Gun Rights Versus Anecdotes

Which side wins depends on whether one can reason or simply react emotionally.

Letters and an ad from gun rights hating groups

For a while back in the Winter, a retired philosophy professor (who wants to remain anonymous) and I exchanged a few emails and, from him, snail mail, discussing gun rights. After not hearing from him for several months he very unexpectedly mailed me a large envelope containing forty-nine newspaper clippings with many reports of shootings and a few anti-gun rights op-eds (and, strangely, a pro-gun op-ed by John Lott). He also included a fund raising letter from the Brady Campaign, another one from the Children's Defense Fund Action Counsel, a magazine ad from the Center to Prevent Handgun Violence, and a hand written note. Especially surprising for their absence were any articles from scholarly source. Are there no scholarly articles in favor of gun control? He sent almost all anecdotes from mass media sources leaning heavily towards the New York Times and the Philadelphia Inquirer. One would expect better from university professor.

Some of the anecdotes are easily debunked as challenging gun rights. For example the New York Times' article, “In Youth’s Death, Some See a Montana Law Gone Wrong”. A tragic and unnecessary death for which the shooter has been convicted of murder, but what does it say about guns in Montana? Not much. The article states that “...Montana...has one of the country’s highest rates of gun ownership...”. Yet its murder rate is only 2.2 per 100,000, less than half of the national average. If anything Montana proves gun rights haters wrong, more guns don't mean more murder.

Another easily debunked article is the Wall Street Journal's “Mass Shootings on the Rise, FBI Says”. The idea that mass shootings are on the rise was debunked previous to the publication of the FBI report here. The FBI's report is directly debunked in John Lott's “The FBI’s bogus report on mass shootings”.

The professor also sent an editorial from the New York Times titled “The Court: Ignoring the Reality of Guns”. This editorial attempts to justify banning hand guns but fails. First, it gets wrong the practical matter of thinking that the availability of guns is the problem. Second, it fails to present constitutional grounds justifying a ban on hand guns. In the end it is really advocating ignoring the Constitution. So much for the rule of law. 

I could go on debunking but I feel I've made my point. The gun rights haters' case is all smoke and mirrors. It also ignores the fact that guns in private hands prevent 2.5 million crimes each year.

Part of the hand written note mentioned above reads as follows:

I have selected newspaper articles to send you. I think almost all of them challenge your position.

I take your position to be that the more guns there are in the hands of private citizens , and the less government regulates or restricts them, the better off we all are.

These articles are full of horror stories stories about the harms guns do in the hands of private citizens.

True that “... the less government regulates or restricts them [guns], the better off we all are.” As to what the right number of guns in society is I'll leave that to the market. I'm surprised that the professor sees my view as so shallow since he saw my presentation “There Is No Case for Gun Control”. I've written much on my blog on the subject of gun rights, let me quote from it in rebuttal:

...as with any issue, we have to start with basic principles and moral implications. That means talking about the one moral imperative that guides us in all human relationships, the non-aggression principle [NAP]...It is immoral to initiate the use of force or the threat of force against peaceful people. In other words, a person has to be actually engaging in aggression or credibly threatening to do so before it is morally justifiable to use force in retaliation. What does that have to do with guns? The mere possession of an inanimate object such a gun aggresses against no one. There is no moral justification for taking guns away from people who adhere to the non-aggression principle since this involves initiating the use of force to separate them from their weapons.
From “Progressivism’s Violent World”

It is violation of the NAP that leads to society becoming more unstable and unsafe. The more society is ruled by force the worse the results. As Frederick Bastiat, wrote in his book “The Law” in 1850:

Is there any need to offer proof that this odious perversion of the law is a perpetual source of hatred and discord; that it tends to destroy society itself? If such proof is needed, look at the United States. There is no country in the world where the law is kept more within its proper domain: the protection of every person's liberty and property. As a consequence of this, there appears to be no country in the world where the social order rests on a firmer foundation.

This is the source of the problem, violation of the NAP and the social dynamics that unleashes, not the availability of guns. This is reinforced by modern research such as that of Randolph Roth, a professor at Ohio State University and the author of “American Homicide”. In a presentation at the National Institute for Justice titled “Why Is The United States The Most Homicidal Nation In The Affluent World?” Prof. Roth sums up the drivers of the murder rate on slide 4: 

Again showing that it's not the availability of guns that drives the murder rate. Deal with the social dynamics that are the real problem and, when it comes to crime, guns become irrelevant. That begs the question, why do so many advocate gun control as a solution when guns obviously aren't the cause of the problem? Because it's their beloved big government that has caused the problem. To again quote from “Progressivism’s Violent World”:

Progressivism has failed to achieve its lofty ideals. Instead it has created our present situation of crime and murder, war and empire. It is this failure that the advocates of gun control want to cover up. Instead of facing reality they want to blame guns for the problems the implementation of their ideas has created. Before anyone gets too smug, let me emphasize that both political parties have adopted the progressive ideology. Today’s so-called liberals and conservatives advocate different degrees and different aspects of it, but advocate it they do...It’s past time for both sides to realize that the killing will only end, society will only heal by turning it away from being ruled by force and toward voluntary interaction between its members. Liberty is the answer. Implementing it means change at the institutional level, disarming the government and keeping the people not only armed but also organized to defend themselves.

Compassion is what motivates us to feel outrage about senseless murders. Gun rights advocates share that feeling with gun rights haters. The difference is that we, gun rights advocates, realize that reason is what must guide us not compassion. Unthinking, emotional reactions to horrible events will only make things worse. Let's stop trying to add the force of more gun control to the force that's already damaging our society. Freedom from force, liberty, is the only reasonable way forward.

                    Some suggested reading to gain insight into why we need guns in civilian hands. Not pictured but also recommended is "Guns and Violence: The English Experience".

PA Gun Rights Haters Show Their Intolerance

A few liberty activists dropped in on a gun rights haters' rally. On a nice Sunday afternoon, March 9, 2014, they had the Team 26 bicycle riders stop at Buckingham, PA near Philadelphia. Here is the reception I received: 

They were angry because the high school where they originally were going to do their rights hating rally at ran them out. They relocated to an out of the way church with no sidewalk on either side of the road. This made a counter-rally impossible. Strangely, they then claimed this constituted our backing down. (See my rebuttal The “Pacifist” Advocates of Violence Lie Again.)

There was no excuse for these people's behavior at the rally. If they had any regard for freedom of speech they wouldn't have interfered with our respectful outreach. Notice how at 0:42 a woman laughs delightedly at the verbal abuse the activist in the red coat is dishing out. It is obvious from the video that many in the crowd agreed with her abusive behavior. Contrast this to the behavior of members of the Brandywine Peace Community when on Good Friday 2011 a libertarian brought a gun to their civil disobedience at Lockheed Martin in King of Prussia, PA. They were outraged but remained civil. Their nonviolence discipline specifically states, "We will observe with co-actors, police, Lockheed Martin employees, and passers-by, the rules of human courtesy. We will exhibit no violence or hostility - physical or verbal - toward anyone." [emphasis added] The people running the rally can learn from the good folks at the Brandywine Peace Community.

In fairness as I started handing out fliers one woman did say that even though I was on the other side she was glad I was there. She even thanked me for attending. The woman at 2:02 in the video seems puzzled by the spectacle of the red coat insulting me and taking my fliers. Perhaps she wondered, why the intolerance? I ask those of you who oppose gun rights to think about the kind of people you're following. Can you really trust them? Is the behavior you see in the video something you approve of? Don't you think that free speech should be defended rather than attacked? Please don't support these rights destroying groups anymore.

"The greatest dangers to liberty lurk in insidious encroachment by men of zeal, well-meaning, but without understanding.”

-- Judge Louis D. Brandeis

A comment on a recurring theme at these kinds of rallies. We hear speakers say over and over that they respect gun rights and don't want to take away good people's guns. Yet we see signs like the one at the top of this article. Isn't a ban taking away people's guns? It is truly amazing that gun rights haters can't see the hypocrisy.

Police cars at the gun haters rally

Speaking of hypocrisy, notice how the red coat in the video threatens to call security. To my mind this was threatening me with force. (I'm sure there wasn't any security she was just making a pathetic attempt to intimidate.) Off camera she said "the police know you're here". Again, the threat of using force against peaceful outreach. Strange that these gun rights haters claim to be the peaceful ones. They claim to be against guns and violence yet they didn't ask the gun toting police to leave. I'm sure the opposite is true, the police were there at their request. Remember that the police are the ones whose job it is to use force and more often to threaten to do so. It isn't consistent with pacifist principles to want armed men who are legally empowered to use force around.

Sometimes law enforcers come up with a good idea. Such is the case with Law Enforcement Against prohibition (LEAP), a group concerned with the war on drugs and neutral on guns. The text of the flier I was handing out is from a page that was, but is no longer, on LEAP's website. Link to text of the flier: http://bit.ly/1njNedS

On a humorous note I can now add "parasite" to "disgusting creepy crawly thing" on my activist resume. Keep the insults coming, haters.

The above hate mail was a reaction to this presentation: There Is No Case for Gun Control (video and hate mail)

In closing, I once again repeat my challenge to debate the gun rights issue. If the gun rights haters are confident that they're right they'll jump at the chance to do so.

The “Pacifist” Advocates of Violence Lie Again

Do the anti-gun rights zealots really think that people are so stupid they'll fall for these lies? Given what Shira Goodman wrote in “Gun Bullies Back Down and Plan to Stay Away from Peaceful Gun Violence Prevention Event” they must. Let's take her article apart piece by piece. (Items in bold are quotes from the article linked above.)

Concerned Gun Owners of Pennsylvania made clear in their press release that “CGOPA has canceled their counter-rallying on Sunday out of respect for private property rights and the sanctity of God's church.” They did this after CeasefirePA and their collaborators were run out of Doylestown, PA and had to relocate to a church in a nearby town.

“...CeaseFirePA, Moms Demand Action for Gun Sense in America, Mayors Against Illegal Guns, and local groups like Bucks Safe are hosting a peaceful event to greet the Sandy Hook Riders Team 26,...” Quite true, the event is peaceful, but what violence are they calling for? Read on.

“... a group of cyclists riding in memory of the victims of gun violence prevention...” Interesting that they published this. We're the ones advocating gun rights, they're the ones whose “gun violence prevention” is disarming decent people preventing them from defending themselves. I guess that makes their mourning appropriate. (Since they will no doubt correct this typo a screen shot is included below as proof of their sloppiness.)

“...and calling for stronger gun laws.” Last I checked laws are enforced by armed people with jails to confine other people in. An interesting position for alleged pacifists to take. They seem to be all for non-violence until is is time to disarm peaceful people like us activist gun owners. Then the violence and bullying become OK. Here's how I put it in my coverage of their two state May 11, 2013 event:

There is a reason we stayed in Pennsylvania. We knew we couldn't go into Trenton, New Jersey (where their rally started) with our guns. The police would have arrested us. Even in Morrisville the township threatened to arrest open carriers. We ignored those threats and they backed down. Yet somehow the gun haters saw themselves as being threatened. The fear was totally irrational. The open carriers would have protected them had a criminal tried to harm them. Meanwhile, it is they, the gun haters, that want to send armed law enforcement officers after gun owners. Go figure.

“For the last week, pro-gun organization Concerned Gun Owners of America had been planning a counter-protest and blatantly trying to intimidate supporters to avoid this event.” No, it was the Concerned Gun Owners of Pennsylvania that was holding the counter-protest. Obviously accuracy isn't Ms. Goodman's forte.

“Members of the group took to social media posting plans to carry firearms and shout through megaphones at the peaceful gathering, but [we] were not intimidated.” Intimidated? Please, Ms. Goodman, post any threats of violence that were made against your group. I know you won't because there were none. As opposed to your group which advocates legal violence against us. Regardless, please don't lie, the counter-protest was going to be empty holster since guns aren't allowed in or near schools. (They originally were going to rally at Central Bucks West High School.) We already know that these gun rights haters have an irrational fear of guns. Are they now afraid of empty holsters too?

“...bullies try to intimidate people because they’re insecure.” I couldn't agree more. We libertarians live by the non-aggression principle. The idea is that it is immoral to initiate the use of force or threaten the use of force against others. We have the confidence to say we will not use violence or threats nor will we tolerate that kind of behavior against ourselves or others. I call on all gun rights haters to renounce their advocacy of violence and join with us in calling for a world in which no one aggresses against anyone else.

Lastly, I issue a challenge to Ms. Goodman and the others standing with her to debate the issue with me. If you really think you know what you're talking about we'll be debating soon.

Progressivism’s Violent World

Unfortunately, no discussion of gun rights can take place these days without talking about the horrible murders at Newtown, CT last year. My heartfelt condolences go out to the families and friends of the victims as well as my sympathies to the survivors and the rest of that community for having to go through such a terrible experience.

The gun haters say that because of Newtown the gun rights advocates need to pipe down and accept whatever they want to dish out. I say there’s no better time than now to dispassionately look at how and why there is a violence problem here. The first thing that needs to be faced is that things are never simple. The problem is complex and simplistic approaches like banning guns or putting police in the schools won’t work for a number of reasons. No issue can be looked at in a vacuum. Therefore, as with any issue, we have to start with basic principles and moral implications. That means talking about the one moral imperative that guides us in all human relationships, the non-aggression principle, the one that was so horribly violated at Newtown. It is immoral to initiate the use of force or the threat of force against peaceful people.  In other words, a person has to be actually engaging in aggression or credibly threatening to do so before it is morally justifiable to use force in retaliation. What does that have to do with guns? The mere possession of an inanimate object such a gun aggresses against no one. There is no moral justification for taking guns away from people who adhere to the non-aggression principle since this involves initiating the use of force to separate them from their weapons.

Property rights are part of this equation also. People have a right to their property. Guns are property. Separating people from their guns by force is theft of those weapons.

There is a moral justification for, at times, using force. That is self-defense. Since the initiation of force is immoral the right to self-defense seems obvious. Depriving people of their guns is clearly taking away part of their ability to use defensive force. This is another way that gun control is a violation of people’s rights.

Before anyone says “that sounds nice in theory but doesn’t work in the real world” let’s look at how this plays out in the real world. To write about all the tyrannical governments that have killed, raped, tortured, enslaved, imprisoned, exiled, and stolen from all the people they have disarmed would require a book. Gun control is in reality people control starting from some very racist roots. In Maryland the law read "That no Negro or other slave, within this Province, shall be permitted to carry any Gun or any other offensive Weapon...." In Nazi Germany the law read “Jews are prohibited from acquiring, possessing, and carrying firearms and ammunition, as well as truncheons or stabbing weapons”. Whether it was not allowing African-Americans to own guns in this country or not allowing Jews to own guns in Nazi Germany the intent was the same, to have disarmed victims incapable of resistance. In the bloody 20th century, Mao Tse-tung summed it up perfectly, “Political power grows out of the barrel of a gun.”  Governments want disarmed victims. This is what Mao had in mind and there are seventy million dead Chinese to prove it, part of the over two-hundred million killed by governments in the 20th century. Governments that implemented gun control have committed all of the major genocides.

That’s why there’s never a good time to talk about disarming the people. What the discussion should be about is disarming the government. There is a massive imbalance between the power of the government and the power of the people.  Not only the military but the law enforcement establishments here are overwhelmingly strong. We need to start shifting power away from the government by putting these functions back in the people’s hands where they belong. One of the lesser known Founders, Tench Coxe, explained it well. Picking up on the same theme as Mao he wrote:

Who are the militia? Are they not ourselves? Is it feared, then, that we shall turn our arms each man against his own bosom… Their swords, and every other terrible implement of the soldier, are the birth-right of an American ... the unlimited power of the sword is not in the hands of either the federal or state governments, but, where I trust in God it will ever remain, in the hands of the people.

There is only one way to guarantee our lives and liberty. That is to be stronger than those who seek to take them are.

This is why the Founders warned us against having a standing army. They knew that such a force would be used to oppress.  Today, the “standing army” that we have to worry about domestically is the huge law enforcement establishment. I’m talking about not only state and local police but also agencies like the Internal Revenue Service, the Federal Bureau of Investigation, the Bureau of Alcohol Tobacco Firearms and Explosives, the Drug Enforcement Administration, and ad nauseum. Rather than deploy troops on the streets they use law enforcement to control us. While these agencies exist our liberty will always be in danger. In his greatest speech titled “Shall Liberty or Empire be Sought?”, arguing against adoption of the constitution, Patrick Henry warned us:

The honorable gentleman who presides told us that, to prevent abuses in our government, we will assemble in Convention, recall our delegated powers, and punish our servants for abusing the trust reposed in them. O sir, we should have fine times, indeed, if, to punish tyrants, it were only sufficient to assemble the people! Your arms, wherewith you could defend yourselves, are gone….Did you ever read of any revolution in a nation, brought about by the punishment of those in power, inflicted by those who had no power at all? You read of a riot act in a country which is called one of the freest in the world, where a few neighbors cannot assemble without the risk of being shot by a hired soldiery, the engines of despotism. We may see such an act in America.

A standing army we shall have, also, to execute the execrable commands of tyranny; and how are you to punish them? Will you order them to be punished? Who shall obey these orders?

Patrick Henry was right. Gun owners today can’t stand up to the law enforcement establishment much less the military. People that advocate civilian guns to counter-balance the government’s weapons are engaging in a dangerous fantasy that is rightly ridiculed. In the US since the government can’t disarm us completely they have armed themselves to the hilt. This has a similar effect as disarming us. One only needs look at the militarization of the law enforcement establishment to see this. There is only one answer and that is institutional change shutting down those agencies while building up the private means of defending ourselves. We need to move to a system of private security. There is no need for local police. History has already proved that private security is better at protecting us than the government is. A shining example is Oro Valley, Arizona. In 1975 they hired Rural/Metro Inc. to be their police department, providing the services previously provided by the county sheriff. Crime rates where greatly reduced at a fraction of the cost of a government police force.

There is no need for national level law enforcement. Agencies like those I mentioned, the Federal Bureau of Investigation, the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms, and Explosives; and the Drug Enforcement Administration are merely instruments of oppression enforcing many unconstitutional laws. One is reminded of Thomas Jefferson's words about the overly powerful capitol,

When all government, domestic and foreign, in little as in great things, shall be drawn to Washington as the center of all power, it will render powerless the checks provided of one government on another and will become as venal and oppressive as the government from which we separated.

Not only is private security better able to protect people, and their property, they have a provider/client relationship with them. Under this scenario there is no incentive for private security to enforce something like the drug prohibition and the government wouldn't have the means to do so.

Bear in mind that policing, as we know it today, got its start in the mid-19th century. It wasn't truly about preventing crime, as crime rates were quite low back then. It was all about expanding the government's power. Fast-forward to today and we find that the greatest threat to our lives, liberty, and property is the government. This is due to their tremendous police power. The only way for us to restore our rights is to take that power away from the government.

There is a foreign policy aspect to this too. While the US government has a huge military to wield against the rest of the world it will remain, to quote Patrick Henry again, “a powerful and mighty empire”.  Moving to a militia-based defense is impossible while there is gun control. All too many who advocate peace also advocate civilian disarmament not realizing that they are actually empowering the military that they oppose.  We can guarantee peace, at home and abroad, only by disarming the government and arming the people.

Digging deeper, though, there are other connections between domestic and foreign tyranny that many don’t see. The Communist Manifesto is a good a place to start this analysis. The four of the ten planks in that book that have been openly implemented in the United States are most relevant to this discussion:

2. A heavy progressive or graduated income tax. - Not only does this furnish money for the government’s use (such as paying for aggressive wars), it provides them with one of its worse organs of plunder and domestic repression, the IRS.

5. Centralisation of credit in the hands of the state, by means of a national bank with State capital and an exclusive monopoly. - The Federal Reserve System, the United States’ central bank, is the greatest enabler the government has. It creates the easy money that finances all its mischief.

6. Centralisation of the means of communication and transport in the hands of the State. - The corporate media are but the government’s propaganda arm, hyping the wars and glorifying the troops and LEOs at every turn. The government owns the roads, most public transportation, ports, and the airports, giving it control of all movement and vast resources.

10. Free education for all children in public schools. - Government schools are in reality also indoctrination centers. They produce loyal citizens trained to unquestioningly support the state.

It is truly scary how mainstream these destructive ideas have become. Today, we live in a world of the progressives’ creation, somewhere halfway between socialism and liberty. It is a volatile mixture. It is a world increasingly ruled by force; force wielded by a powerfully armed government. Whether it is the force of the income tax, the force of compulsory education, the force of regulation, or the force of law enforcement the effects are clear to all willing to see: a society becoming sicker and more aggressive. We’ve sunk a long way since 1850 when a Frenchman, Frederick Bastiat, wrote in his book  “The Law”:

Is there any need to offer proof that this odious perversion of the law is a perpetual source of hatred and discord; that it tends to destroy society itself? If such proof is needed, look at the United States. There is no country in the world where the law is kept more within its proper domain: the protection of every person's liberty and property. As a consequence of this, there appears to be no country in the world where the social order rests on a firmer foundation.

They’re sure not talking about us like that in France anymore! Progressivism has failed to achieve its lofty ideals. Instead it has created our present situation of crime and murder, war and empire. It is this failure that the advocates of gun control want to cover up. Instead of facing reality they want to blame guns for the problems the implementation of their ideas has created. Before anyone gets too smug, let me emphasize that both political parties have adopted the progressive ideology. Today’s so-called liberals and conservatives advocate different degrees and different aspects of it, but advocate it they do. The liberals may advocate gun control, but it is the conservatives who advocate the police state that can enforce it. Stop and frisk is a great example of this. Gun control is what drives it. While the liberals object to stop and frisk they support its driving force. While the conservatives advocate stop and frisk they oppose the gun control that drives it.

It’s past time for both sides to realize that the killing will only end, society will only heal by turning it away from being ruled by force and toward voluntary interaction between its members. Liberty is the answer. Implementing it means change at the institutional level, disarming the government and keeping the people not only armed but also organized to defend themselves.  Back in 1789 Representative Elbridge Gerry of Massachusetts explained it well. During the Floor debate over the Second Amendment he said:

What, Sir, is the use of a militia? It is to prevent the establishment of a standing army, the bane of liberty.... Whenever Governments mean to invade the rights and liberty of the people, they always attempt to destroy the militia, in order to raise an army upon their ruins.

Today, society smolders in those ruins. It’s time to put that fire out.

[author's note: some parts of this article were taken from articles previously published. See here and here]  

This article was based on my speech "The Relationship Between Liberty, Power, and Guns"

http://theinternationallibertarian.blogspot.com/2013/01/the-relationship-between-liberty-power.html