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The following article is reprinted by permission from the
Los Angeles Times of June 8, 1992. Reproduction on
computer bulletin boards is permitted for informational
purposes only. Copyright (c) 1992 by the Los Angeles
Times. All other rights reserved.
[Note: the following text is drawn from the original
manuscript; there are insignificant changes in the
published version. -- JNS]
JOINING FORCES AGAINST A COMMON FOE
by J. Neil Schulman
There are about 200 million guns in America in the
hands of about 60 million Americans. The sale of guns
nationwide following the Los Angeles riots has reached
record levels, many of them to first-time buyers. Firearms
training classes are filled to capacity. The National
Rifle Association currently has 2.8 million members -- ten
times the membership of the American Civil Liberties Union
-- and expects to exceed 3 million by the end of 1992.
Both advocates of gun control and advocates of gun
rights agree that there is an epidemic problem with the
criminal use of guns in America. But every time a gun-
control advocate points to the latest atrocity committed
with a firearm, the gun-rights advocate will surely ask:
why was there no armed citizen who could have tried to stop
the criminal?
The difference between the advocate of gun control and
the advocate of gun rights lies in a perception of the
cause of the criminal use of a gun. Those who advocate gun
control think the cause is wide and easy availability of
guns. The advocates of gun rights think the cause is a
legal system which leaves criminals free to prey on a
public which is socially discouraged, and often legally
forbidden, from using guns for personal defense.
The war over gun control is fought with news reports.
Advocates of gun control have no shortage of reports that
prove guns in the hands of criminals are a plague on our
society. Advocates of gun rights find, however, that the
use of firearms to prevent or stop a crime is often left
unreported by media which are worried that reporting gun
defenses will encourage irresponsible vigilantism.
The war over gun control is fought with statistics.
The number of gun attacks in the United States is easy to
compile: just count up the thousands of bodies in the
morgues, and the hundreds of thousands of gunshot victims
treated in hospitals. The number of times a gun is used for
defense, however, has a built-in problem: the use of a
firearm to deter, prevent, or stop an attack is unrecorded,
overwhelmingly because the defense was accomplished without
pulling the trigger, and less often, because the person
using the gun for self-defense was legally forbidden to be
in possession of it at that time or place, and thus did not
report it.
The war over gun control is fought with historical
debates about the intent of the Second Amendment. Those
who advocate gun control say the Second Amendment has no
Supreme Court ruling which defines the Second Amendment as
protecting an individual right of the citizenry to keep and
bear arms for personal defense. Those who advocate gun
rights say that the intent of the authors of the Second
Amendment, and the Fourteenth Amendment which would apply
it to the states, is indisputable, and it is a politicized
Supreme Court which does not have the courage to enforce
it.
It's likely that the only other issue with such
polarized and deeply felt world views is abortion. Oddly,
those who advocate the right of choice on abortion are
often the same people advocating eliminating the right to
choose firearms as a defensive option.
It's also likely that a final Supreme Court ruling on
the Second Amendment would fail to end the issue. A ruling
in favor of an individual rights interpretation of the
Second Amendment would probably coalesce gun-control
advocates into a movement to repeal the amendment. A
ruling against an individual rights interpretation of the
Second Amendment would alienate and radicalize the millions
of Americans who believe in that right as firmly as the
advocates of abortion rights believe in theirs.
As long as the advocates of gun control write laws and
court rulings that abridge the right of private citizens to
buy, own, and carry the firearms they feel are theirs by
right to have for defensive and sporting use, gun owners
will continue to be alienated and radicalized, and become
more and more willing to engage in civil disobedience
against such abridgements.
Advocates of gun control need to realize that passing
laws that honest gun owners will not obey is a self-
defeating strategy. Gun owners are not about to surrender
their rights or their guns, and only the most foolish of
politicians would risk the stability of the government by
trying to use the force of the State to disarm the people.
If gun-control advocates do not acknowledge the right
of the people to keep and bear arms for individual and
civic defense before they attempt to remove guns from the
hands of those who abuse them, then sensible gun laws will
be out of reach, and the criminal plague of gun victimizing
will continue.
Can't advocates of gun control see the advantage
of recruiting gun-rights advocates to a joint cause of
eliminating gun tragedies? We can all agree that guns
need to be kept out of the hands of the violent criminal
and the lunatic. We can agree that the solution to gun
accidents is safety training. We can agree that those who
own and carry firearms for protection must take
responsibility for knowing how to use them safely and
appropriately.
Surely, instead of fighting one another, we can join
forces to fight our common enemy: the armed criminal?
#
J. Neil Schulman is a writer, hosts a radio program on the
American Radio Network, and is founder and chair of the
Committee to Enforce the Second Amendment.