Second Amendment Project Newsletter.February 1, 2000
The Second Amendment Project is based at the Independence
Institute, a free-market think tank in Golden, Colorado.
http://i2i.org
1. New on web: Big win in court case on Houston gun shows. British gun laws lead to severe gun crime rise. US Judges want to carry guns. Washington Times op-ed on Clinton lawsuit against gun companies. Mothers Insisting on Licensed Tools (humor). New web page of quotes by gun prohibitionists.
2. "The Immorality of Gun Control." By Linda Gorman.
3. "To unravel Bill of Rights, start with a single thread ..." By Vin Suprynowicz.
4. FAQ about this newsletter.
a. Win for Houston gun show in federal appeals court. The city government of Houston passed an ordinance requiring that all guns at gun shows be registered, and have their firing pin removed. The Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals affirmed a decision from federal District court declaring the ordinance void. Texas state law explicitly preempts all local gun control, except controls regarding the discharge of firearms. By ruling for the gun show on statutory grounds, the Fifth Circuit avoided having to decide claims that the Houston ordinance violated the First and Second Amendments. HC Gun & Knife Shows, Inc., v. Houston, No. 98-20497, Jan. 20, 2000. http://laws.findlaw.com/5th/9820497CV0.html
b. "Killings Rise as 3m Illegal Guns Flood Britain." By Jon Ungoed-Thomas. Sunday Times, Jan. 16, 2000. The story of how Britain's gun laws fail miserably.
http://www.sunday-times.co.uk/news/pages/sti/2000/01/16/stinwenws02004.h tml? 999
c. "Gun Violence in Britain." Webpage maintained by The Guardian & The Observer. Most recent article begins: "Police warned yesterday that guns had become 'almost a fashion accessory' among young drugs criminals on the streets of Manchester." Jan. 14, 2000. http://www.newsunlimited.co.uk/gun/
d. "Firepower Beneath the Robes: Enough federal judges want to carry concealed weapons that they're asking Congress to free them from having to comply with state laws." By Dan Christensen. Miami Daily Business Review. January 14, 2000. http://www.lawnewsnetwork.com/stories/A13399-2000Jan13.
e. "Ambushing the gun industry." By William Goldcamp. January 10, 2000. Commentary on the Clinton/Cuomo plan to sue firearms companies. http://www.washtimes.com/commentary/commentary2-01102000.htm
f. "Power Tools: America's Children at Risk". The fictional group M.I.L.T. (Moms Insisting on Licensed Tools) does for power tools what the gun control groups do for guns: Frighten ignorant people with distorted claims of about the product's danger. http://www.frenchu.com/tpg/drill.html
g. Gun ban citations. UCLA Law Professor Eugene Volokh's compilation of statements by gun control advocates showing that "first step" gun controls are part of a long term plan to ban guns. Make sure to check out the many other excellent firearms law resources on this website. http://www.gunscholar.org/gunban.htm
In a January 4th letter-to-the editor of the Denver Rocky Mountain News, Mr. Joseph E. Cordova of Littleton wrote "I am confused as to why people are so devoted to keeping a constitutional right that allows us to own a tool that when used correctly either destroys or damages life...I honestly believe that if James Madison and his colleagues were alive to see what the musket has evolved into today and the horrific events that firearms have caused, they would not be offended if we were to change their original thoughts."[1]
What Mr. Madison would see is 273 million Americans using guns to safely protect themselves and their loved ones from robbery, assault, rape, and murder approximately 2.5 million times every year. With 50% of all households owning one or more of the country's estimated 200 million guns, just 981 people, 142 of them under the age of 14, died in gun accidents in 1997.[2] On an annual basis, there are more accidental deaths from falls, drowning, and bicycle riding.[3]
Mr. Cordova's cavalier surrender of his 2nd Amendment rights also poses a moral question. As Jeffrey R. Snyder pointed out in the Fall 1993 issue of The Public Interest,[4] ruling out firearms means that Mr. Cordova rules out the most effective form of fighting back when someone else forcibly threatens his life or property. If he is unwilling to accept the risk of protecting his own life with a firearm, how can he demand that other people risk their lives to protect him? United States courts have repeatedly ruled that he cannot. The police do not have to protect any individual, and government officials have repeatedly demonstrated that they feel no obligation to do so. Consider the Los Angeles riots. Police were withdrawn at the beginning. Those who suddenly needed guns for self-defense could not buy them because California had a 15-day waiting period. Local authorities then attacked those who did have guns by banning ammunition sales. At the first hint of real trouble, the civil authorities delivered the residents of the city to the tender mercies of gun toting criminals.
Governments all over the world behave like this. When people fail to obey the laws they pass, governments respond by passing more. Since government never knows when to quit and gun control never works, "reasonable" gun control measures inevitably end up prohibiting self-defense by the law-abiding and promoting criminal activity. In the 1999 Hamline Law Review,[5] Joseph Olson and David Kopel chronicle England's slide down this slippery slope of gun control and describe its corrosive effect on civil liberties.
In 1903, Parliament voted to forbid pistol sales to minors and felons. Sales were allowed only to those with gun licenses, which were easy to get. In 1920, despite the fact that people with firearms posed no particular danger, the government expanded controls by prohibiting the ownership of rifles or pistols without "good reason." In 1936, short-barreled shotguns and fully automatic firearms were outlawed.
In 1940, the British government found itself short of arms for island defense and ran ads in American newspapers begging people to "Send a Gun to Defend a British Home. Not having learned its lesson, it searched soldiers returning home from World War II, confiscating and destroying any weapons found. In 1946, British bureaucrats announced that self-defense was no longer an acceptable reason to apply for a gun license. All offensive weapons were banned in 1953, and people carrying knives were subject to prosecution unless they could provide a reasonable excuse for having one. Confiscation of handguns, made possible by the records generated by licensing requirements, began in 1997. With guns outlawed and crime rates far in excess of those in the United States, Britons have attempted to switch to other forms of self-defense. Affronted, the government has outlawed those as well. Chemical-defense weapons like Mace, electric stun guns, pit bulls, penknives, swordsticks, and blowpipes are all illegal, as are imitation guns. One elderly lady was arrested for trying to frighten off a gang of thugs by firing a blank from her imitation firearm. Safe storage requirements have also spawned a number of abuses. Introduced in the 1930s as a "reasonable measure", authorities now use them to prevent legal ownership. Some districts require that gun safes withstand a half-hour attack by a burglar with safe-cracking tools. Unannounced, warrantless, home searches are used to ensure compliance.
In sum, surrendering your right to keep and bear arms means putting your life, and the lives of your loved ones, in the hands of government officials who have no obligation to protect you, and who may lack both the desire and the ability to do so. Think about that the next time someone claims that gun control will make you safer.
Notes: [1] Joseph E. Cordova. 4 January 2000. Letter-to-the-Editor, The Denver Rocky Mountain News, p. 31A. [2]Gun ownership figures in Paul H. Blackman. March 1994. The Federal Factoid Factory on Firearms and Violence: A Review of CDC Research and Politics. Paper delivered at the annual meeting of the Academy of Criminal Justice Sciences, Chicago, Illinois. Posted on the web at http://www.saf.org/journal/7_factoid.html. Defensive use statistic from Gary Kleck and Mark Gertz. Fall 1995. "Armed Resistance to Crime: The Prevalence and Nature of Self-Defense With a Gun," Journal of Criminal Law and Criminology, 86(1): 150-187. Body of paper available at http://www.guncite.com/gcdgklec.html. Figures on accidental deaths from Donna L. Hoyerrt, Kenneth D. Kochanek, and Sherry L. Murphy. 30 June 1999. "Deaths: Final Data for 1997," National Vital Statistics Reports, 47,19, United States Department of Health and Human Services, Table 16. [3]Data from bicycle accidents from "A Case-Control Study of the Effectiveness of Bicycle Safety Helmets. RS Thompson, FP Rivara, and DC Thompson, N Engl J Med 1989 May 25;320(21):1361-7,
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/entrez/query.fcgi?cmd=Retrieve&db=PubMed&lis t_ui ds=2716781&dopt=Abstract. Data on drowning from the National Safety Council, Injury Facts "Deaths Due to Unintentional Public Injuries, 1998. http:/www.nsc.org/lrs/statinfo/99116.htm. Web pages cited as of 7 January 2000. [4]Jeffrey R. Snyder. Fall 1993. "A Nation of Cowards," The Public Interest, 113, pp. 40-55. [5]Joseph E. Olson and David B. Kopel. 1999. "All the Way Down the Slippery Slope: Gun Prohibition in England and some Lessons for Civil Liberties in America," Hamline Law Review, 22. 399-465. http://www.goa-texas.org/kopel-2.htm
Linda Gorman is a Senior Fellow with the Independence Institute, a free-market think tank in Golden, Colorado, http://i2i.org. This article originally appeared in the Colorado Daily (Boulder), for which Linda Gorman is a regular columnist.
Suppose with me that hypothetical riots and insurrection have broken out in our fair city. At your local newspaper office, pressmen drop what they're doing, drive home to grab their hunting rifles, and return to join the small, uniformed security staff in guarding the premises from rampaging hooligans.
Sure enough, within minutes, a parade of surly, drunken rioters appears around the corner, bearing torches and striding directly toward the newspaper offices. "The newspaper you're defending is an organ of the corporate state!" shouts the mob's leader, climbing atop a car hood. "Its pages are bought and paid for by the advertising of greedy capitalist exploiters that keep the working man down! Let us in!"
"What do you aim to do?" asks the pressman in charge of the newspaper's defenders.
"We've got sledgehammers to break up the presses, and then we're going to use these torches to burn the place down," explains the head of the mob.
"Join us! Or are you part of the system that only makes the rich richer, and never gives a break to the little guy?"
"Well, OK," agrees the pressman. "Let them through, guys. After all, in this age of ever-widening economic gaps between the 'haves' and the 'have-nots', it's pretty difficult to defend our part in such capitalist transactions."
Is there something wrong with this picture? Armed citizens who would stand aside and watch a newspaper's presses shattered and burned would be kissing their own freedoms goodbye, wouldn't they?
Of course. The Ninth Amendment assures us Americans have far more rights than are enumerated in the first 10 articles of Amendment. But the rights sanctified in the Bill of Rights itself are there because they're the paramount liberties necessary to preserve freedom. More importantly they are interlocked, often as firmly as a cat's cradle.
What good is the Sixth Amendment's guarantee of a "speedy and public trial" without the Fifth's guarantee of "due process," as well as its protection against enforced self-incrimination?
A speedy public "trial" at which the defendant appears bound and gagged, and the only "testimony" is a reading of his confession, signed under torture? Thanks for nothing.
How could any of our other rights be long preserved without the First Amendment's freedom of the press, allowing publishers to raise a loud alarm against any government attempt to erode our other liberties?
And isn't the very purpose of the Second Amendment to make sure we have an armed citizenry -- "necessary to the security of a free state" -- to guard that freedom of the press (among the others) from any mob or tyrant that aims to take it away?
What then, shall we make of the AP news report out of Tucson, Arizona last week, that "The city's two daily newspapers will no longer allow individuals to sell guns through classified advertisements"?
"The Arizona Daily Star announced its policy change Sunday, and The Tucson Citizen's editor and publisher confirmed a similar policy Monday," the AP story continues.
"In a front page notice to readers, Jane Amari, the Star's editor and publisher, said there was concern that people buying through classifieds circumvent background checks now required by law."
Background checks (back-door registration) which a free press might be expected to oppose with all its might, of course, given that the Second Amendment assures us "The right of the people to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed."
But that would only be the case for a newspaper publisher who sees those rights guaranteed in the Bill of Rights as mutually supporting -- all of one fabric -- I guess.
Instead, Ms. Amari explained to her readers: "In an age of increasing gun violence, it is difficult to defend our part in the transaction."
Really? First, if the Associated Press reports accurately, then Ms. Amari has lied outright to her readers: Private transfers among law-abiding gun owners remain legal under both federal and Arizona law, without any "background check."
But beyond that, Yale law professor John Lott -- along with Gary Kleck at Florida State -- have now demonstrated beyond refute that the carrying of concealed handguns by law-abiding citizens substantially reduces violent crime. The only thing "hard to defend ... in this age of increasing gun violence" are actions that tend to perpetuate victim disarmament, by making it hard for free citizens to acquire arms equal to those of their assailants without getting caught up in the net of government "registration."
We will be assured this is a matter of no concern, of course, since it's "only a private decision," and Tucson readers can always patronize competing papers.
But Tucson's morning Star and evening Citizen _were_ the competing papers. They received a special exemption from federal anti-trust laws to combine their advertising and business departments into a monopoly, "in the public interest."
How droll.
Both newspapers will continue to accept ads placed by federally registered gun dealers, we are assured -- the kind in which the new owner's name and address are registered with state and federal authorities - the very kind of registration scheme which made it easy for authorities to confiscate firearms in Turkey in 1915, in Russia and Germany in the 1920s and '30s, and in the past decade alone in England, Australia, Staten Island, and California.
No, Ms. Amari is under no obligation to defend the Second Amendment. But when they finally come to seize her presses, and she looks about and finds no free citizen coming to her aid, perhaps she'll find cause to paraphrase Pastor Martin Niemoeller, musing as the Nazis hauled him away: "When they came for the gun owners I didn't speak up, because I wasn't a gun owner..."
--------------------- Vin Suprynowicz is assistant editorial page editor of the Las Vegas Review-Journal. Copies of Vin's book, "Send in the Waco Killers: Essays on the Freedom Movement, 1993-1998" (recently named "Freedom Book of the Year" by the fine folks at Free-Market.Net) are in stock for immediate shipment and can be ordered by mailing check or money order for $24.95 postpaid to Mountain Media, P.O. Box 271122, Las Vegas, Nev. 89127. Orders can also be placed -- with credit card orders welcome -- by dialing Huntington Press at 1-800-244-2224. Inquire about volume discounts for your group or store. Or, on the Internet, go to http://www.thespiritof76.com/wacokillers.html, where credit card and bulk orders are also accepted.
Q. Who writes it? A. Dave Kopel.
Q. I received this newsletter as a forward. How can I get a copy directly? A. Go to http://independenceinstitute.net, and sign up on the form on that page.
Q. How often is this newsletter published? A. Approximately once a week. The particular day of the week is not consistent. Every so often, a week gets skipped, due to the need to prioritize other projects.
Q. What can I do to help the Second Amendment Project? A. Join the Independence Institute as a Second Amendment member. We have special packages of materials for people interested in the Second Amendment. More information is available at http://independenceinstitute.net/crimjust.htm. Look for the membership information at the bottom of the page.
Q. Can I post material from this newsletter on the web? A. The authors who have given permission for their work to be used in this newsletter have not specifically consented to Internet postings. To obtain consent, contact the particular author. To contact Dave Kopel or Linda Gorman, send e-mail to DaveKopel@hotmail.com
Q. I need legal advice about a firearms or other issue. Can I contact you? A. The Independence Institute does not have the resources to provide any kind of legal advice. If you need an attorney, contact the National Rifle Association or the Second Amendment Foundation for their lists of pro-rights attorneys.
Criminal Justice and the Second Amendment: http://i2i.org/crimjust.htm The Columbine High School murders: http://i2i.org/suptdocs/crime/columbine.htm and The Waco murders: http://i2i.org/Waco.htm The Independence Institute's on-line bookstore. Start your browsing at the Second Amendment section: http://i2i.org/book.htm#Second
That's all folks!