Second Amendment Pandemonium

The Supreme Court decision in District of Columbia vs. Heller defined that individuals have a fundamental right to defend themselves, and that the Second Amendment gives them the right to do so with a firearm.

This drives a stake through the heart of plans long cherished by some, to pay lip service to traditions of hunting and sportsmen, while working incrementally to restrict the "right to keep and bear arms" to the ability to check a shotgun out of a repository long enough to shoot a few grouse, then check it back in. These opponents of legal gun ownership operate on the belief that their world would be a safer place if you don't have a gun.

Most of these people have never had a felon with malicious intent in their living room or in their face. After the felon has left, the police are summoned. That is when you realize that to a large degree, the police are society's janitors. There is little chance that they will be there to protect you when the wolf comes to call. That is when you question the wisdom of remaining an unarmed sheep, supposedly for the greater good.

Opponents of legal gun ownership like to couch their advocacy in terms of public health concepts. When advocacy tries to masquerade as science, it plays fast and loose with the facts. Pretty soon, it starts to sound rather like blaming the tornado on the existence of the trailer park. Generally, valid scientific conclusions do not flow from exclusion of contrary evidence, fabrication of data, and incestuous literature references. The canons of scholarly discourse are not in evidence in the antigun health advocacy literature.

Antigun health advocates say that it is simple: more guns means more homicides, suicides, and fatal gun accidents, while restrictive gun laws mean fewer such events. However, this belief is not supported by the evidence. In 1973, the rates of U.S. gun ownership, handguns and all guns, was 176 and 610 per thousand, respectively. The homicide rate was 9.4 per 100,000. In 1992 the handgun and all gun ownership rate had increased significantly, to 304 and 870 per thousand, respectively. The homicide rate was 9.3 per 100,000. While gun ownership rates have increased, accidental gun deaths have decreased. There is no observable relationship between gun ownership and suicide rates. Antigun health advocates will not engage the data that suicide rates are much higher in antigun European nations.

The science which the opponents of legal gun ownership never want to acknowledge is criminology, when it looks at the effects of legal gun ownership on crime. Criminologists generally conclude that gun availability does not lead law abiding citizens to commit crimes, and that the value of firearms in defending potential victims has been significantly underestimated.

But now, the entire debate is shifting. As popular as it is right now for the antigun health advocates to say, "But it's bad for you!," the Supreme Court has said that there is an individual right to own and use a firearm in self defense. The Chicago Tribune at least is intellectually honest about the whole thing, as they call for repeal of the Second Amendment. The LA Times favors a more weasel-like approach, calling for legislation where gun manufacturers are somehow made responsible for target societal rates of gun violence, with surcharges and production limits if the target rates aren't met. Backdoor games to make guns expensive and rare are not likely to meet constitutional muster.

Those who are eager to impose their views on the nation as a whole should pay heed to what those efforts do to their other interests. Democrats have lost many elections because gun owners vote. Sometimes it seems as if the Republicans have the vote of Joe Paycheck despite making corporations supreme and shipping jobs overseas, simply because the Republicans can be trusted to not make a move on Joe's guns. If Democrats wanted to be more competitive in rural America, they could consider the idea of deciding that where antigun legislation is concerned, the voters have spoken against it, and move on to other issues.

One thing you can be sure of is that gun owners are paying close attention right now, to see who is wringing their hands and gnashing their teeth about the Heller decision. Those who see the Heller decision as an unfortunate setback to be overcome are revealing themselves right now. Gun owners do not forget.