Not too long ago a friend of mine asked me my opinion on “this
whole gun rights mess”. A more eloquent friend also sent me the following link from
The Economist (honestly, while I don’t
always agree with their views I find this journal to be the best written and
most thoughtful publication available right now. They make Time magazine look
like a tabloid rag). Read it, whichever side of the topic you may fall on.
http://www.economist.com/blogs/democracyinamerica/2012/07/gun-rights?fb_ref=activity
It’s a great article, they’ve put thought into it.
Still, The Economist tends to miss
the mark a bit on some topics and this may be one of them.
To quote, "The
idea that, in the modern world, a country full of people with private handguns,
shotguns and AR-15s in their households is more likely to remain a liberal
democracy than a country whose citizens lack such weapons is frankly
ridiculous."
Hm... Not sure I agree here. I believe that an armed society makes for military
juntas and even legal coups more difficult because of the mere threat of resistance.
"To
stack up against police, the National Guard or the US Army, private gun
enthusiasts would, at a minimum, have to be packing an arsenal that would be
illegal in any state in the union, even Arizona."
Not
entirely correct, most urban conflict occurs with small arms and while the
military may have an advantage here, the police will not be rolling tanks into
downtown or leveling it from the air. Guerilla warfare is often carried out,
quite successfully, by those armed with nothing but common small arms and
improvised explosives... and the willingness and desire to use them.
"If anything, widespread gun
ownership forces the government to become more repressive and more invasive in
its efforts to fight crime and prevent insurrection."
Now that
is an interesting point and one actually worth considering. England might be a
good example to review in more depth. This could actually be the case to some
degree, but does it have to be so? If you look at many European countries you’ll
find that those with gun bans seem to be extremely repressive by our standards
and significantly less respectful of the privacy of the individual than we would be comfortable with.
Now, here
is the problem I see. In the US we have a culture of firearms ownership. If
(seriously big IF) we could level the playing
field and not only outlaw all firearms ownership but then somehow get rid of
all firearms currently in circulation (something Australia managed do to in
modern times) then I would be willing to at least consider it, to discuss it.
Fuck it, I'll get a Taser and life will be just fine.
The problem
is that I don't think that's realistic,
too many firearms are in circulation and many people will not give them
up. Now the second part of the problem, and it’s a big one, bad people will
still find / stash / steal / garage-engineer guns. They are criminals, by definition they do not
follow the letter nor spirit of the law. Plus, my Taser against one or two
armed assailants is still a sad bet which leaves me, for lack of a better word,
outgunned.
Of
course, we still have that whole government issue which I do think is
important.
Unfortunately
while the idea of a modern armed populace keeping their government in check
through their firearms ownership is far-fetched (although I would ask the
people in Libya or Syria how they feel about that before rushing to judgment) I
feel that a gun free and safe society remaining as such without the means to
defend itself from those who see to do it harm, whether from without or within,
is even more implausible.
Points
to ponder by those who have put more thought into this than myself:
"One
of the arguments that had been made against gun control was that an armed
citizenry was the final bulwark against tyranny. My response had been that
untrained, lightly-armed non-soldiers couldn’t prevail against a modern army. I
had concluded that the qualitative difference in firepower was such that all of
the previous rules of guerilla war no longer applied. Both Vietnam and
Afghanistan demonstrated that wasn’t true. Repelling an armed invasion is not
something that American citizens are likely to face, but the possibility of a
despotic government coming to power is not wholly unthinkable. One of the
sequellae of Vietnam was the rise of the Khmer Rouge and slaughter of perhaps a
million Cambodian citizens. Those citizens, like the Jews in Germany or the
Armenians in Turkey, were unarmed and thus utterly and completely defenseless
against police and paramilitary. An armed minority was able to kill and
terrorize unarmed victims with total impunity.”
~Paul Hagar
"If
gun laws in fact worked, the sponsors of this type of legislation should have
no difficulty drawing upon long lists of examples of crime rates reduced by
such legislation. That they cannot do so after a century and a half of trying —
that they must sweep under the rug the southern attempts at gun control in the
1870-1910 period, the northeastern attempts in the 1920-1939 period, the
attempts at both Federal and State levels in 1965-1976 — establishes the
repeated, complete and inevitable failure of gun laws to control serious
crime.”
~Senator Orrin Hatch
"The
most foolish mistake we could possibly make would be to allow the subjected
people to carry arms. History shows that all conquerors who have allowed their
subjected peoples to carry arms have prepared their own downfall by so doing.
Indeed, I would go so far as to say that the underdog is a sine qua non
["something essential" lit. "without which not"] for the
overthrow of any sovereignty. So let’s not have any native militia or police.”
~Adolph Hitler
”This year
will go down in history. 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 into the future!”
~Adolph Hitler, 1935, on The
Weapons Act of Nazi Germany
"You cannot invade the
mainland United States. There would be a rifle behind each blade of grass.”
~Admiral Isoroku
Yamamoto
"Americans
have the will to resist because you have weapons. If you don’t have a gun,
freedom of speech has no power.”
~Yoshimi Ishikawa
"When
seconds count between living or dying, the police are only minutes away.”
~Phillip Van Cleave
"Good people do not need laws to tell
them to act responsibly, while bad people will find a way around the laws.”
~Plato
"There’s
no question that weapons in the hands of the public have prevented acts of
terror or stopped them.”
~Israeli Police Inspector General Shlomo Aharonisky
"Gun control has not
worked in D.C. The only people who have guns are criminals. We have the
strictest gun laws in the nation and one of the highest murder rates."
~Lowell
Duckett
