Ammunition to Defend Your Rights
“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.”
NOTHING illustrates the battle between the good forces of individual liberty and the destructive, idiotic forces of collectivism better than the ongoing battle over the meaning of those 27 little words.
Normal people understand the natural existence of the right to bear arms, the plain language guaranteeing us that right, and the clearly documented history that led to its enshrinement in the Bill of Rights. But those who distrust individual freedoms in favor of an all-powerful government are horrified by the idea that one person can possess enough power to lawfully resist, with force, unacceptable intrusions into his or her life.
Perhaps some of those opposed to the individual right to bear arms understand that, as King George once discovered, an armed populace is a populace that will not be pushed around. Perhaps they even understand Thomas Jefferson’s famous observation (or was it a warning?):
“When governments fear the people, there is liberty. When the people fear the government, there is tyranny.”
Whatever the reason, these people seem to appreciate, if not respect, the role of the Second Amendment in protecting our way of life. Successfully weaken it, and it’s only a matter of time before all of our other rights begin to fall away, like dominoes.
That’s why so many of the debates over the Second Amendment aren’t really about guns at all; they’re about big versus small government, rights versus responsibilities, and, ultimately, about where the balance of power in America should reside: with politicians or with the people. That’s also why it’s so imperative that all Americans, gun lovers or not, understand their Second Amendment right well enough to fight for it against idiots who say things like . . .
They sure don’t write laws the way they used to. Back in the eighteenth century, preambles like the one we see in the Second Amendment’s militia clause were actually quite common. Who knows, maybe the politicians were a little more modest back then and believed they had to offer explanations for the laws being handed down—but, whatever the reason, the rules of English grammar haven’t changed.
The argument that the militia clause somehow defines, narrows, or transforms the operative part of the right-securing language (“the right of the people to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed”) proves only the sad state of modern education in America.
Just because the Second Amendment happens to have a preamble doesn’t diminish the fact that the granting of this right to the people is perfectly clear. When our Founders intended to specifically refer to the militia or the states, guess what—they used those words. Look at the Tenth Amendment, for instance: “The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States respectively, or to the people.” Pretty clear, right?
It becomes even more clear when you look at other instances where the Founders used the language “the right of the people.” Like in the First Amendment, for example: “the right of the people peaceably to assemble.” Or, in the Fourth Amendment: “the right of the people to be secure . . . against unreasonable searches and seizures.”
The first clause of the Second Amendment, which discusses the necessity of a well-regulated militia, is a reason why the people have the right to arms. It’s a perfectly good and sufficient reason, but it’s not the only reason, and it doesn’t change who has the right.
“In a radical break from 70 years of Supreme Court precedent, Justice Antonin Scalia, writing for the majority, declared that the Second Amendment guarantees individuals the right to bear arms for nonmilitary uses, even though the amendment clearly links the right to service in a ‘militia.’”
—The New York Times Editorial Board, June 27, 2008
Consider this sentence:
“Being a fisherman, Joe needs to buy a boat.”
Does that mean that Joe should buy a boat only if he fishes for a living? What if Joe also likes to water ski?
“No free man shall ever be debarred the use of arms.”
—Thomas Jefferson
Being a fisherman is a great reason for getting a boat, but it isn’t the only reason and, in fact, it doesn’t even have to be true. What if Joe is actually allergic to fish? What if Joe is an accountant who happens to enjoy sailing on the weekends? What if Joe is a strict vegan, but loves to scuba dive? Would the above sentence preclude Joe from buying a boat in any of those situations?
Likewise, the militia clause of the Second Amendment doesn’t have to be true for the rest of the statement to stand. What if a well-regulated militia is not necessary to the security of a free state? We are pretty secure and still (kind of) free these days, but we don’t have a functioning state-militia system. Perhaps the Framers were wrong—maybe the only thing necessary to security is a nuclear-defensive umbrella, a strong navy, and just plain good luck.
Does a constitutional right go away simply because one of its perceived benefits no longer exists? Of course not—no individual right depends on the government’s actions. That’s why the Declaration of Independence made clear that the rights we were fighting for were those we were “endowed [with] by our creator” instead of some elected bureaucrat.
Judges and lawyers have understood that the flowery, explanatory language of the sort we see at the outset of the Second Amendment is of little real value. That’s why, for hundreds of years, such language has been widely ignored by courts—unless absolutely necessary to explain the operative text.
In announcing one influential English decision in 1716 (remember, they still used common sense back then), the judge called the idea that a preamble can limit or redefine the operative text “a ridiculous notion.” The reporter noting the decision even wrote that “his Lordship” rendered his decision “with some heat.”
I wonder if any of our current reporters have used the term “his Lordship” lately? 
Over a hundred years later, the interpretations were still the same. A mid-nineteenth-century legal treatise explained, “When the words of the enacting clause are clear and positive, recourse must not be had to the preamble.” And, in this century, modern authorities declared that “the preamble can neither limit nor extend the meaning of a statute which is clear. Similarly, it cannot be used to create doubt or uncertainty.”
If you’re still not convinced, consider that the first Congress, which approved the Second Amendment, also reenacted the Northwest Ordinance, which laid out the settlement and exploration of what then passed for the frontier west. That law declared:
“Religion, morality, and knowledge, being necessary to good government and the happiness of mankind, schools and the means of education shall forever be encouraged.”
Many gun-grabbing idiots would disagree that religion, morality, and knowledge are necessary for good government, so does that mean that we can now do away with all public schools in the states of the old Northwest Territory (Ohio, Michigan, Illinois, Indiana, and Wisconsin)?
Hang on a second . . . no public schools? Maybe they’re onto something with this whole “preamble” thing after all.
Even our original Constitution contains a Second Amendment–style preamble. Congress has the power “to promote the Progress of Science and the useful Arts,” by enacting copyright and patent laws. Does that mean that every copyrighted work or patented invention must promote scientific progress and useful arts? Suppose Al Gore’s next book advocates a radical back-to-nature lifestyle that abandons the use of cars, planes, and electric power—things that would all be against scientific progress. Would Gore still be entitled to copyright it? Of course he would. Why? Because courts don’t limit copyright and patent protection only to things that might “promote the Progress of Science and the Useful Arts.”
In a very similar way, “the right of the people” as stated in the Second Amendment doesn’t depend on, and is not defined by, those who take advantage of it only in the context of a militia.
The science of linguistics had not yet been invented by Noam Chomsky at the time the Second Amendment was written, but the rules of interpreting legal language were well understood anyway.
Gun-grabbers are not the only people who make bizarre arguments about the punctuation, capitalization, or format of a constitutional amendment they dislike. So do tax protestors, many of whom believe the Sixteenth Amendment, which permits Congress to levy an income tax, wasn’t legally ratified because of alleged errors and inconsistencies in the typography of the text. People who advance those kinds of arguments generally end up being able to have a lively debate over their insanity in the same place: federal prison.
Relying on gobbledygook from the faculty lounge to contradict the plain meaning of the Second Amendment defeats a key purpose of having a Bill of Rights in the first place. As St. George Tucker, perhaps the leading legal scholar of the Second Amendment’s day, said, “A bill of rights may be considered, not only as intended to give law, and assign limits to government . . . but as giving information to the people [so that] every man of the meanest capacity and understanding may learn his own rights, and know when they are violated . . .”
Sadly, Tucker apparently grossly overestimated the intelligence and “meanest capacity” of some people.
The gun-grabbers like to fantasize that the Founders used “militia” to mean a government-organized military unit—but, as usual, they couldn’t be more wrong.
We’ve really changed what the definition of a “militia” is. Back in the 1700s, it meant all able-bodied men. But now? A militia member seems to be anyone who’s not perfectly in the mainstream. According to a report done by the Missouri Information Analysis Center, people who endorse third-party candidates, are pro-life activists, enjoy the film “America: From Freedom to Fascism,” or, most ironically, fly the Gadsden “Don’t Tread on Me” flag, might just be in a militia. Of course, that’s not all bad news—if we use their definition then everyone who voted for Ron Paul or is against Roe v. Wade has the right to bear arms no matter how you interpret the Second Amendment.
The Constitution gave Congress the power both to raise and support a national army and also to organize “the Militia.” The army had to be “raised” because it didn’t naturally exist in society, but “the Militia,” on the other hand, only had to be organized. Why? Because it was a pre-existing concept.
In debating the Constitution, George Mason famously asked, “Who are the Militia?” Surprisingly, his answer didn’t include camo-clothed, beer-drinking rednecks, talk-radio listeners, or Bob Barr supporters. In fact, Mason was asking a rhetorical question. The Militia, he said, “consist now of the whole people.”
They still do.
Hundreds of years ago, people feared the idea of a permanent, standing army because their experience had been that, in times of peace, standing armies would occupy themselves by repressing the citizenry. Modern police departments didn’t develop until the nineteenth century, so, with no army and no cops, peace and order were maintained by “the militia”—a group of ordinary civilians who were expected to use their own arms to defend the community.
As the Supreme Court long ago explained, the “militia system . . . implied the general obligation of all adult male inhabitants to possess arms, and, with certain exceptions, to cooperate in the work of defence.” It went on to say that the militia are not troops or standing armies but civilians primarily: “all males physically capable of acting in concert for the common defense.”
James Madison, the author of the Second Amendment, plainly understood that “the militia” meant able-bodied civilians. Dismissing fears that a federal army might become as oppressive as the English Redcoats, Madison noted that America had “a militia amounting to near half a million of citizens with arms in their hands.” And, according to Madison, this broadly defined militia held “the advantage of being armed, which the Americans possess over the people of almost every other nation” with “governments [that] are afraid to trust the people with arms.”
James Madison may have been a brilliant man with extraordinary foresight, but even he apparently couldn’t fathom a time when our government wouldn’t trust their own citizens to bear arms. If he had fathomed it, he might have written the Second Amendment a little differently . . . like: “All citizens have the right to keep and bear arms.”
It might be difficult to imagine this today, but during the Revolution, cities like Boston and New York had accurate, quality newspapers. The Boston Evening Post once reported that “the total number of the Militia, in the large province of New-England, is upwards of 150,000 men, who all have and can use arms,” while the New York Packet once declared, “Whoever asserts that 10 or 12,000 soldiers would be sufficient to control the militia of this Continent, consisting of 500,000 brave men, pays but a despicable compliment to the spirit and ability of Americans.”
The colonies, then the states, and now the federal government have long declared exactly which part of the population might be organized as “militia.” Today, federal law defines “the militia of the United States” to include all able-bodied males from 17 to 45 and members of the National Guard up to age 64, but excluding those who have no intention of becoming citizens and active military personnel.
To translate, that means that every able-bodied guy of a certain age who’s not in the military is in the militia. Once we understand that, it’s easy to see the relationship between the Second Amendment’s militia purpose and its rights-securing language. If “the people” cannot have guns, they cannot function as “militia” when needed. After all, people who are called to perform militia duties are “expected to appear bearing arms supplied by themselves and of the kind in common use at the time.” No guns, no militia.
While George Mason may not have fully understood just how complex the debate over his desired protection for the right to arms would eventually become, he did realize the threats this system might one day have to endure. He explained, “The militia may be here destroyed by that method which has been practised in other parts of the world before; that is, by rendering them useless—by disarming them.”
Because it doesn’t have to! The militia purpose was one purpose that folks who had just overthrown a tyrannical king thought would be important for future generations to remember. But everyone understood that “the right of the people to keep and bear arms” referred to an individual right to use guns in self-defense. It was so obvious that it didn’t even need to be said.
Unlike America, England had no militia system to speak of. Yet, in the 1689 Declaration of Rights, the king agreed “that the Subjects which are Protestants may have Arms for their Defence suitable to their Conditions and as allowed by Law.” By 1744, English law had already “settled and determined” that “a man may keep a gun for the defence of his house and family.”
John Adams, in defending the Redcoats at the Boston Massacre trial, declared, “Here every private person is authorized to arm himself, and on the strength of this authority, I do not deny the inhabitants had a right to arm themselves at that time, for their defence, not for offence . . .” The disarmament of the people of Boston provoked outrage from the Continental Congress.
In 1791, the realization of the need to band together as militia was fresh in people’s minds, so we’d expect the Second Amendment to highlight that function of the right to arms. But that doesn’t exclude other functions, especially one like the right to self-defense that was already so widely understood.
YOU CAN TAKE MY GUN WHEN YOU PRY IT FROM MY COLD, DEAD HANDS . . . OR YOU CAN JUST PHOTOSHOP IT AWAY
In the 20th anniversary rerelease of the classic film E.T.: The Extra Terrestrial some things were added, and others things quietly disappeared.
Like the guns.
Fearing that shotgun-wielding federal agents were too threatening, director Steven Spielberg used the magic of digital technology to turn their weapons into harmless walkie-talkies.
That got me to thinking how interesting other famous film scenes could be if we went back and de-gunned them!
I know this is hard to believe, but in 1791, America was a much more free country than it is today. Missing from the landscape were the endless numbers of alphabet soup agencies and two-bit bureaucrats that now seem to infect every aspect of our lives. Only a true idiot would envision our Bill of Rights as a celebration of regulation!
The term “well-regulated” meant something very different to our ancestors than it now does to some pencil pusher at the Federal Bureau of Regulation’s Administration of Government Initiatives. As noted by the Oxford English Dictionary, “well-regulated” meant “well-functioning”: i.e., “well-regulated appetites” (1709), “well-regulated clock” (1812), and “well-regulated mind” (1862). When speaking specifically of troops, regulated means “properly disciplined.” “Discipline,” in turn, means “training in the practice of arms.”
The Patriots who formed militia groups to resist British rule, including George Washington, described their groups as “well-regulated militia.” Knowing the definitions, what do you think makes more sense, that Washington’s neighborhood militia was granted the Royal Seal of Approval by some kingly regulator, or that his militia was “properly trained in the practice of arms”?
“Arms discourage and keep the invader and plunderer in awe, and preserve order in the world as well as property.”
—Thomas Paine
Some people believe that people are now sooooo much smarter than those dead old guys who liked to dress up in wigs, got rid of the king, and wrote our Bill of Rights. In their world, gun violence is not only a problem that didn’t exist in the 1700s, it’s also a problem that the Framers could never have even foreseen because they were living in a quaint, peaceful time, and their ideas, while imaginative for three hundred years ago, aren’t so hot today.
Not so much. Whatever else has changed over the years, it’s not human nature. People alive in the 1700s were just as violent and crazy as they were in the 1800s, 1900s, and today. All of the modern arguments we hear about gun control today were made back then, considered, and rejected.
On July 7, 1775, the Newburn (North Carolina) Gazette reported that “a Demoniac” shot three people and wounded a fourth with a sword, before being shot by others. (Note the fact that sane, law-abiding people with guns handy kept the lunatic from racking up a greater body count.)
Nothing makes people call for gun bans more than a terrible tragedy. But if we gave in to temptation and banned guns every time one is used in a mass murder, then we’d never even have the Second Amendment because the “Demoniac” would have convinced everyone that guns are evil. Unfortunately, England didn’t have the same resolve. After the 1996 “Dunblane Massacre,” in which a man shot and killed 16 children and their teacher at a primary school, England instituted a handgun ban. More on how that worked out later in the chapter.
It’s not as though there was no gun crime back then, or that nobody thought about whether disarming the population would result in less violence. It’s just that, after thinking about it, they realized it would never work.
In 1764, Italian Marquis Cesare Beccaria published On Crimes and Punishments, a book credited with founding the science behind modern criminology. Our Founders were quite familiar with Beccaria’s work—John Adams confidently quoted from it to the jury during the Boston Massacre trial and Thomas Jefferson was also a fan. In his own “Commonplace Book,” Jefferson copied Beccaria’s passage denouncing gun control and even called gun control an example of “false utility”—a backwards and irrational approach to crime prevention that will only make the problem of criminal violence worse.
According to Beccaria and Jefferson, gun-control laws “disarm those only who are neither inclined nor determined to commit crimes. Can it be supposed that those who have the courage to violate the most sacred laws of humanity, the most important of the code . . . will respect the less important and arbitrary ones, which can be violated with ease and impunity, and which, if strictly obeyed, would put an end to personal liberty . . . Such laws make things worse for the assaulted and better for the assailants . . . [These] laws [are] not preventive but fearful of crimes, produced by the tumultuous impression of a few isolated facts, and not by thoughtful consideration.”
The “Demoniac” of 1775 went on his shooting spree three months after the Revolution’s bloody opening at the Battle of Lexington and Concord and less than a year before the Declaration of Independence was signed. Given that environment, it’s not surprising that the Gazette also carried this clear message from the Continental Congress: “It is the Right of every English Subject to be prepared with Weapons for his Defense.”
Gun laws don’t deter criminals, but they do disarm the law-abiding, making them easier to attack, and eventually leading to the end of individual freedom. These laws are produced by panicked reaction to individual incidents and not, as the authors of our Declaration of Independence once said, by “thoughtful consideration.”
So, in other words, we can just ignore the parts of the Constitution that we feel no longer make sense because they’re “outdated”? Sweetness! Why stop with the Second Amendment? What if some unelected, crazy judge somewhere thinks it would be good to bring slavery back? Or eliminate the right to privacy? Or stop having free and fair elections—after all, we keep voting for Bushes, Clintons, and Kennedys anyway. Why not just set up some sort of rotating monarchy?
If the intent is really to reduce crime and violence, the Second Amendment is an odd place to start. After all, Saudi Arabia and North Korea seem pretty peaceful and orderly, so why not mimic them and eliminate our Fourth Amendment so that police can search wherever and however they want and arrest people who just don’t look right? What have you got to hide if you haven’t done anything wrong?
We can get rid of the Fifth Amendment, too. Due process? Waste of time! If we can make you confess to a crime, all the more efficient. The Sixth Amendment—give me a break! Jury trials? Why, so we can have O.J. fool a bunch of morons? Do you really need a lawyer to explain your actions if you’re innocent?
But the real culprit here, the part of the Bill of Rights that kills the most Americans, by far, is the Eighth Amendment. You know, the one that says fines can’t be “excessive” and that people shouldn’t be subjected to “cruel and unusual punishment.”
Anyone remember The Running Man? Great movie . . . maybe it’s time for life to imitate art?
Why? We’re talking about guilty people here! Criminals! A few public beheadings or Taliban-style floggings, broadcast in prime time right between Cops and America’s Most Wanted and crime rates will plummet!
If we’re really worried about public safety there are lots of other things in the Constitution to target that would be far more effective. But idiots don’t target those things because they know they’ll lose—so they start with the Second Amendment and hope, as I said before, that destroying it will lead to a domino effect.
Does the First Amendment protect only the sort of speech that existed in 1791? If you’re struggling with the answer to that rhetorical question then I’m not sure I actually want you to be able to own a gun.
Back in the 1700s, Al Gore hadn’t yet invented the internet and, with no radio or television, Keith Olbermann hadn’t yet invented hypocrisy. Yet the First Amendment protects both of those people, along with the millions of others who use new mediums to broadcast things that other people might find outrageous (and yes, that fortunately includes yours truly).
Al Gore could pole-dance topless in an internet broadcast that is then turned into a Larry Flint Blu-Ray Disc . . . and it would all be constitutionally protected. Anyone trying to stop it would likely find a militia of ACLU lawyers trying to bury them under the courthouse.
It would be an interesting case on whether that ACLU “militia” could bear arms.
If we want to get rid of anything that can be used to kill people, we can’t stop at firearms.
. . . Toasters In 2002, Mariela Karbowski of Victoria, Texas, was charged with beating her estranged husband to death with a two-slice toaster.
. . . Coffins In 2008, a Brazilian widow on the way to her husband’s funeral died after the hearse she was traveling in was hit from behind in an accident. The force of the collision pushed the coffin forward into her head, killing her.
. . . Video Games In 2005, A South Korean boiler repairman collapsed and died after playing the video game StarCraft online for almost 50 consecutive hours.
. . . Weird Combinations of Harmless Things In 2006, British comedian Mark Cassidy was killed after accidentally overdosing on nitrous oxide (laughing gas) while watching pornography on his laptop computer.
In 1791, we had very few practitioners of Wahhabist Islam on these shores. Mormons? Zero—Joseph Smith wouldn’t be born for decades. Chicken-sacrificing voodoo preachers? Scientologists? Nope, not on the Mayflower. Yet, today, all of those religions, along with hundreds of others, are protected by the First Amendment’s guarantee of religious freedom.
How about our Fourth Amendment rights against “unreasonable” searches? Back in 1791, there were no telephones to tap—yet the police now generally need to get a warrant before they can spy on your telephone conversations. Back then there were no helicopters to hover over your house with special thermal-imaging cameras that could peek through your roof to detect drug-making equipment—but that, too, is now considered a violation of your Fourth Amendment rights.
All of our other rights protected by the Bill of Rights have expanded based on evolving technology—so why should the right to bear arms of all kinds not evolve with technology? Again, if that question is hard for you to answer, then you might have a bigger problem with our Constitution than just its Second Amendment.
What’s an assault weapon?
So should the law ban only “things that belong on a battlefield”?
Oh, okay, thanks for clearing that up.
Few rational people dispute that there are some weapons that should be banned from private ownership. Ted Turner may own half of Montana, but he can’t defend it with nukes.
I’m not singling Turner out just because he’s cozy with the United Nations, has a tendency to marry Viet Cong agents, and is prone to saying stupid things—i.e., “We’ll be eight degrees hotter in ten—not ten, but in 30 or 40 years. And basically none of the crops will grow. Most of the people will have died, and the rest of us will be cannibals.” Seriously, he really said that.
The Supreme Court tells us that the Second Amendment protects the possession only of weapons that can be carried on one’s person and are of the type that would be in common use for lawful purposes.
But where do “assault weapons” fit into that? It depends. The word “assault” doesn’t tell us anything, because any object used to harm another person can be designated as an “assault” weapon. If a mugger uses a kitchen knife, baseball bat, or fireplace poker to prey on his victims, should Congress label those items as “assault weapons” and ban them from private homes?
It seems logical that if a gun is going to be banned for being an “assault weapon,” there should be something about it that makes it particularly useful for criminals, but use less for lawful applications. Unfortunately, there is nothing logical about the agenda of gun-grabbers. They’re focused on banning as many guns as they can, as fast as possible—common sense be damned.
These bans have very little to do with what the guns actually do, and a whole lot more with their cosmetic appearance. Maybe a more accurate term for an assault weapons ban would be a “scary-looking weapons ban” or “cool-looking weapons ban,” depending on your view.
No. The sort of “assault weapons” that might be used in the military or the movies are machine guns (i.e., guns that spray bullets everywhere). They are called “fully automatic” weapons because the gun automatically loads and then fires bullets for as long as the shooter keeps pressing on the trigger. These types of guns have been heavily restricted in the United States since the mid-1930s and are not covered by the “assault weapons” ban laws.
In case you’re not familiar with them (i.e., “you’re a ‘normal person’”), the Violence Policy Center isn’t exactly some right-wing think tank funded by the gun lobby. In fact, they’re just the opposite: They believe that guns are actually a public health issue and should be subject to government health and safety regulations. So, when they talk about the public’s being “confused” by the terminology, they mean that in a good way.
That’s right. But don’t take it from me. In a 1988 report laying out their strategy for banning so-called assault weapons, the Violence Policy Center declared public confusion to be a key aspect of their strategy. “The weapons’ menacing looks,” they wrote, “coupled with the public’s confusion over fully automatic machine guns versus semi-automatic assault weapons—anything that looks like a machine gun is assumed to be a machine gun—can only increase the chance of public support for restrictions on these weapons.”
The gun-grabbers’ amazing dishonesty is right there, in plain view. They know that by inciting confusion they prevent people from asking logical questions—questions that gun prohibitionists can’t answer.
Let’s take a look at what these “assault weapon” bans actually prohibit. First, these laws pertain only to “semi-automatic” guns. The term “semi-automatic” may seem exotic to those unfamiliar with guns, but most guns made in the last hundred years fall into this category. It just means that one bullet will be fired each time the trigger is pulled. Keep your finger down on the trigger and you’ll get a whole lot of . . . nothing. Semi-automatic guns will not “spray” bullets, but you do not need to manually reload each bullet into the chamber, a distraction that usually makes most target shooting—and self-defense uses—far less effective. “Excuse me, Mr. Serial Killer, I missed. Please sit still while I get another bullet ready to go.”
Manual reloading of guns does, however, provide much better drama for the scene in the movies where the hero has to struggle to get another round in the chamber as the madman defies all laws of medicine by rising from the floor after taking a shot to the chest.
Good question. Here’s what the guns-are-a-public-health-issue Violence Policy Center says:
“Defining an assault weapon—in legal terms—is not easy. It’s not merely a matter of going after guns that are ‘black and wicked looking.’ Although those involved in the debate know the weapons being discussed, it’s extremely difficult to develop a legal definition that restricts the availability of assault weapons without affecting legitimate semi-automatic guns . . . although legislation could be passed that would ban specific weapons, the world’s arms manufacturers are expert at producing weapons that follow the letter, but not the intent, of the law. This often results in products that are virtually identical to the restricted weapon, yet different enough to remain on the market.”
So the gun-grabbers’ way around the fuzzy definition of “assault weapons” is to ban specific rifles and handguns, as well as all guns that have certain features. The now-expired federal “assault weapons” ban, enacted in the early Clinton days, put that kind of philosophy into practice. First, a laundry list of specific guns, by make and model, were deemed to be “assault weapons,” and second, any gun that had some combination of “evil features” was banned.
“That the People have a right to keep and bear Arms; that a well regulated Militia, composed of the Body of the People, trained to arms, is the proper, natural, and safe Defence of a free state.”
—George Mason
But there’s a big problem with that approach. Looking at the “evil” features targeted by assault weapon bans makes the cosmetic nature of this game completely obvious. For example, despite the almost complete lack of criminal bayoneting in this country, a mount that could accommodate a bayonet counted as a strike against a gun. Pistol grips and folding stocks—features designed to make guns easier to aim and shoot accurately and comfortably—were also deemed evil and counted as another strike. But shouldn’t the government want people to be more accurate shooters? Cumbersome guns probably lead to more stray bullets.
But don’t expect the gun-grabbers to understand what they’re banning. New York’s Carolyn McCarthy, who’s arguably the loudest anti-gun voice in Congress, was campaigning for renewal of the federal assault weapons ban when she was asked why she wanted to ban guns that had barrel shrouds. Now, McCarthy knew she wanted to ban barrel shrouds, but didn’t know why.
So what is a “barrel shroud”? Well, because gun barrels can become too hot to hold when they’re in use, a barrel shroud is a piece of vented metal or plastic that surrounds the gun barrel thereby allowing the user to hold it steady while shooting. In other words, barrel shrouds make guns safer and easier to shoot.
Of course, like most gun-grabbers, Congresswoman McCarthy didn’t seem to know any of those details. When asked, “Do you know what a barrel shroud is?” her answer was as stunningly honest as it was scary: “I actually don’t know what a barrel shroud is . . . I believe it is a shoulder thing that goes up.”
Barrel shrouds unfortunately violate the “cool-looking” test, which is why we apparently can’t have them.
Gun rights is one of those issues where a personal experience can really change your mind . . . either way. Carolyn McCarthy ran for Congress on a strict antigun platform after her husband was killed and son injured by an avowed racist on a New York commuter train.
Conversely, Ohio State Rep. Michael DeBose, who was solidly antigun, changed his mind after an encounter with two armed thugs near his home. “I was wrong,” he said. “I’m going to get a permit and so is my wife. I’ve changed my mind. You need a way to protect yourself and your family. I don’t want to hurt anyone, but I never again want to be in the position where I’m approached by someone with a gun and I don’t have one.”
Two politicians, two encounters with violent criminals, two very different reactions.
. . . that clearly doesn’t work.
The statistical games played by gun prohibitionists are more creative than Charlie Rangel’s excuses for why he didn’t follow the tax laws he was in charge of writing. For some people, believing that guns are harmful is, like global warming, an article of faith—science be damned. But more rational people who are willing to consider neutral sources (like those wild-eyed gun nuts at the National Academy of Sciences and the Centers for Disease Control) soon realize that the evidence points in a completely different direction.
In 2003, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention published a study investigating whether gun control actually works. They examined all sorts of gun laws, from bans on different firearms and types of ammunition, to licensing and registration mandates, waiting periods, laws designed to keep guns away from kids, and harsh enforcement regimes for different gun violations.
Their conclusion? Nothing seemed to work very well. A year later, the National Academy of Sciences published a comprehensive review of 253 journal articles, 99 books, and 43 government publications evaluating 80 gun-control schemes. The total number of gun laws found to reduce violent crime, suicide, or accidents?
Zero.
Good Gun News . . . from the Mainstream Media?
“Recent polls show shrinking support for new gun-control measures and strong public sentiment for enforcing existing laws instead . . . Frank Newport, editor in chief of the Gallup Poll, [said], ‘Every bit of data is showing us that Americans are getting more conservative about gun control.’”
—The Houston Chronicle
It doesn’t.
Remember the English Declaration of Rights with its right to arms? Like the rest of that Declaration, it restrains only the queen—Parliament can do whatever they want and, being that they are idiots, they wanted to take guns away. So, in 1997, they did.
Over a decade later, the results are in: the ban is a disaster. From 1998 through 2005, the number of deaths and injuries from handguns skyrocketed 340 percent.
But that statistic shouldn’t be surprising. One European study of 21 countries recently found “no significant correlations” between the number of guns in society and the corresponding suicide or homicide rates. Another study, comparing suicide and homicide data for 36 countries, including the U.S., between 1990 and 1995, reached the same conclusion. A third study, done in 2007, compared gun ownership and murder rates in almost every European country. It found that countries with more widespread gun ownership had fewer murders while countries with less gun ownership had, say it with me: more murders.
Don’t forget, England is an island, meaning it’s presumably easier to restrict what goes in and out than it would be in a country like the U.S.
There are many heroic police officers who rapidly and professionally respond to any threat—blowing away the villain or arresting the criminal and saving otherwise helpless citizens from harm.
In the movies.
In real life, as the saying goes, when seconds count, the police are only minutes away. Let me illustrate what I mean by picking just one crime-riddled, tough-on-guns city: Washington, D.C.
In 2002, almost thirty years into a gun ban (which was overturned by 2008’s landmark Supreme Court case District of Columbia v. Heller), the D.C. police force’s response time to a “Priority 1” call was 8 minutes, 25 seconds. That’s almost eight and a half minutes from the time the dispatcher has spoken with you and determined that there’s an intruder in your home to the time the first squad car arrives.
Of course, that response time assumes that (1) you actually get a chance to make the call, and (2) once you make the call, someone will answer. In 1998, a newspaper investigation discovered that nearly 90,000 callers to 911 had to wait at least 90 seconds for an answer. Another 32,000 callers either couldn’t connect at all, or got so tired of waiting that they gave up.
Things you can do in the eight and a half minutes it takes the D.C. police to respond to a Priority 1 call: Brew a pot of tea for your intruder, deal him a deck of blackjack, dance the macarena with him (twice), scan the NYT Book Review, listen to five appeals for donations from NPR, and play a game of Russian Roulette—which is exactly what you’re doing if you leave your family’s security completely up the police.
As the hysterically antigun Washington Post opined a few years ago, “The 911 system is a joke.” Four years later, antigun Councilman Jack Evans exclaimed, “People constantly say they call 911 and an officer either doesn’t respond or an officer responds late. Somewhere the system is still not working even after all the money we’ve put into this.”
The 911 problem isn’t unique to Washington, D.C. Call 911 in Nassau County, New York, and you might get a recording with some calming music. The police response time to 911 calls in New York City: 7.2 minutes; Los Angeles, 10.5 minutes; Atlanta and three neighboring counties, 11.1 minutes; Philadelphia, almost 7 minutes; St. Petersburg, Florida, just over 7 minutes. While on hold would you rather be holding a loaded handgun—or a wooden spoon?
It’s not as though there aren’t enough cops in Washington to respond. The city has the highest police officer to citizen ratio of any city in America—yet, year in and year out, it’s also the nation’s murder capital. More cops, more crime?
The city’s police force might be more effective if it had a competent leader, but former Washington, D.C., Police Chief Charles Ramsey subscribes to the “set the bar low and you’ll never be disappointed” theory of governance. In 2002, he cut his target for closing homicide cases from 65 percent down to a lowly 50.9 percent, explaining, “It’s more encouraging . . . You get these stretch goals, and when you don’t even come near it, you get hammered for it.”
But even with those laughable goals, the numbers are still fudged. If a murder occurred in a prior year and isn’t solved, it doesn’t count against them, even though it’s still very possible to find the killer. But, if by some stroke of luck, a murder that occurred in a prior year is suddenly solved, it counts toward the department’s success. They can’t lose!
If we followed this same logic in baseball, everyone could bat 1.000 all season long! The only at-bats that count would be the ones where the batter gets a hit.
What’s amazing is that, even with the fudging of prior-year numbers, the rate at which D.C. solves murders is still barely over 50 percent. And since that rate includes solved murders from prior years, the real odds of someone finding your killer the year you are murdered is very, very low.
The truth is that it’s often harder to open a business or find a parking spot in Washington, D.C., than it is to get away with murder—which is probably one big reason why there are so many of them.
A 2001 audit of D.C.’s numbers by the Office of the Inspector General revealed that the real murder-clearance rate isn’t 50 percent . . . it’s 6 percent. I’m just thinking out loud here, but maybe the reason why there is so much gun violence in D.C. is that the criminals know they’ll never get caught.
In America, you have the right to own a gun, the right to defend yourself with it, and the right to ask your assailant to sing “Kumbaya,” explore his feelings, and understand how the lack of social justice and oppressive capitalist culture forced him into bludgeoning your forehead with an axe. But the right you don’t have is the one where you ask Kevin Costner to get all “Bodyguard” with you.
Despite what you may think, you do not have a right to police protection. And, once you’re dead, nobody can sue the police for failing to protect you, no matter how incompetent they may have been.
The idea that police aren’t responsible to crime victims is well entrenched in our legal system. One of the leading cases on this point comes to us—surprise, surprise—from our nation’s capital. In March 1975, just as city officials were gearing up to ban guns, two Washington, D.C., women were awakened by the sound of their back door being broken down. Moments later, they heard their roommate’s screams downstairs as she was being raped by two thugs. They quickly called 911, who advised them to remain quiet until the police arrived.
The dispatcher called police, but didn’t tell them that the call was very important. It rated only a “code 2”—a lower priority than a crime in progress.
Four police cars responded to the call and three of them actually went to the victims’ home. The two roommates who had called the cops managed to sneak out onto the roof, where they witnessed one police car drive slowly past their house. Another officer actually got out of his car, went to the front door, and knocked. When the rapists didn’t answer the door and offer them fresh-made lemonade, the police left—they’d been there a whole five minutes.
The two women crawled back into the house. With their friend still screaming, they called the police again and were again told that help was on the way. But this time the dispatcher recorded the call only as “investigate the trouble”—and nobody ever did.
Believing that the police were on the scene, the two roommates called out to their friend. Big mistake. The rapists kidnapped all three women and brutalized them for another fourteen hours.
Given that the rapists were armed with only a knife, would it have made a difference if the women had a gun? We’ll never know.
“A militia when properly formed are in fact the people themselves . . . and include all men capable of bearing arms . . . To preserve liberty it is essential that the whole body of people always possess arms, and be taught alike, especially when young, how to use them . . . ”
—Richard Henry Lee
It’s hard to imagine how this could have turned out much worse. . . . until the women sued the police department, and lost. As horrible as all of this was, the police owed these victims nothing under the law—another reminder that the person most incentivized to keep you safe . . . is you.
It doesn’t matter if a judge has ordered the police to protect you, they still can’t be held legally responsible for failing to do so.
Jessica Gonzales suffered a rough divorce from her violent husband and obtained a nice piece of paper from the court commanding him to stay 100 yards away from the family home at all times, unless he was coming to pick up the couple’s three young daughters for a prearranged visit. The nice piece of paper also commanded the local constabulary: “You shall use every reasonable means to enforce this restraining order.” It even said they could arrest the bad guy, or seek a warrant for his arrest, if he violated or tried to violate the order.
Which piece of paper would you rather have: A piece of paper that tells violent psychos to leave you alone, or a piece of paper that lets you have a gun?
You can probably guess why this story is included in this chapter. The jerk kidnapped the children as they played outside the house. About two hours later, Jessica called the police. Two officers showed up, but told her they weren’t going to do anything and suggested she call back if the kids weren’t back by 10 PM. At 8:30 PM, Jessica called her ex-husband, who claimed to have the kids at an amusement park. She called the police back, but was again told to wait until 10 PM.
At 10:10 PM Jessica called again, but was told to wait until midnight. At 12:10 AM she was told to wait for an officer to arrive. When nobody showed up by 12:50 AM, Jessica went to the police station herself. The nice officer took a report and then went to get something to eat.
The police got one thing right: they had no need to exert themselves to find Jessica’s ex-husband. He showed up at the police station himself at 3:20 AM. Shooting. The police gunned him down, but the three little girls—Rebecca, Kathryn, and Leslie, ages 10, 9 and 7—were already dead.
It’s hard to know if a gun in Jessica Gonzales’s hands would have made matters better, but it’s hard to argue that they could have made things any worse. The police’s guns proved useful to resolve the issue with her ex-husband, if regrettably too late. But, as a legal case against the police department, the outcome was never in doubt. The Supreme Court held that Jessica had no constitutional interest in having the nice piece of paper enforced.
The great thing about guns is that almost all defensive uses of them involve an actual shooting. Most criminals aren’t looking to risk getting shot, they’re looking for an easy victim. If a potential victim is armed, that’s cool with the crooks—they’ll find some other poor sucker who isn’t. It’s a lot like installing an alarm in your home—sure, a criminal can still break in, but why bother when there are so many other homes without them?
Actual reports of successful defensive non-shootings are low (and you won’t find them in the news—nothing could bore the media more than “no shots fired”), but that doesn’t mean they aren’t out there. Social scientists studying the phenomenon disagree widely about the actual numbers, but one set of thirteen different surveys yielded results ranging from 760,000 to over 3 million defensive gun uses per year. According to another particularly well-respected survey, no shots were ever fired in over three-fourths of such defensive gun uses.
A few grassroots efforts are under way to do the job the media won’t and track defensive gun uses. You can find updates on two of them here:
www.claytoncramer.com/gundefenseblog/blogger.html
If you’re one of those statistics, I bet you probably have a pretty healthy respect for your Second Amendment rights.
Sure, if you’re attacked by Obi-Wan Kenobi and he uses some sort of Jedi mind trick to make you give up the gun, you’re in trouble. But to the folks involved in the hundreds of thousands of successful defensive gun uses each year, the Jedi mind tricks proved useless.
The science here is a little more realistic. The National Crime Victimization Survey data shows that Jedi weapon-take-away rates are, at most, one percent. And it’s not like resisting a criminal attack will somehow make the aggressor more angry. One criminological survey even concluded that the use of a gun by the victim significantly reduced the chance of being injured.
Yes, it is hard to have a gun accident without guns. It’s also hard to have a car accident in the absence of cars. And if we banned all the airplanes, they’d stop crashing, too.
The gun-hating media sensationalizes every gun accident, leading some to believe that such accidents are common. Or maybe gun accidents are heavily covered in the press because, like plane crashes, they are so exceedingly rare.
In 2005, there were 789 accidental deaths from firearms in the United States. Given our population, that means the risk of having a fatal gun accident in America was 0.30 per 100,000 people—approximately the same as the risk of dying in a plane crash or from bronchitis.
Of course, most people don’t fly or contract respiratory illnesses every day, but they do usually bathe, and that’s super-dangerous for children relative to having guns in the home. In 2003, children 14 and under suffered 56 fatal gun accidents. But that same year, 86 children drowned in bathtubs and 285 children drowned in pools in 2003.
For kids under 10 years old, the numbers are even more dramatic. As noted by economists Steven Levitt and Stephen Dubner, “The likelihood of death by pool (1 in 11,000) versus death by gun (1 in 1 million-plus) isn’t even close.”
That is complete nonsense. The causes of suicide are complex, but one aspect of this tragic phenomenon is clear: people do not take the decision to kill themselves lightly. As the World Health Organization long ago noted, “Removing an easy and favored method of suicide was not likely to affect substantially the overall suicide rate because other methods would be chosen.” Shooting is an effective method of suicide, but it is not significantly more effective than hanging, asphyxiation by car exhaust, or overdosing on pills.
If guns cause suicide then Americans should be killing themselves at much higher rates than do people in other countries. But they’re not. For an industrialized nation, America has an average rate of suicide. Obviously, the more guns there are, the more suicide-by-gun incidents there will be—but that doesn’t mean that guns increase the suicide rate. In countries where guns are less available, people simply kill themselves in other ways, often at far greater rates than we see here in the “gun-filled” U.S.A.
The Japanese experience debunks the notion that more guns lead to more suicide. Gun-grabbers point to Japan as an example of a more-peaceful, relatively gun-free nation, where gun-related homicide is almost unknown. But while the Japanese may not be shooting each other, they’re spending plenty of time harming themselves. Japan’s suicide rate is more than double America’s. In fact, the Japanese suicide rate actually exceeds the rates of suicide and homicide in gun-crazy America, combined.
Of course, none of that means that guns are safe in the hands of suicidal people. They’re not. And neither are pills, razors, booze bottles, ropes, hibachi grills, or the collected works of Nancy Pelosi. Yet, in a free country, we don’t ban things simply because they might help you to kill yourself. And remember, despite all of the arguments continually recited by all of your Idiot Friends, we are still a free country.
Given all of those suicides, Japan must be a pretty terrible place to live, right? What makes it that way? I don’t know, but it’s not all of the guns they don’t have.
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