“The watchword for gun owners is stay ready,” said Wayne LaPierre, chief executive of the National Rifle Association. “We have had some successes, but we know that the first chance Obama gets, he will pounce on us.”The Brady Campaign, a group working for better gun control laws, has published a report grading Obama’s first year in office, giving him an overall ‘F’ for working to prevent gun violence. The report contains a shocking statement that in only one year Obama has repealed more federal gun control laws than George W. Bush in all eight of his years in office. Usually it’s the Republicans pushing for looser gun regulation, so this is a puzzling statement. Now, of course, Obama has a mountain of issues to tackle, including the health care debate and Afghanistan, and gun-control seems to be one of those issues that has been debated over ever since the writing of the Constitution, but this can only somewhat excuse negligence over the issue, not negative progress. Even if Obama hasn’t been able to focus on fulfilling his promises to enforce stricter laws, why has he then allowed a loosening of those laws at the same time?
Getting deeper into the issue, I keep asking myself why people even want to own guns so much. Are some gun-lovers just so attached to a romanticized Wild West notion of the US that they stubbornly (pun intended) stick to their guns and fight for their 2nd Amendment right? Although I don't see this as an extremely pressing issue, I do find it interesting that it's still a matter of such contention in the US, albeit though national attention to it ebbs and flows. Why does the Republican Party hold so tightly to this? Is it just niche-diplomacy as a way to get more votes?
In general, there are a couple of areas which both sides of the debate continue to bring up, namely gun use for self-defense, recreation/hunting, possession by armed forces’ reserves, as a way to resist tyranny, and cases of domestic violence. As far as hunting goes, of course some states are more rural than others and hunting is more common in such places (like Palin’s beloved Alaska where Moose hunting seems to be a local pastime) - I see no need to take guns away from hunters (though PETA might disagree). But when open carry gun-rights supporters flock to Starbucks with pistols strapped to their hips and intimidating (purposefully or not) less-zealous customers, I wonder just how far the 2nd Amendment should apply. “A right unexercised is a right lost!” as the Open Carry organization insists on their website. However, wouldn’t keeping your licensed gun in your house, out of the reach of children be just as much an exercise of that right? Rights are meant to protect people from intrusions on their freedom, not meant to create opportunities for people to use that liberty to interfere with other people’s lives. I mean I don’t run around yelling at US soldiers that they aren’t allowed in my house, and just because I have a right to the freedom of speech doesn’t mean that I have to tell everyone what my political opinions are every time I see someone I don’t know – there’s just no reason to and I’m not worried that just because I’m not trying to say something controversial my freedom of speech will be taken away. Why make a statement about it even if it is in the constitution? Today there are few uses for guns outside of law enforcement, military, and criminal realms, so why carry a gun unless you belong to one of those categories? It seems about as ridiculous as the huge pick-up trucks with giant testicles attached to the tow hitch but with far more dangerous consequences than offending all the old ladies on the road.
If hunting for sport or target practice are your thing, then there are plenty of alternatives for recreational use of less lethal guns such as BB guns, air soft, or paintball guns. Throughout my childhood my dad used his BB gun to deal with the pigeons that pooped all over his office building, and I too owned a BB gun which I did target practice with in the back yard; it's fun – maybe just a guy thing. But the times when I actually shot and killed even just a bird, I felt guilty and regretted it immediately. Sure there can be recreational use, but I see no need for anything stronger than a BB gun unless you live in a rural area where you need protection from wild animals or if you live near a war-zone where a weapon means life or death; I see very little need for guns in 'civilized' America, especially in urban areas.
In doing a little research on reasons people should be allowed to carry guns, I came across an article by an outspoken gun-rights advocate named David Kopel. In this article, Kopel presents a rather far-fetched argument to blame gun-control laws as one of the reasons why Hitler was able to kill so many people during the Holocaust. Making such a large connection as this seems very ludicrous to me. Though Kopel makes some good points that the Nazis did indeed disarm Jews, making it easier to carry out the genocide, but Kopel’s conclusion is a huge stretch in logic, that because racially biased gun-control laws were imposed upon the victims of the Holocaust, gun-control laws in the US should be questioned as well. Surely other factors such as racism and a power-abusing regime are far more to blame for the Holocaust than whether the Jews had a hand gun in their closet. If you don't trust your government enough and suspect that they want to disarm you so they can more easily kill you off, maybe you have bigger issues to worry about than whether you're allowed to carry guns. And even if there had been no gun-control laws carried out, wouldn't it have only turned into small-scale shoot-outs between the Jews and Nazis, assuming those Jews who were in possession of firearms resisted the Nazis when they came to take them? I think there would only have been so much they could have done when faced with heavily armed and trained SS troops with strict orders. I understand Kopel's reasoning that:
One never knows if one will need a fire extinguisher. Many people go their whole lives without needing to use a fire extinguisher, and most people never need firearms to resist genocide. But if you don't prepare to have a life-saving tool on hand during an unexpected emergency, then you and your family may not survive.But as he admits, those are very rare emergencies, and if something as dire as a state-led genocide program comes knocking on your door, I hardly think having a few guns on hand will save you from death in the long run. The solution to preventing war and genocide doesn't lie in increasing weapons possession, but in changing people’s mindsets and core beliefs about the morality of violence. Just look at Japan for an example of a state where, although there are fairly strict gun-control laws in name, they are not enforced very strictly and the people are not fighting for stronger rights to bear arms – Japanese society is very pacifist and using firearms is not only legally unacceptable but socially unthinkable as well. Japan also happens to have one of the lowest crime rates in the developed world.
Other than referencing the Holocaust, in Kopel’s article he also mentions Zimbabwe and the Mugabe regime as being potential African Hitlers. Having grown up in Zimbabwe myself, I was confident I'd understand the context of Kopel's argument much better, so I read another of his articles on Zimbabwe. Although Kopel does a good job of describing the situation as it was in Zimbabwe (the article is old - from 2001), again he fails to make a logical connection between the tragedy of genocide and the US campaign for gun-rights. The ending paragraphs to Kopel's article are:
…But are we Americans truly serious about ending the epidemic of genocide? Are we no longer willing to watch from the sidelines as another century rolls by, and witness thousands or millions more innocent victims killed by their own government?
If we really mean "never again," then the solution is rather obvious: ensure that the potential victims of genocide are never disarmed.I almost fell off my chair when I read this, I was so surprised at this guy’s complete lack of logical sense (IOW he was a moron!). Is the solution really that obvious!? I fail to see how this argument follows that the best way to prevent genocide is to keep guns in more people's hands. In both of his articles mentioned above, what Kopel fails to account for are the real possibilities of widespread conflict should both sides be armed; increasing the amount of weapons only makes conflict more likely. And firearms are not the only weapons used in genocide, though Kopel seems to think that genocide victims will be safe if they have firearms. What if they’re attacked by artillery shells or burned in their houses? What about the Rwandan genocide where most of the people were killed by hand with simple machetes? Should there be machete-carrying rights as well? Or should there be machete-control laws instead?
Now genocide, politicide, any type of government-sanctioned or widespread killing is appalling and I don't discount that whatsoever. But don't go and exploit the suffering of people in foreign countries as a way to garner sympathy for gun-rights campaigns in a peaceful land like the US. You have to account for far more than material realities and consider psychological and social factors as well.
This is a complicated issue at hand, and I’ve only scratched the surface, but I’ll end this post with a reiteration of the cliché that it’s not the guns that are evil, but the people who choose to use them in an evil manner that are. The problem is the increased likelihood of someone being harmed when weapons are more prevalent, not to mention the increased fear of harm that accompanies the presence of such weapons. As Martin Luther King said,
By our readiness to allow arms to be purchased at will and fired at whim...we have created an atmosphere in which violence and hatred have become popular pastimes.Are gun rights really necessary or do they do more harm than preventing it, and how important is it that Obama follow through on his campaign promises regarding this issue?
UPDATE:
Here is a post from a fellow blogger who advocates for the right to bare arms. My thoughts on his article can be found in its comments (Nanashi).
Simply put, David Kopel is an idiot; to compare gun control in the U.S. to the Holocaust is simply preposterous. The Nazi regime was able to take over for a number of reasons, most notably political power, but what Mr. Kopel is referring to is the military force used by Nazis on Jewish civilians. Last I checked, anytime any sort of military tries to take over civilians of any sort, they usually succeed, so claiming that gun control was the reason that they were able to do it so easily is simply trying to stretch the truth to make a point about today's American society. Not to mention the fact that it has been 3/4 of a century since the Holocaust and we are halfway across the world.
ReplyDeleteThe fact is, in today's world (in particular the westernized U.S.) there is absolutely no reason for someone to carry a gun to restaurants, coffee shops, or any other general public area. The right to bear arms was written as the 2nd amendment hundreds of years ago, when guns were needed for both personal safety and hunting purposes. As time changes, laws should as well, but the main argument made by those who are pro-gun rights is that the right to bear arms is the 2nd amendment of the U.S. Constitution. Ultimately my view is that our Constitution (and subsequent amendments made to it) should be subject to change as the government sees fit, not laws inscribed in concrete that cannot be changed, no matter how much our society, culture, and country as a whole changes.
I DO respect the 2nd amendment. But we need to recognize the original significance and intent of the right to bear arms: the right to protect and defend oneself and one's family from aggression.
ReplyDeleteWe are simply not faced with those fears in the same way now as we were in the 18th century. English soldiers are as likely to take over Boston, Philadelphia, and New York City as Osama Bin Laden is to apologize to the American people for the horrible attacks he masterminded on September 11, 2001. These fears of attack in the 1700s were why organizations were created and laws established to protect our country's citizens. These organizations kept order by punishing aggressors to the letter of the LAW.
Our fears now cannot be defended by bringing a handgun to ANY public place. This action in itself constitutes the individual taking the right to assert justice into his or her own hands. Without professional qualifications - such as state or federal police, detectives, etc - carrying weapons in public is simply putting everyone at potential risk, regardless of how low the percentage of risk is.
To think of it in terms of nuclear war, wouldn't we all be safer if the weapons just didn't exist? yes, this implies a world where no country lies about not having nukes while secretly stashing them. but point blank: the presence of nuclear weapons has made the world a less safe/secure place for every individual living on it.