Posted on 05/21/2005 10:42:38 PM PDT by Dan from Michigan
CSGV: GUN CULTURE THREATENS DEMOCRACY
Op-Ed Challenges "Guns Equal Freedom" Formula
Gun lobby threatens our very way of life
The price extracted by guns is simply too high
By JOSH HORWITZ
SPECIAL TO THE REVIEW-JOURNAL
When the National Rifle Association's top lobbyist, Wayne LaPierre, addresses the crowd at "FreedomFest 2005" at the Bally's/Paris Resort in Las Vegas today, he will be preaching a message that has served his organization well: guns equal freedom.
As LaPierre puts it, "The Second Amendment is the fulcrum of freedom in our nation, because freedom and the Second Amendment are mutually interdependent. They are the 'chicken and the egg;' neither can exist without the other."
LaPierre can expect a friendly reception from the right wing activists at FreedomFest. Aggressive support for gun rights provokes none of the intramural squabbling that sometimes threatens to divide social conservatives and their libertarian allies in the GOP.
By framing the gun debate as a choice between protecting liberty and the illusion of safety, the gun lobby has painted itself as a defender of basic American values.
Too often, gun control advocates walk into the trap and concede that values like democracy and independence must be sacrificed to fight gun crime.
"At what point will Americans agree that the price exacted by guns -- the gun lobby's 'price of freedom' -- is simply too high?" asks Josh Sugarmann of the Violence Policy Center.
This formulation is not smart politics, because Americans rightly treasure freedom. More importantly, it fails to hold LaPierre and the gun lobby accountable for a philosophy that is at odds with freedom and the institutions that support it.
The most recent example of the tension came last month, when Florida Gov. Jeb Bush signed a bill that allows people to use deadly force -- including guns -- when faced with a violent threat, even when a confrontation could be avoided by simply walking away. The new law goes far beyond self-defense, which was already a well-established right in Florida, to invite vigilantes to substitute their judgment for the judicial system.
David Kopel, a leading gun rights theorist, acknowledges the potential tension between an expansive right of self defense like the one embodied in the new Florida statute and the rule of law, but dismisses the concern out of hand, arguing that "people's taking the law into their own hands has always been a core principle of the American legal system, and the American attitude toward guns is simply one manifestation of that principle."
This warped conception of popular sovereignty is at the root of the most egregious anti- democratic proposition advanced by the gun lobby: that citizens need to arm themselves to safeguard political liberties against threats by the government.
Kopel has called guns "the tools of political dissent," and LaPierre wrote in 1994 that "the people have a right, must have a right, to take whatever measures necessary, including force, to abolish oppressive government."
As famed legal scholar Roscoe Pound observed, however, "A legal right of the citizen to wage war on the government is something that cannot be admitted. ... [because] bearing arms today is a very different thing from what it was in the days of the embattled farmers who withstood the British in 1775. In the urban industrial society of today a general right to bear arms so as to be able to resist oppression by the Government would mean that gangs could defeat the whole Bill of Rights."
The standoffs at Ruby Ridge and Waco -- often cited as proof that the government can and does abuse its power -- illustrate why armed resistance is a dead end. Randy Weaver and David Koresh may have had good reasons to distrust the government, but they had no right to use private arsenals to keep the police at bay. Our system includes democratic safeguards, such as juries, that do not rely on the private force of arms.
After the Oklahoma City bombing, the gun lobby toned down its rhetoric, casting an armed citizenry as a deterrent to oppression rather than a potential rebel force against a democratic government. "The Second Amendment is America's first freedom because it is the one right that protects all the others," LaPierre says.
This argument sounds reasonable but is no different in substance that what gun rights absolutists were saying before Oklahoma City. If they believe in the right to take up arms to resist government policies they consider oppressive, even when these policies have been adopted by elected officials and subjected to review by an independent judiciary, then they are opposed to constitutional democracy.
When LaPierre talks about guns and freedom, he wraps himself in a flag that the NRA is simultaneously ripping to shreds. Protecting vigilantes from criminal prosecution and urging citizens to stockpile weapons for a showdown with the government are more than just threats to public safety -- they are threats to our democracy and our way of life.
"Florida eliminated it's "requirement to run" law, and I believe adapted Texas law that says basically that any legally armed citizen is not required to run. If you feel that your life is being threatened, you can use deadly force, and this has not caused any problems in Texas."
Except for the criminals. They always have problems with this. Which explains why crime in the Dem-controlled cities is up (where they're pushing their usual agendas) while the predominantly Republican suburbs, exurbs, and rural areas have some of the lowest crime rates in the US because gun ownership and use is highly encouraged by society.
Thanks for the graphics... 3:54 am and I need a good drunk.
Keep up the good fight.
You would have situations like the government confiscating a factory and giving it to "the people" (whatever that means). They would arrest the factory owner and if he resisted, they would shoot him. And the worker bees would not fare much better. Can you imagine someone trying to form a union, which would undoubetedly be against the law because "the people" own the means of production and a union is thus not necessary. Such a troublemaker would be re-educated with a bullet. Likewise, armed agents of the government would protect "society" against dangerous ideas and banned books.
The socialist leaders understand this, which is why they want citizens disarmed. Their useful idiots don't want to understand this, which is why they pretend to be such pacifists -- they are trying to convince themselves of their own purity. But their true nature shows through sometimes, like when they cheer some dictator who sets up concentration camps in his "people's republic," or when the useful idiots say they hope such and such a person is assassinated because he is rich, or conservative, or a Christian, or a "Zionist," or whatever. A total state without violence is as possible as a forest fire without flames.
Teddy needs less sloppy speechwriters -
I'd say, on the contrary, that too many here are stepping into it. It is not proven truth, that an armed citizenry will prevent the imposition of socialism. As Jefferson put it, mankind are more disposed to suffer, while evils are sufferable. We have been suffering a lot of socialism over the past 70 years or so. We seem to be, as a people, more disposed than ever to suffer. The evils are more flagrant than ever, and the law-abiding people always consider which is worse, to resort to arms or to suffer yet another evil, and they always choose the latter.
One day, we RKBA fire-eaters will be as scarce as centenarians---perhaps we will be centenarians---and the government will bide its time until the last one expires. Or maybe the government will slowly marginalize us, maneuver us, indoctrinate our grandchildren against us, and one sorry day, just quietly and efficiently round us up and send us to the showers.
Call me a pessimist but I do believe that is possible, and gun possession is no guarantee of liberty in this metal-detector society. Guns don't protect; people do. It remains to be seen how many people feel how strongly about armed resistance to slow-cooked tyranny.
"Step this way, please."
Those were tactical defeats, but moral and strategic victories, for the cause of freedom and gun rights. Government types sometimes forget that these are liberties jealously guarded by millions of people. Waco was a bracing reminder that there are limits to what government can foist on the people in this country. The scrutiny the FBI and BATF endured afterwards will be long remembered by those in charge.
If they believe in the right to take up arms to resist government policies they consider oppressive, even when these policies have been adopted by elected officials and subjected to review by an independent judiciary, then they are opposed to constitutional democracy.
Straw man! Nobody I know ever argues that this is the case. Armed resistance is for when constitutional democracy is usurped.
-ccm
I never heard of this clown. It is obvious he has not read the Constitution of the State of New Hampshire.
Part I, Article 10: [Right of Revolution.] Government being instituted for the common benefit, protection, and security, of the whole community, and not for the private interest or emolument of any one man, family, or class of men; therefore, whenever the ends of government are perverted, and public liberty manifestly endangered, and all other means of redress are ineffectual, the people may, and of right ought to reform the old, or establish a new government. The doctrine of nonresistance against arbitrary power, and oppression, is absurd, slavish, and destructive of the good and happiness of mankind.
June 2, 1784
This is bourgeois to bourgeois scarifying tactic.Stick to your guns,the ones who don't will be fried,despite the implicit threat.As Christ said:if you have money,give it all away,and sell your coat to buy a sword.
bttt
I hadn't noticed this fixation on gangs, but it doesn't surprise me. That's been their modus operandi -- get the MSM bellowing about something, and then try to start a legislative push based on the manufactured hullabaloo.
Read later.
"Guns equal freedom"....what else needs to be said?...no one will ever consider invading your abode if they even think you have a weapon...believe me, it's true.
Hooo Raah!!
Yes, I would like to see some of these hoplophobes demonstrate their conviction and their devotion to the gun-grabbing cause by affixing some nice big signs to their home that read along the lines of "No Guns Here and Proud of It!" or "Gun-free and Proud of It!" or "No Gun Zone".
So far, I have not seen any gun-grabbers so zealous, but I am sure that there must be some.
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