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Gun Ownership ? Are We Fit to Be Free?
NewsMax.com ^
| Wednesday, Dec. 19, 2001
| Phil Brennan
Posted on 12/19/2001 7:22:27 AM PST by Israel
Gun Ownership -- Are We Fit to Be Free?
Phil Brennan
Wednesday, Dec. 19, 2001
It happened again. Some poor guy caught in a love
triangle he couldn't handle went berserk and shot a
number of co-workers before killing himself.
These things are happening more and more frequently,
the list of victims continues to grow, and much of the
blame for the deaths and woundings can be laid
squarely at the doors of the nation's rabid anti-gun
zealots.
If that sounds harsh, keep in mind the fact that in every
single instance of mass shootings, the victims were all
defenseless, largely because anti-gun laws and
irrational anti-gun sentiments kept victims and
bystanders from having weapons that could have been
used to stop the killers in their tracks.
That could have been true at Columbine high school
where, had just one teacher had a concealed handgun
kept to protect his students, the killing spree could have
been ended and the list of victims sharply diminished.
In every single case, by the time police arrived on the
scene the damage had been done, dramatically
underscoring the fact that Americans cannot rely on the
police to protect them in such circumstances. As a result,
laws banning or prohibitively restricting citizen gun
ownership are putting Americans at the mercy of
murderous crackpots and felons.
Had pilots on the three hijacked planes on Black
Tuesday been armed, there is every chance that the
twin towers at the World Trade center would still be
standing, the Pentagon would be intact, and thousands
of innocent victims would still be among us, alive to
celebrate Christmas with their loved ones.
That they aren't is largely the fault of the fascistic
anti-gun fanatics who have used dishonest statistics and
outright lies to blame firearms, and not those who
criminally use them, in order to create a national distaste
for firearms. Gun Control Studies
A February 2000 study by acclaimed researchers John
R. Lott Jr. and William M. Landes concludes that "the
only policy factor to influence multiple victim public
shootings is the passage of concealed handgun laws."
The study conclusively shows that such crime deterrents
as more police and wider use of the death penalty tend
to curb "normal" instances of murder. They do nothing,
however, to prevent such school shooting tragedies as
have occurred in a number of the nation's public schools
since 1997.
To support their insistence that the availability of guns in
or near public schools prevented more death and injury,
Lott and Landes cited a number of examples, including
the following:
In the Pearl, Miss., shooting, an assistant principal
retrieved his gun from his office and used it to physically
immobilize the shooter before he caused additional
harm.
In an Edinboro, Penn., shooting, which left one teacher
dead, "a shotgun pointed at the offender while he was
reloading his gun prevented additional harm. The police
did not arrive for another 10 minutes" after the assailant
was apprehended by school staff.
According to Lott, far and away the best-informed
scholar on the subject, "in the U.S., the states with the
highest gun ownership rates have by far the lowest
violent crime rates. And similarly, over time, states with
the largest increases in gun ownership have
experienced the biggest drops in violent crime."
"Research by Jeff Miron at Boston University, examining
homicide rates across 44 countries, found that countries
with the strictest gun control laws also tended to have
the highest homicide rates," Lott wrote.
News reports in Britain showed how crimes with guns
have risen 40 percent since handguns were banned in
1997. Police are extremely important in stopping crime,
but almost always arrive on the scene after the crime
occurs. Passive behavior is much more likely to result in
serious injury or death than using a gun to defend
oneself. The only serious research on this issue has
been conducted in the United States.
"The National Crime Victimization Report, done by the
U.S. Department of Justice, indicates consistently that
women who behave passively are 2.5 times more likely
to be seriously injured than women who defend
themselves with a gun. It is the physically weakest
people (women and the elderly) who benefit the most
from having a gun.
"Criminals, overwhelmingly young males, like to attack
the targets that will give them the least trouble. A gun
represents a great equalizer. Defensive gun uses are
almost completely ignored by the media, but Americans
use guns defensively about two million times a year, five
times more often than guns are used to commit crimes." Media's Role
Lott takes aim at the media, pointing the finger of blame
for the disinformation that abounds about gun ownership
directly at those who report the news.
"No one would ever learn this by simply watching the
news. In part this disregard by the media might arise
because an innocent person's murder is more
newsworthy than when a victim brandishes a gun and an
attacker runs away with no crime committed.
"Unlike the crimes that are avoided, bad events provide
emotionally gripping pictures. But covering only the bad
events creates the impression that guns only cost lives.
Even the rare local media coverage of defensive gun
use seldom involves more than very brief stories. News
worthiness also dictates that these stories are not the
typical examples of self-defense, but the rare instances
where the attacker is shot. In fact, in up to 98 percent of
the cases, simply brandishing a gun is sufficient to stop
a crime.
"Fewer than one out of 1,000 defensive gun uses results
in the attacker's death. Worldwide we hear about crimes
like the public-school shootings, as we should, but we
never even hear locally about the many more lives
saved. Since the well-known public shootings started in
the fall of 1997, 32 students and four teachers have
been killed in any type of shooting at elementary or
secondary schools, an annual rate of one death per 4
million students. This includes deaths from gang fights,
robberies, accidents, as well as attacks such as the one
at Columbine.
"But some sense of proportion is needed. During that
same period, 53 students died playing high school
football."
Shall we ban high school football? Concealed-Carry Laws and Crime Reduction
Noting that he analyzed the FBI's crime statistics for all
U.S. counties by year from 1977 to 1996 as well as
extensive cross-county information on accidental gun
deaths and suicides, Lott explained that his study
examined states that adopted so-called "objective" or
shall-issue concealed handgun laws. Thirty-one states,
he wrote, "now have shall-issue laws, while another 12
permit citizens to carry guns if they can demonstrate a
need to public officials."
The findings of the study, he said, were dramatic. The
more people obtain permits over time, the more violent
crime rates decline. For each additional year that these
laws are in effect, murders declined.
"Giving law-abiding adults the right to carry concealed
handguns had a dramatic impact. Thirty-one states now
provide such a right under law. When states passed
right-to-carry laws, the number of multiple-victim public
shootings plummeted below one-fifth, with an even
greater decline in deaths. To the extent attacks still
occur in states after enactment of these laws, such
shootings tend to occur in those areas in which
concealed handguns are forbidden. The drop in attacks
in states adopting right-to-carry laws has been offset by
increases in states without these laws."
He cites the following incidents where citizen gun
ownership proved decisive:
Clearwater, Fla.: At 1:05 a.m., a man started banging on
a patio door, briefly left to beat on the family's truck, but
returned and tore open the patio door. At that point, after
numerous shouts not to break into the home, a
16-year-old boy fired a single rifle shot, wounding the
attacker.
Columbia, S.C.: As two gas station employees left work
just after midnight, two men attempted to rob them. The
sheriff told a local television station: "Two men came out
of the bushes, one of the men had a shovel handle that
had been broken off and began to beat [the male
employee] ... about the head, neck and then the arms."
The male employee broke away long enough to draw a
handgun from his pocket and wound his attacker, who
later died. The second suspect, turned in by relatives,
faces armed robbery and possible murder charges.
Detroit: A mentally disturbed man yelled that the
president was going to have him killed and started firing
at people in passing cars. A man at the scene, who had
a permit to carry a concealed handgun, fired shots that
forced the attacker to stop shooting and run away. The
attacker barricaded himself in an empty apartment, fired
at police and ultimately committed suicide.
West Palm Beach, Fla.: After being beaten during a
robbery at his home just two days earlier, a homeowner
began carrying a handgun in his pocket. When another
robber attacked him, the homeowner shot and wounded
his assailant.
Grand Junction, Colo.: On his way home from work, a
contractor picked up three young hitchhikers. He fixed
them a steak dinner at his house and was preparing to
offer them jobs. Two of the men grabbed his kitchen
knives and started stabbing him in the back, head and
hands. The attackers stopped only when he told them
that he could give them money. Instead of money, the
contractor grabbed a pistol and shot one of the
attackers. The contractor said, "If I'd had a trigger lock,
I'd be dead."
Columbia Falls, Mont.: An ex-boyfriend is accused of
entering a woman's home and sexually assaulting her.
She got away long enough to get her handgun and hold
her attacker at gunpoint until police arrived.
Salt Lake City: Two robbers began firing their guns as
soon as they entered a pawn shop. The owner and his
son returned fire. One of the robbers was shot in the
arm; both later were arrested. The shop owner's
statement said it all: "If we did not have our guns, we
would have had several people dead here."
Baton Rouge, La.: At 5:45 a.m., a crack addict kicked in
the back door of a house and entered. The attacker was
fatally shot as he charged toward the homeowner.
What advice would gun control advocates have given
these victims? Should they have behaved passively?
Unfortunately, by making it difficult for law-abiding
people to get the most effective tool to defend
themselves, gun control often puts victims' lives in
jeopardy.
On the other side of the coin, gun control has proved
deadly, as is the case in England where under the
Firearms Act of 1997 all handguns and most rifles were
outlawed and confiscated.
Wrote Richard Poe in his best-selling book, "The Seven
Myths of Gun Control":
"What happened next is something most Americans
know nothing about because the press has not reported
it in this country. A terrifying crime wave swept England.
Stripped of the ability to defend themselves, Britons
were left helpless against criminal attacks. And the
criminals knew it. Their attacks grew bolder, as well as
more frequent."
To prove how true is the old adage "If guns are outlawed
only outlaws will have guns," Poe reports that "Between
April and September 2000, street crime in London rose
32 percent over the same period in 1999." Lies and Progaganda
Aside from keeping such vital information from their
fellow Americans, the mainstream U.S. media have
shamefully promoted anti-gun propaganda and lies.
Take, for example, Professor Michael Bellesiles' book in
which the author claims that the idea of a well-armed
America in revolutionary times and afterward was a
myth.
As NewsMax reported at the time: "Frenzied
anti-self-defense zealots hailed his book as proof that
colonial Americans owned few guns and that the idea of
a nation of well-armed citizens was a myth, and he won
a prestigious award for his rooting out the truth about
guns in early America. But new research indicates that in
many instances historian Michael A. Bellesiles simply
twisted the facts to fit his own agenda.
"In a blockbuster exposé published in the Boston Globe,
much of Bellesiles' book ''Arming America: The Origins of
a National Gun Culture'' was called into question.
"According to Bellesiles, he examined more than 11,000
probate records of more than 1,200 counties, counting
the number of guns listed in probate inventories. He
wrote that he learned that between 1765 and 1821, no
more than 17 percent of the inventories listed guns. He
claimed that the rate of gun ownership was even lower
in the 1760-1795 period ? a mere 14 percent, he said.
"[O]ver half of these guns were listed as broken. ... "
According to a Dec. 9 story in the New York Times,
"Emory University professor Michael Bellesiles, whose
book "Arming America: The Origins of the National Gun
Culture" caused a sensation with Second Amendment
foes last year with its claims that gun ownership in the
U.S. was "an invented tradition," may have perpetrated
what the Times described as "one of the worst academic
scandals in years."
According to the Times, scholars who examined
Bellesiles' data were unable to substantiate his claim
that 11,000-plus probate records from 40 counties in
colonial America showed that fewer than 7 percent
actually owned working guns. Those scholars who tried
to corroborate the book's sensational findings were
stunned by "an astonishing number of serious errors,"
the Times reported. "almost all of them intended to
support [Bellesiles'] thesis."
"In some cases his numbers were off by a factor of two
or three or more," Randolph Roth, a history professor at
Ohio State University, told the Times.
"The number and scope of the errors in Bellesiles' work
are extraordinary," Roth told the Times, saying they
include "misinterpretation of militia returns, literary
documents and data from many other sources."
The academics who studied Bellesiles' contentions
found that his book was filled with blatant
misrepresentations.
For example, Bellesiles told one critic that he'd managed
to obtain detailed probate records from the 1850s from
the San Francisco Superior Court. But the courthouse
said all probate data from that decade had been
destroyed in the great earthquake of 1906.
"[The San Francisco records] were not available in two
other Bay area libraries, either," the Times said. "Mr.
Bellesiles now says he must have done the research
somewhere else and cannot remember where."
"Arming America" won Columbia University's prestigious
Bancroft Prize in American History and Diplomacy.
Before the book's rampant errors were discovered, legal
scholars had said Bellesiles' work could impact on
several court challenges to Second Amendment
protections.
Despite this obvious fraud, the U.S media have failed to
apologize for initially giving the book such wide publicity
and praise. The Second Amendment
Finally, the gun control nuts and their socialist allies in
the media have sought to distort the meaning of the
Second Amendment's provisions which guarantee the
right of the citizens to bear arms, even though the intent
of those who wrote the Bill of Rights is crystal clear.
Wrote Patrick Henry, for example, "The great object is
that every man be armed. ..."
Then there was Richard Henry Lee, who said, "To
preserve liberty it is essential that the whole body of the
people always possess arms, and be taught alike,
especially when young, how to use them."
In his book, Richard Poe cited a speech in the House
during the debates concerning adoption of the Bill of
Rights that sets out the clear meaning of the Second
Amendment:
"As civil rulers, not having their duty to the people duly
before them, may attempt to tyrannize, and as the
military forces which must occasionally be raised to
defend our country, might pervert their power to the
injury of their fellow citizens, the people are confirmed by
the next article in their right to keep and bear their
private arms."
Poe explores the history of the militia concept, showing
how it applied, for example, in the case of the
Minutemen, armed citizens who formed the backbone of
the colonial forces who won our liberty. After the
American Revolution it was understood that the militia ?
specifically consisting of men between the ages of 16
and 60 ? constituted the force that would prevent the
new government from becoming a tyranny.
Said Noah Webster, "The supreme power in America
cannot enforce unjust laws by the sword because the
body of the people are armed. ..."
During the debates about the adoption of the Bill of
Rights, delegate members of the Anti-Federalist forces
demanded that the 10 amendments include one that
would guarantee the right, as Patrick Henry put it, "that
every man be armed. ..."
The result was the Second Amendment, and its meaning
was as clear as a bell: All Americans have the right to
keep and bear arms. All Americans!
We live in dangerous times. The threats we face are
more numerous than merely those posed by Al-Qaeda
and other terrorists groups. We live in a society where
hordes of conscienceless criminals are armed. Not a
single gun control measure has changed that fact. They
have instead restricted gun ownership by honest
Americans.
In short, these laws have allowed the outlaws to have
guns while depriving honest Americans of their Second
Amendment right of self-defense.
Sure, there are dangers inherent in widespread gun
ownership. Accidents will happen. Some people will do
stupid things with their guns. Some people are simply
unfit to own weapons.
There are dangers inherent in widespread ownership of
automobiles. Accidents will happen. Some people will do
stupid things behind the wheels of their cars. Some
people are unfit to own cars.
Let's ban autos. After all, they kill tens of thousands of
Americans every year ? far more than are killed in
firearms accidents.
Citizen gun ownership is a feature of a free society. We
are either fit to be free or we are not.
***
Phil Brennan is a veteran journalist who writes for
NewsMax.com. He is editor & publisher of Wednesday
on the Web (http://www.pvbr.com) and was Washington
columnist for National Review magazine in the 1960s.
He also served as a staff aide for the House Republican
Policy Committee and helped handle the Washington
public relations operation for the Alaska Statehood
Committee which won statehood for Alaska.
He can be reached at pvb@pvbr.com
Read more on this subject in related Hot Topics:
Guns/Gun Control
TOPICS: Constitution/Conservatism; News/Current Events
KEYWORDS: banglist
When are arms to be used?
You are not fit to be free if you are not willing to shoot a tyrant. How long do you wait? If the tyrant runs your schools and indoctrinates the next generation, what point is there in waiting? 10 years, 20 years? It takes less than 10 years for their indoctrination to begin to affect society. How do you "change" when the momentum is against you? Elections? In 20 years muslims will dominate politics, will wimpy Americans cross a muslim? Who is the enemy? The ones teaching false doctrine and the entire organizational structure that supports it. Is that the public school (temple), the arrogant school board, the compliant legislature, and the various special interest groups that control them? Even if you win an election, why should they not be punished for damages? And if you win, and they say "no", what then?
1
posted on
12/19/2001 7:22:27 AM PST
by
Israel
To: Israel; bang_list
The gun grabboids do not want an end to violence they want power unlimited power and will use whatever violence is necessary to their goal.
Stay well - Stay safe - Stay armed - Yorktown
2
posted on
12/19/2001 7:36:12 AM PST
by
harpseal
To: Israel
You are not fit to be free if you are not willing to shoot a tyrant. How long do you wait? If the tyrant runs your schools and indoctrinates the next generation, what point is there in waiting? Your right and thank you Isreal for your words of wisdom. I am currently cleaning my shotgun so I can take care of my sons kindergarden teacher! Its good that you have adopted the John Wilkes Booth approach to changing things with firepower for the things and people you don't like. Where were you for the last 8 years? Maybe you weren't fit to be free at that time huh!
3
posted on
12/19/2001 7:53:21 AM PST
by
Bommer
To: Israel
BTTT
4
posted on
12/19/2001 8:14:10 AM PST
by
Gritty
To: Israel
Second Amendment Sisters Bump
Self Defense is a basic human right.
To: .30Carbine
There are dangers inherent in widespread ownership of automobiles. Accidents will happen. Some people will do stupid things behind the wheels of their cars. Some people are unfit to own cars.Some?
Some?
Anyway, 2nd Ammendment BUMP!
MOLON LABE!
6
posted on
12/19/2001 10:40:52 AM PST
by
TigersEye
To: harpseal; Israel; M1991; cdwright; mbb bill; ctdonath2; Zoey; kristinn; Rebeckie; Lucky...
"
much of the blame for the deaths and woundings can be laid squarely at the doors of the nation's rabid anti-gun zealots."
ALL, "Gun control laws KILL". The innocent citizens who obey laws, NOT the criminals who by definition do NOT obey laws. Peace and love, George.
To: George Frm Br00klyn Park
To: George Frm Br00klyn Park
bttt
To: TigersEye
We live in dangerous times.I can't think of a single man whom I would rather have leading me through these difficult days. Thanks for the bump, for all your research and preparedness, for your Constitutional patriotism and for your wisdom.
TigersEye and .30Carbine in chorus: "MOLON LABE!"
To: Israel
11
posted on
12/20/2001 2:38:28 AM PST
by
backhoe
To: backhoe
Good post! It's a shame the 1 out of 1,000 statistic isn't more like 500 out of 1,000. Less criminals, less crime.
To: Bommer
My daughter's kindergarten teacher would shoot back, as would several students in the school. Dead Bummer.
To: harpseal
I find it hysterical that the "gun safety" (their new term for themselves) proponents have never offered a single class on the safe use, handling, and storage of a firearm. Been pointing that out to them of late. They need to start calling themselves the "gun registration and confiscation" movement.
And the basic tenet is still true and unrefuted:
Guns don't kill people: People kill people!
Comment #15 Removed by Moderator
To: George Frm Br00klyn Park
BUMP!!!
To: CWRWinger
Thanks for looking... feel free to copy & pass on any of those links.
17
posted on
12/20/2001 4:54:19 AM PST
by
backhoe
To: John R. (Bob) Locke
The VPC wouldn't know enough about gun safety to criticise a person for pointing a firearm at another.
Stay well - Stay safe- Stay armed - yorktown
18
posted on
12/20/2001 6:02:10 AM PST
by
harpseal
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