"Safety" is not even worthy of our consideration as an issue

"Safety" is not even worthy of our consideration as an issue

By Jeff Snyder

On April 18, the Violence Policy Center released a report, "Where'd They Get Their Guns?: An Analysis of the Firearms Used in High-Profile Shootings, 1963-2001" (vpc.org/graphics/where.pdf). The report surveys firearm information (including how the firearm was acquired) relating to 65 "high-profile" shootings, most of which (59) occurred from 1980 onward.

In the report's conclusion, the VPC claims that "specific firearm design characteristics— concealability, high capacity and large caliber, among others— make certain guns more prone to use in multiple shootings." The report concludes with an endorsement for "The Firearms Safety and Consumer Protection Act" (H.R. 671 and S. 330) to end "the firearms industry's deadly exemption from health and safety regulation," by empowering the Department of Treasury "to set minimum safety and design standards… and ban specific firearms in extreme cases when no other remedy is sufficient."

I cite the VPC report not in order to take issue with its data or claim, but because it so nicely exhibits, and seeks to exploit, the reigning value of our time: safety.

Curiously, safety was not deemed to be Man's Highest Value, nor its creation Government's Principal Service, by the Founding Fathers. In fact, the Constitution doesn't even list health, education or welfare among the 17 subjects which Congress has a power to legislate (Article I, Clause 8 of the U.S. Constitution).

Further, not even one of the amendments that make up the Bill of Rights includes any exception for safety. You will not read there that Congress shall make no law abridging the freedom of the press— except as may be necessary for public safety.

No where does it say that the right of the people to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed— except as may be necessary for protecting the public.

Careful reading won't uncover this: that each man shall be free from unreasonable searches and seizures— unless we would really be more safe if we were subject to continuous public surveillance.

Why is that? Did the Founders simply not care if innocent lives were lost for no good reason? Were they heartless, unfeeling brutes? Maybe the Founders just didn't care about the children!

Did the idea just never occur to them that, by creating some exceptions to rights in the interest of public safety, it might be possible to prevent crime, rather than simply punishing criminals after the fact, when it was too late?

Apparently the Founders did understand the concept, but rejected it as the principal object of good government. Benjamin Franklin said, "They that can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety." [Historical Review of Pennsylvania, 1759.]

This is more than rejection; this is contempt for those who crave safety. What twisted world view could these men have shared that would lead them to conclude that liberty was more important than safety?

I know of no detailed examination of the relationship of liberty and safety in the writings of the Founders. All we have are aphorisms like Franklin's, or Thomas Jefferson's translation of Beccaria's observations on false ideas of utility that "…would take fire from men because it burns, and water because one may drown in it."

Possibly, to the Founders, the idea that anyone could think safety preferable to liberty was so craven, so repugnant, that it was, for the most part, unthinkable and unworthy of comment. Sadly, it has fallen to our lot to consider this, because we are not the men the Founders were: what was repugnant to them has become precisely that which allures us.

In safety vs. liberty, we have a way to take the measure of the distance of ourselves from the Founders. I will make a start with two observations, one psychological, and one philosophical.

First, it is noteworthy that safety nowadays is viewed as something that is provided and delivered, which inheres in the structure of, and is created by controlling, external reality (i.e., banning guns). The citizenry views themselves as consumers of public safety; they expect to have a safe world created for them and delivered to them.

As such, the pursuit of "safety" as a principal goal of government indicates an essential, if not pathological, passivity in the citizenry, indicating that they view themselves as "recipients," and not actors, even in a matter that concerns the preservation of their very lives.

Such a world outlook can arise only in one who has abandoned the idea that his safety is his responsibility, for if he produces it himself, and it is his responsibility, he does not believe it is to be created for or provided to him by others, who are supposed to arrange external reality for him to make it nonthreatening.

His safety is in himself, not in external reality, and certainly not in an illusion that external reality has been rendered safe by the work of police enforcing paper decrees (i.e., guns are banned so I need not worry about being hurt by guns).

Those who view themselves as source and producer of their safety will be concerned foremost with their liberty, for that is the condition needed for them to act and to fulfill their responsibility.

Second, we may view the matter from the perspective of political philosophy. The Founders were schooled in the principles of the common law. As such, they would have believed that the purpose of the criminal law was to provide justice: to avenge or requite wrongs.

Justice can be rendered only after the fact. Since it is unjust to punish someone who has not actually done anything wrong, justice must wait until someone has actually done something morally wrong.

Modern law, however, seeks prevention, not justice. Accordingly, it imposes prior restraints on citizens' conduct in order to protect them from themselves. Consider a few familiar examples.

A firearm dealer may not sell a firearm to a convicted felon. Presumably, this has been defined as a crime because it is feared that the felon will use the gun to perpetrate other crimes like assault, robbery or murder.

A citizen cannot purchase or own a semiautomatic assault weapon manufactured after 1994. Presumably, this has been made a crime because it is feared that the citizen will have too deadly a weapon for robbing banks, going on murder sprees, engaging in terrorism or even starting an insurrection.

Citizens cannot carry guns into post offices or airports, presumably because they might shoot someone or might hijack an airplane.

Viewed from the perspective of the principles of justice established at common law, the use of law as a tool of prevention punishes citizens, not for actual acts that they have committed that are harmful to others and which were committed with an intent to harm or in reckless disregard for others, but simply because of what they might do, or because of what someone else might do, later.

Citizens are punished in advance, before they have actually done anything that, under common law principles, would be defined as criminal or wrong.

Thus, citizens are subjected to prior loss of liberty and, if they flout the restraints, actual additional punishment, for the commission of an act, not in itself harmful to anyone and which has not been demonstrated to actually have harmed anyone because that event has not in fact happened, but merely because of assumptions, statistical probabilities or fears about what might happen later.

Citizens who have done nothing wrong, morally speaking, are therefore held accountable for a presumed failure to prevent crimes which government itself, with its direct laws against crimes, its police forces, courts and prisons, cannot and does not prevent. All this is the logical consequence of the pursuit of safety instead of liberty and justice.

Only justice, and not safety, is consistent with liberty, because safety can be secured only by prior restraint and punishment of the innocent, while justice begins with liberty and the concomitant presumption of innocence and imposes punishment only after the fact.

The two cannot be combined in a system that "balances" safety and liberty, for they are completely incompatible with one another.

Any attempt to introduce the pursuit of safety into a system of justice founded on liberty must inevitably lead to the destruction of the latter, as the continual erosion of the Bill or Rights in the name of safety amply demonstrates. The Founders evidently instinctively knew this, knew that there is no liberty in safety, and no justice without liberty. They chose accordingly.

Jeff Snyder is the author of Nation of Cowards: Essays on the Ethics of Gun Control, available from Accurate Press, 1-800-374-4049. This article originally appeared in the November/December 2001 issue of American Handgunner Magazine and is reprinted with the kind permission of Mr. Snyder. You can find other articles written by Jeff
Snyder at his website, www.nationofcowards.net.

Articles such as this raise the bar on the pro-anti gun discussion. Rather than simply responding to the antis arguments (When guns are outlawed...If the victims had had a gun...A revolver will kill just as fast as a semi-auto, etc.) this moves the point of discussion.

The pro gunners should be asking the anti's questions such as "How can you impose prior restraint...what right do you have to change the status quo...do you have a study showing your legislation will reduce crime...how does your legislation conflict with the Constutition...would you ban my gun if I could use it to save just one life?"

For me the issue is simple. BAN ALL GUNS WILL NOT STOP GUN VIOLENCE. If we can achieve the VPC's desire of banning the manufacture of guns in US except for military and state arsenals, the criminal element still needs guns to survive. They will be willing to pay up $ 2000 for a cheap semi-auto handgun and organized crime will be willing to add illicit foreign guns to the list of items already being smuggled into this country (i.e illegal immigrants, drugs, exotic birds and etc). What will happen is criminals will now be armed and the law abiding citizen is unarmed and at their mercy. WHY CAN'T LIBERAL COLLEGE EDUCATED PEOPLE UNDERSTAND THAT!!!!

ibbryn, you make a valid point. Those of us who debate these issues should see the bar raised. You make some very valid points.

The problem is, the antis will not acknowlege your argument, as good as the point is. They do not ever respond with a clear, meaningfull rebuttal, they just quote more of their myths, over and over again, hoping to promote the Goebbels' effect (the big lie).

If we, who debate for the full restoration of the 2A were to ONE TIME, get fair coverage by the media, we could beat this hands down. The reality is, however that anything WE say is always predicated by "alleged", "extreme", "powerful lobby", "rabid" or some other words which make us look like the bad guy in the debate. If there is a way that you know of to get the message out without being misquoted or taken out of context, please let me know ;-) I am looking for a good method.

I wish we had good exposure like the antis, we could clean them off the face of the earth with good, reliable, facts and figures, and irrefutable evidence about the positive side of firearms ownership, but WE never get reported, simply because it is not the ideology of the press to do so.

Keep the Faith for Freedom

MAY GOD BLESS AND PROTECT THIS HONORABLE REPUBLIC

Greg

Great article.

The nerve of those people.

BTW, see that you're hawking The Skeptical Environmentalist on enterstageright.

I'm reading it now and it's got more ammunition for composting environmentalist radical BS than any other one book I've ever read.

Keep at it. We are winning some battles. Ascroft has been helping, Bush over Gore is big time, Emerson decision. While all this is going on nationally, attack on the local level. Write to the papers, take your neighbors shooting and support your local RKBA groups.

We currently have billboards up all over CA with the phrase "society is safer when criminals don't know who is armed". Does our local govt care (will they give us CCW). No. Do our local taxpayers/voters care? Yes.

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