty, and property existed beforehand that caused men to make laws in the first place.’ “
Well, not being a “believer”, I disagree with God being the source of individual rights, but I certainly reject the premise that rights are “granted” by government. As to accepting the corollary that rights can be denied by government – certainly they can – so long as the People allow it. And I’ve said elsewhere, a “right” is what the overwhelming majority of a society believes it is. Taft continues:
“In a primitive state, there is no doubt that each man would be justified in using force, if necessary, to defend himself against physical harm, against theft of the fruits of his labor, and against enslavement of another.
“Indeed, the early pioneers found that a great deal of their time and energy was being spent doing all three – defending themselves, their property and their liberty – in what properly was called the “Lawless West.” In order for man to prosper, he cannot afford to spend his time constantly guarding his family, his fields, and his property against attack and theft, so he joins together with his neighbors and hires a sheriff. At this precise moment, government is born. The individual citizens delegate to the sheriff their unquestionable right to protect themselves. The sheriff now does for them only what they had a right to do for themselves – nothing more.”
But the sheriff’s not responsible for doing that job for everybody all the time. The law says so. Even if he were held legally responsible, logistically it is impossible to accomplish everywhere, all the time. He can only do the best he humanly can, because even though he represents the power of government, he’s a human being just like the rest of us with all attendant flaws.
However, Benson’s phrasing here is illustrative:
“The individual citizens delegate to the sheriff their unquestionable right to protect themselves. The sheriff now does for them only what they had a right to do for themselves – nothing more.”
I would not have used “delegate” in that sentence, nor would I have expressed it as “what they had a right to do for themselves.” “Delegate” implies a surrender of the right, and “had” reinforces that implication.
Instead, I think we extend to law-enforcement the power necessary to protect us (as best they can), while still retaining that right for ourselves. It isn’t a matter of yeilding a right to a governmental authority, it’s a matter of employing government to enhance our safety above what we are able to do for ourselves alone. All-in-all a “proper role of government”.
So no, I don’t want the government to come out and proclaim that they cannot protect us, because by and large that’s not the case. What I do want is for the populace to understand the government’s limitations in that capacity. That fact has a large bearing on the right to arms, and a much larger bearing on the responsibilities of citizens. If they are not aware of the facts, then they cannot make reasonable decisions. In programming terms: GIGO. And there’s a lot of “garbage in”.
Regardless of why people commit crime, active resistance to it is the only way to stop them during the commission. Relying solely on the police for that active resistance makes the job of the criminal easier and safer, as the residents of England have come to discover. Robert A. Heinlein wrote in Starship Troopers (and if you don’t think it’s a book on philosophy, you need to go read it):
“What is ‘moral sense’? It is an elaboration of the instinct to survive. The instinct to survive is human nature itself, and every aspect of our personalities derives from it.
“But the instinct to survive…can be cultivated into motivations more subtle and much more complex than the blind, brute urge of the individual to stay alive. …’moral instinct’ was the instilling in you by your elders of the truth that survival can have stronger imperatives than that of your own personal survival. Survival of your family, for example. Of your children, when you have them. Of your nation, if you struggle that high up the scale.”
There’s an essay (and now a book) by a man named Jeff Snyder entitled A Nation of Cowards. It’s not surprisingly received little attention – even among gun nuts – because what of Snyder declares. Snyder declares that that the crime problem cannot be addressed without confronting the moral responsibility of the intended victim. He states that taking responsibility for one’s life, family and community requires fighting back when threatened with violence.
A friend of mine once said:
“The vast majority of people are good, decent “herbivores” who just wander around, harming nobody. Unfortunately, there are a small number of carnivores out there, who would prey upon the herbivores. The fact that some of the herbivores have the ability to defend themselves and others makes ALL herbivores safer, and only makes life appreciably more dangerous to the carnivores. I don’t think there is a huge amount of violence out there….but there is SOME.
“I don’t carry guns so that I can shoot people, I carry a gun so that if somebody tries to do something violent or bad, I can put a stop to the violence. The idea is actually one of being able to bring to bear overwhelming force in the face of force, so that the first person doesn’t try to use force in the first place.”
Snyder insists that responsible citizens must be armed and must resist when confronted with crime. I don’t think that’s the case, myself. That’s your “Dodge City” scenario with a six-shooter on every hip.
I think Snyder, Heinlein, and my friend all have legitimate points, though. The base instinct of all creatures is self-preservation. If confronted with crime, the natural base reaction is “cover your ass.” However, we’re part of society, and ultimately a nation. If, as Heinlein put it, our ‘moral sense’ is educated to the point where we value something higher than ourselves, then “avoiding trouble” when it comes to you is immoral. It is your duty to resist, in defense of the rest of society.
However, duty requires protecting yourself (self-preservation) and your society (which is, admittedly, a higher order of duty not everyone accepts), but duty does not require that you risk your life to do so. Duty includes serving on juries, and serving as witness in court, too, if that’s what is required.
My friend’s example of the “good, decent herbivores” represents the majority of the population, and this majority is largely unaware that they are the ones responsible for their own safety. They depend on the police almost exclusively for their safety and protection from crime. In their fear of violence, they fear the other “herbivores” with guns, too. They do so because some gun owners are idiots, but mostly because they’re told that guns are the cause of crime, and they don’t know any better. They don’t accept that general citizens who are willing to resist crime are an asset, not a liability to society.
So what am I advocating? I am advocating educating the citizens of our society as to their rights and attendant duties. That way they can make educated decisions as to their own protection, and that of their fellow citizens. Then if they decide that, for them, actively opposing crime is not an option, they won’t be so eager to deny the means to those who decide it’s the moral thing to do.
In other words, I trust my fellow-man to make the right decision if given all the information.
A lot of people seem to think so. “We need more police, better enforcement,” is usually the refrain you hear when crime rates go up, or a string of crimes occurs. The police tell us that we shouldn’t resist when we’re being robbed or raped. It’s called taking the law into your own hands when you do. It’s the job of the police and the justice system – branches of the government – to protect you, according to most people. Certainly according to most police chiefs and elected officials.
But is it?
Let me tell you a story:
In the early morning hours of March 16, 1975, Carolyn Warren, Joan Taliaferro, and Miriam Douglas were asleep in their rooming house at 1112 Lamont Street, N.W. Warren and Taliaferro shared a room on the third floor of the house; Douglas shared a room on the second floor with her four-year-old daughter. The women were awakened by the sound of the back door being broken down by two men later identified as Marvin Kent and James Morse. The men entered Douglas’ second floor room, where Kent forced Douglas to sodomize him and Morse raped her.
Warren and Taliaferro heard Douglas’ screams from the floor below. Warren telephoned the police, told the officer on duty that the house was being burglarized, and requested immediate assistance. The department employee told her to remain quiet and assured her that police assistance would be dispatched promptly. Warren’s call was received at Metropolitan Police Department Headquarters at 6:23 a. m., and was recorded as a burglary in progress. At 6:26 a. m., a call was dispatched to officers on the street as a “Code 2” assignment, although calls of a crime in progress should be given priority and designated as “Code 1.” Four police cruisers responded to the broadcast; three to the Lamont Street address and one to another address to investigate a possible suspect.
Meanwhile, Warren and Taliaferro crawled from their window onto an adjoining roof and waited for the police to arrive. While there, they saw one policeman drive through the alley behind their house and proceed to the front of the residence without stopping, leaning out the window, or getting out of the car to check the back entrance of the house. A second officer apparently knocked on the door in front of the residence, but left when he received no answer. The three officers departed the scene at 6:33 a. m., five minutes after they arrived.
Warren and Taliaferro crawled back inside their room. They again heard Douglas’ continuing screams; again called the police; told the officer that the intruders had entered the home, and requested immediate assistance. Once again, a police officer assured them that help was on the way. This second call was received at 6:42 a. m. and recorded merely as “investigate the trouble” – it was never dispatched to any police officers.
Believing the police might be in the house, Warren and Taliaferro called down to Douglas, thereby alerting Kent to their presence. Kent and Morse then forced all three women, at knifepoint, to accompany them to Kent’s apartment. For the next fourteen hours the women were held captive, raped, robbed, beaten, forced to commit sexual acts upon each other, and made to submit to the sexual demands of Kent and Morse.
Those paragraphs are taken, with the exception of a single word, “appellants,” verbatim from the opinion in Warren v. District of Columbia. Carolyn Warren, Joan Taliaferro, and Miriam Douglas were the appellants in a lawsuit against the District of Columbia and its police department for failing to protect them. Fail them it did, but the court found against them. And here is its reasoning:
A publicly maintained police force constitutes a basic governmental service provided to benefit the community at large by promoting public peace, safety and good order. The extent and quality of police protection afforded to the community necessarily depends upon the availability of public resources and upon legislative or administrative determinations concerning allocation of those resources. The public, through its representative officials, recruits, trains, maintains and disciplines its police force and determines the manner in which personnel are deployed. At any given time, publicly furnished police protection may accrue to the personal benefit of individual citizens, but at all times the needs and interests of the community at large predominate. Private resources and needs have little direct effect upon the nature of police services provided to the public. Accordingly, courts have without exception concluded that when a municipality or other governmental entity undertakes to furnish police services, it assumes a duty only to the public at large and not to individual members of the community. (Emphasis is mine)
Note the quote: “without exception.” This is not the first time someone has sued the government for not protecting them, not by a long shot. It’s one of the most egregious examples, but far from the only one.
So, it isn’t the government’s responsibility to protect “individual members of the community,” that is, you and me specifically.
So whose job is it?
Think on that awhile. I’ll come back with Part 2 where I’ll discuss just why it can’t be the job of government.
Depending on the State for Your Safety
I’ll have more (much more) to say about this later, but I found this column by Dave Kopel interesting, as I have been studying the UK’s approach to gun control for quite a while, specifically the legal attitude concerning self-defense. So color me unsurprised when Dave followed up on the article with this feedback from someone who’s been there:
“I’m an alumna of Pepperdine University, a school which proudly owns a house/campus on Exhibition Road, literally across the street from the Imperial University, in the middle of South Kensington, right near Harrods, Hyde Park, the Albert Hall. Within two days of arriving for our first semester in London, our relatively small [American] class (37 students, 10 men, 27 women) was visited by a local police officer to instruct us on living in London. Her first question was to the women, ‘How many of you brought mace?’ Three girls raised their hands. She told us we couldn’t use it, shouldn’t even carry it, it was illegal.
That’s correct. Mace, teargas, and pepper sprays have been outlawed since passage of the 1953 “Prevention of Crime Act.” This made it illegal to carry an “offensive weapon” without being able to demonstrate a need for it. Offensive weapons included knives, pointed objects, and firearms, along with chemical sprays. In other words, you had to apply to the government and get their permission in order to carry anything with which to defend yourself. In 1953, remember.
“Had any of us brought any other type of weapon, such as a knife? Several of the men in our group indicated that they carried pocket knives. She told us to leave them at home too.”
As mentioned above, carrying a knife for self-defense was made illegal (without permission from the State) in 1953, but what constituted a knife? That question was rectified with the Criminal Justice Act of 1988 which defined what an edged or pointed weapon was thusly:
“…any article which has a blade or is sharply pointed except a folding pocketknife.” and “This section applies to a folding pocketknife if the cutting edge of its blade exceeds 3 inches.” So, if you carry a very small pocketknife, you’re OK, right? Are you going to take that risk? Small folding lockback? Illegal. Yup. Lockbacks are not considered to be “folding knives.” Carpet knife? Illegal. Boxcutter? Illegal. Leatherman? Illegal. Unless, of course you can prove in court that you had “need,” i.e.: that you used in for work and that you had it on you in conjunction with your work. Woe unto you if you stop by the pub on the way home with anything considered illegal on your person or in your car.
What happened to the English common-law assumption of innocence? It’s turned on its head here. You have to prove your innocence, because the law assumes that if you have something that can be used as a weapon, you intend evil.
If you’re interested, the British Knife Collectors Guild has a site covering the specifics of the laws there. To continue:
“Then she instructed us on how to properly be a victim. If we were attacked, we were to assume a defensive posture, such as raising our hands to block an attack. The reason was (and she spelled it out in no uncertain terms) that if a witness saw the incident and we were to attempt to defend ourselves by fighting back, the witness would be unable to tell who the agressor was. However, if we rolled up in a ball, it would be quite clear who the victim was.
“The feeling I got was, in London, it is not permissable to defend oneself. I also understood that this police officer thought Americans were more likely to be agressive and/or cause more damage to a potential attacker. She was warning us for our own good. I have to admit, she did not make me feel particularly safe.”
Yup. Depend on the State to protect you. You’re not qualified to protect yourself. It would sound like a Monty Python piece if it weren’t true. As Joyce Lee Malcolm has documented, England’s anti-self-defense laws have resulted in violent crime rates considerably higher than we have here.
Update: HAH! Glen Reynolds comments on this, too. But I didn’t see it until AFTER I had my post up. (How does he read all this stuff?)
In relation to the “What is a right” essay…
I posted below, I found this quotation attributed to Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia. I don’t have any other information detailing where it was published, so I’ll hold off on actually laying it at his feet (though if someone can give me a pointer, I’d appreciate it). However, it says in a paragraph what took me an entire essay — Rights are what a society believes they are. (Of course, I was trying to win something, and it was oriented specifically towards the right to arms, but….)
Here it is:
To some degree, a constitutional guarantee is like a commercial loan, you can only get it if, at the time, you don’t really need it. The most important, enduring, and stable portions of the Constitution represent such a deep social consensus that one suspects if they were entirely eliminated, very little would change. And the converse is also true. A guarantee may appear in the words of the Constitution, but when the society ceases to possess an abiding belief in it, it has no living effect. Consider the fate of the principle expressed in the Tenth Amendment that the federal government is a government of limited powers. I do not suggest that constitutionalization has no effect in helping the society to preserve allegiance to its fundamental principles. That is the whole purpose of a constitution. But the allegiance comes first and the preservation afterwards. (My emphasis)
Indeed.
Before I go to bed (who am I fooling, I’ll stay up and read Cryptonomicon until midnight again) I thought I’d post this essay that won me membership priviledges over at AR15.com a few months ago. It was short due to the 8,000 character limit for single posts to that forum. This should be an interesting exercise in HTML coding…
What is a “Right”?
Webster’s has several definitions:
1: qualities (as adherence to duty or obedience to lawful authority) that together constitute the ideal of moral propriety or merit moral approval
2: something to which one has a just claim: as a: the power or privilege to which one is justly entitled b: the interest that one has in a piece of property – often used in plural (mineral rights)
3: something that one may properly claim as due
All accurate, but incomplete. In speaking of the “Rights of the People” we refer to definitions 2 and 3, “something that one may properly claim as due” or “to which one is justly entitled.” Some would add “endowed by the Creator.” What about “life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness?” Robert Heinlein wrote about those in his 1959 novel Starship Troopers:
“Life? What ‘right’ to life has a man who is drowning in the Pacific? The ocean will not hearken to his cries. What ‘right’ to life has a man who must die if he is to save his children? If he chooses to save his own life, does he do so as a matter of ‘right’? If two men are starving and cannibalism is the only alternative to death, which man’s right is ‘unalienable’? And is it ‘right’? As to liberty, the heroes who signed the great document pledged themselves to buy liberty with their lives. Liberty is never unalienable; it must be redeemed regularly with the blood of patriots or it always vanishes. Of all the so-called natural human rights that have ever been invented, liberty is the least likely to be cheap and is never free of cost.
“The third ‘right’ – the ‘pursuit of happiness’? It is indeed unalienable but it is not a right; it is simply a universal condition which tyrants cannot take away nor patriots restore. Cast me into a dungeon, burn me at the stake, crown me king of kings, I can ‘pursue happiness’ as long as my brain lives — but neither gods nor saints, wise men nor subtle drugs, can insure that I will catch it.”
So, what of the “right to keep and bear arms?” Like all “Rights of the People” the right to arms is a social construct – a declaration by a society of what is “right and proper,” and generally agreed to by the population. A society is, by definition, a group with similar beliefs. The enumerated right to arms is historically a fairly new, and a very rare one. Throughout history, the strong have made the rules and the weak have lived under them. Our English ancestors won a limited right to arms from the nobility through centuries of fighting their battles for them. In 1689, the English Bill of Rights proclaimed “That the subjects which are protestants, may have arms for their defence suitable to their conditions, and as allowed by law.”
When our forefathers wrote the Constitution and debated on our Bill of Rights, they looked at their own recent past and at what England had done with that law, and concluded that it provided too much opportunity for interference. In St. George Tucker’s American Blackstone 1803 review of American law, he wrote:
“In England, the people have been disarmed, generally, under the specious pretext of preserving the game: a never failing lure to bring over the landed aristocracy to support any measure, under that mask, though calculated for very different purposes. True it is, their bill of rights seems at first view to counteract this policy: but the right of bearing arms is confined to protestants, and the words suitable to their condition and degree, have been interpreted to authorise the prohibition of keeping a gun or other engine for the destruction of game, to any farmer, or inferior tradesman, or other person not qualified to kill game. So that not one man in five hundred can keep a gun in his house without being subject to a penalty.”
Thus then, as now, government worked to retain the exclusive use of armed force.
Our founders intended to prevent this. Their wording was simpler:
“A well-regulated militia, being necessary to the security of a free state, the right of the people to keep and bear arms, shall not be infringed.”
The meaning of these words went essentially unquestioned for a hundred years. There were questions about just who the People were, but not what “…the right of the people to keep and bear arms, shall not be infringed” meant. The 1857 Dred Scott decision looked at the question of who “the People” were, and declared that slaves and former slaves could not be “the People” because:
(Citizenship) “would give to persons of the negro race, who were recognized as citizens in any one State of the Union, the right to enter every other State whenever they pleased, singly or in companies, without pass or passport, and without obstruction, to sojourn there as long as they pleased, to go where they pleased at every hour of the day or night without molestation, unless they committed some violation of law for which a white man would be punished; and it would give them the full liberty of speech in public and in private upon all subjects upon which its own citizens might speak; to hold public meetings upon political affairs, and to keep and carry arms wherever they went.”
Then we fought a war, in no small part to determine just who “the People” were.
What followed was another ninety years of bad laws aimed at keeping slaves and sons of slaves disarmed “for the public safety.” Laws to keep “those people” from being armed were introduced across the nation. The 14th Amendment was passed to ensure equal protection under the law for all, but the courts played along. U.S. v. Cruikshank in 1875 told us that the job of the federal government was to ensure all citizens received equal rights under the law, but the states were free to pass laws restricting the enumerated right to arms – at least to certain undesirables. In 1939, U.S. v. Miller proclaimed that the arms protected under the Second Amendment were somehow only those of military usefulness, but subsequent decisions using Miller as precedent proclaimed that Miller said that there was no individual right to arms. Once again, government worked to restrict arms to “those like us” – and then, later, “those like us” meant “those with power.” Inevitably, our system of government – established by the people, for the people – has become more and more “us versus them.” The “useful idiots” who fear guns, and the powerful who use them band together to change the meaning of the right to arms in the public mind.
A “right” is what the majority of a society believes it is.
What good is a “right to keep and bear arms” if it gets you put in jail? What good is a “right to keep and bear arms” if using a firearm to defend yourself or someone else results in the loss of your freedom, or at least your property? What good is a “right to keep and bear arms” when you live in a city that denies you the ability to keep a gun in your home for self protection?
This is a battle for public opinion, make no mistake.
It is a battle the powerful and their useful idiots have been winning.
Your rights are meaningless when the system under which you live does not recognize them. Or worse, scorns them.
If you want to keep your rights, it is up to YOU to fight for them. Liberty is NEVER unalienable. You must always fight for it.
“If you will not fight for right when you can easily win without blood shed; if you will not fight when your victory is sure and not too costly; you may come to the moment when you will have to fight with all the odds against you and only a precarious chance of survival. There may even be a worse case. You may have to fight when there is no hope of victory, because it is better to perish than to live as slaves.”
Winston Churchill
(Yup, this HTML stuff is going to take a while to get good at.)
So, this blog is largely dedicated to the rights of individuals, and the right to arms in particular. To get started on the right foot here’s an essay I wrote a while back for the late, lamented Themestream.com. It’s one of my early bits so it’s not as polished as I’d really like, and while I’ve tweaked it a bit to make it fit better here (taking out references to people on Themestream, etc.) I haven’t changed it much. I’m still getting the feel of Blogger and HTML coding.
Anyway, without further ado,
Why DO I Own a Gun?
It’s a reasonable question, one asked of me some time ago on another forum.
On that forum I had written about being a gun owner, and how I got to where I am today. The question of why, however, puts a bit different light on the subject.
As is the case for the majority of gun owners, my father owned guns and still does. However, he was never an avid shooter, and in my recollection has never been a hunter. His guns were his fathers, except for the revolver he purchased after our home was burglarized twice. Guns were just something he had, and they were not really thought about.
However, I have been keenly interested in firearms for most of my life, an interest not shared at all by anyone else in my immediate family. So why do I own a gun? Well, in fact I own several. First and foremost I own guns because I am a recreational shooter. I shoot for sport. It is my number-one hobby. I do not hunt, though I understand the appeal. I am a shooter, and to me hunting is taking your gun for a walk. My particular interest is International Handgun Metallic Silhouette shooting. In this sport the competitor attempts to knock down steel targets shaped in the profiles of chickens, pigs, turkeys and rams at various ranges. It is quite demanding because the longest range in competition is 200 meters and the targets at that range weigh about 50 pounds. An accurate gun, a good aim, and a powerful cartridge are all required to do well.
Most people don’t realize how popular shooting is. My sport is just one of many practiced all over the country. Here is just a short list of shooting sports: Bullseye, High Power, Trap, Skeet, Sporting Clays, Practical Pistol, 100 yard Benchrest, 1000 Yard Benchrest, Bianchi Cup, Schutzenfest, International Defensive Pistol, Steel Challenge, Biathlon, Olympic Free Pistol, Rifle Silhouette, and perhaps the most popular of all, Cowboy Action.
There are many, many more. These are all organized shooting sports with written rules, sanctioning bodies, and scheduled matches. Competitors spend hundreds to thousands of dollars on their equipment and on ammunition for practice and competition. My last competition pistol cost more than $600.00. Used. An Olympic Free Pistol may easily cost in excess of $2,000. Shotguns for Trap, Skeet, or Sporting Clays may cost $5,000 or more. My hand-assembled ammunition costs me about twenty-five cents a shot for the components, so a typical match costs me about ten dollars just for that, not including the 70 mile round trip to the range and the entrance fee. And no, we don’t win prizes.
In addition to the literally millions of rounds fired yearly in organized competition, millions more are fired in practice and just for fun. Ammunition manufacturers report that they sell a combined one billion rounds of .22 rimfire ammunition each year. (I confess to consuming about a fifteen hundred rounds each year of that total.) Shooting as a sport is POPULAR, and while it can be an inexpensive hobby, it can get pricey fast. The point is, recreational shooters don’t exactly fit the stereotype that the media keeps presenting.
I have also been an avid reader for most of my life. My reading has spanned fiction and non-fiction – history, philosophy, mystery, science-fiction, fantasy, technical. In my youth I read just about everything I could get my hands on having to do with World War II. Perhaps I am a throwback to that time, but I believe in duty, honor, personal responsibility, and individual rights. My reading, much more than my formal education, has brought me to study the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution and the history that surrounds these documents and those who wrote them. Because of my readings, I have what I feel is an intimate understanding of the rights of and the responsibilities conferred upon the citizens of this nation.
Listed second in the Bill of Rights is the guarantee to the people that the right to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed by our government. One reason for this guarantee is the common defense of the State in the form of a militia. It is not the only reason. Each of us is responsible for the safety and security of ourselves, our families, our neighborhoods, our cities, our states, and our nation. It is OUR responsibility to combat crime, whether it is armed robbery or reckless driving or governmental corruption. Our freedom of speech and freedom of the press serves to expose corruption. Our ability to call the police department and bear witness in court to crime when it occurs serves when the crime is not directed at us, or when bodily injury is not likely.
However, when we ourselves are confronted with crime directly, it is our duty to resist as best we can. This belief stands in direct conflict with what we’ve been told by the police and other “officials” for the last several years. “Do as you’re told” they tell us “and you (probably) won’t get hurt. Nothing material is worth your life.” They’re right. Nothing material is worth my life. My duty and my honor, however, are not material things.
No, I am not saying that I will immediately throw myself on an attacker and sacrifice my life for no good reason. That’s not honorable, that’s stupid. But to defend my wife against assault, I might do that very thing. I might also do it for a stranger. I decide when a violent response is appropriate, not some uninvolved “official”. To that end I have decided that being armed is preferable to not being armed. I am capable of using firearms, willing if necessary to use lethal force, convinced in my own mind that I have the logical capability to decide if lethal force is necessary, and secure that once I have made a decision that I will be able to live with myself. Further, I am comfortable with the idea that others have made the opposite choice and are willing to take their chances (which are realistically pretty good) remaining unarmed. However, I take extreme exception to those who would tell me “I don’t feel safe because YOU have a gun – you must get rid of it”. I am not a danger to anyone who is a law-abiding citizen. How DARE someone try to restrict my ability to defend myself!
I don’t recommend universal militiarization – i.e.: everyone armed all the time. That’s as insane as the idea of universal disarmament. But I do believe that those who are armed act as a check on those who would commit crime. The evidence backs me up. Wherever laws have been passed allowing or even encouraging average citizens to keep arms for defense, violent crime has dropped, not increased. Wherever laws have been passed prohibiting or severely restricting average citizens from keeping arms for defense, crime has increased, not gone down. Facts seem to be useless against those with firearms phobias, though.
The last reason I own a gun is probably the most controversial. It’s the one that gets gun owners branded as “nuts”, “kooks”, and various other derogatory terms.
I own a gun in order to keep my government in check.
That is the primary reason the Second Amendment was added to the Constitution. The men who wrote it created a whole new form of government, one untried before in history. They did this in the full knowledge that governments are run by human beings, and that some human beings lust for power. They understood that, even with all the checks and balances engineered into the Constitution, with time and patience and even with good intent, the system they set up could fail and tyranny could again rise up. They understood that if the force of arms could be restricted to only the government, that the consent of the governed would become unimportant to those in charge.
So I own a gun. Just as a reminder those in charge that they’d better mean it when they swear an oath to uphold and defend the Constitution of the United States against all enemies foreign and domestic. The Declaration of Independence says it best:
“Prudence, indeed, will dictate that Governments long established should not be changed for light and transient Causes; and accordingly all Experience hath shewn, that Mankind are more disposed to suffer, while Evils are sufferable, than to right themselves by abolishing the Forms to which they are accustomed. But when a long Train of Abuses and Usurpations, pursuing invariably the same Object, evinces a Design to reduce them under absolute Despotism, it is their Right, it is their Duty, to throw off such Government, and to provide new Guards for their future Security.”
It would be tough to throw off such a government starting with only small arms, but it’s been done. It would be impossible without them.
(End of essay. Have a comment or question? I haven’t figured out how to add a comment function yet, so drop me an e-mail at: gunrights AT comcast DOT net)