Gun rights and self defense

I just re-read Classically Liberal's (CLS) blog, "When mass killers meet armed resistance," posted April 18, 2007. A colleague had sent me the link back in May. This article affected me in several ways. The daughter of my college best friend and roommate lost her life at Cho's hands at VA Tech on April 16, just two days earlier. Additionally, in February 2006, my mother was robbed by a home invader. And some years back, my 83-year-old great aunt was brutally raped at knifepoint and robbed by another home invader.

I currently live in a state where, if I have a gun in my car, I must keep it separate from the ammo, in the trunk of my car. And if it's a handgun, I can only legally transport it to/from a range or gunsmith. The law does not make a provision for stopping for a restroom or meal break (although my legislators assure me the police wouldn't enforce the law in those circumstances). Why not put it in writing, so law-abiding citizens like myself don't have to worry about it in the first place? Just a tiny intimidation--turning me into a criminal for exercising natural bodily functions.

And without so much as passing a law, as of August 1, 2007 my state requires its citizens to relinquish all of our medical records to the state police prior to purchasing a controlled firearm (any handgun and some long guns). We already have to wait more than a week for the onerous "Brady check" results. This means I spend an hour completing pages of complicated forms filled with small print and many tiny lines and boxes requiring my initials, checkmarks, or other information, arranged so I'm almost certain to miss something.

And then a store clerk has to review it all to make sure not one of those tiny boxes and lines is blank and ascertaining that I gave an acceptable answer! And, if any minor error is made by either party, you can bet the state police and/or BATFE will come knocking at their door (and mine). All this intimidation aimed at a law-abiding citizen who wants to protect her family and participate in some recreational target shooting, and a store clerk who just wants to make a living to support his family.

It is next to impossible to get a license to carry in my state, unless one regularly carries money, jewelry, or other valuable property for a business. Under our state law, a life is just not that valuable. Especially a woman's life. This is the state where the judge denied a woman a restraining order against her ex-husband, even gleefully belittling her in court. The ex-husband entered her workplace, doused her with gasoline, and set her on fire.

I haven't located the source, but I've heard that another woman has been raped twice and the police still refuse to issue her a license to carry. This reminds me of the cynical pseudo-assertion I've heard that a woman found raped and strangled with her panty hose is morally superior to a woman explaining a bullet hole in her attacker's head.

An innocent traveler could break a law without realizing it if he or she simply crosses a state line. Of course, in my state, localities also like to pass their own even more restrictive laws, so the traveler just passing through a town or county could suddenly become an unintended criminal, subject to arrest and prison. (Watch "The Gang" if you really want to get a look at what can happen to innocent citizens when bureaucrats pursue them in witch-hunt fashion.) And yet, criminals don't follow laws they know exist. They don't care that it's illegal to murder or rape or molest children.

In the article "Self-protection is a matter of Choice," in Women and Guns magazine (May/June 2007), Genie Jennings, spokesperson for Second Amendment Sisters, has convincingly argued for "safety zones" rather than the failed "gun free zones" such as those found at VA Tech and other schools. Jennings advocates for training teachers, administrators, and adult students to be armed and ready to handle such emergencies. The article (and magazine) are well worth a read. All of my elderly relatives remember a time when schools had at least one shotgun on hand in case of trouble. They were a great deterrant, and they were only rarely used. In fact, most criminals who are simply shown a gun change their mind about continuing the illegal act.

I went to high school with a guy named Tracy Bridges, and wonder if it was he who saved lives that day at the Appalachian School of Law in Grundy, VA, mentioned in the article by CLS. Appalachian is just down the road from VA Tech. Bridges and Mikael Gross reportedly retrieved their guns from their cars and confronted Peter Odighizuwa, the mass murderer who had already killed 3 people. Odighizuwa dropped his gun when he was approached by the armed students, who held him until police finally arrived almost 5 minutes later. I imagine these heroes saved quite a few innocent lives. Yet, as CLS pointed out, the media mostly ignored or failed to mention the fact that armed students ended the bloodshed and saved countless lives.

Like CLS, I wondered what might have been the outcome if Bridges and Gross had been concealed carrying instead? Would it have stopped the killer's spree from beginning in the first place or perhaps after only one innocent human life had been lost?

I think Genie Jennings is right. We need safety zones. We also need to remember something our founders clearly recognized. Most law-abiding citizens will do the right thing. Most of us will help each other out and act in amazingly selfless ways in emergencies. Our founders counted on it. They understood that this is the basis of human society--the combination of basic human nature and trust.

Our founders guaranteed the individual right to bear arms in our Constitution. All of the writings of the period indicate that this referred to an individual right, and the 2004 Department of Justice report titled "Whether the Second Amendment Secures an Individual Right" shows this was the indeed the founders' intended meaning. (Also see Karen MacNutt's July/August 2007 article "Parker vs. DC" in Women and Guns.) And, in the (hopefully) rare case it was needed, they could quickly form militias.

I remember as a child that women all seemed to know how to load and use a shotgun. And kids were exposed to guns very early. I was 5 when my father took me plinking for the first time. And fathers brought their service pistols back from WWII and Korea and kept them for home protection.

Today we are on a slippery slope. We are on the brink of losing our liberty--of undoing the magic created by our founders. Well-meaning but ignorant leaders want to disarm us and close down our local gunstores so we have no source of firearms. They believe this will somehow stop the hoodlums, the gangsters, the mentally ill, the sociopaths--the evil ones who would do us harm. However, we know these people have been among us since the beginning of time and they will not disarm.

And what is it about supply and demand that elected and appointed government officials just don't understand? Criminals are practically salivating--poised to quickly seize control of the firearms industry should it be bankrupted or run out of business if it becomes infeasible to implement processes required by misguided lawmakers--and supported by duped citizens who are ignorant of both the issues and their rights.

The Centers for Disease Control have found that gun control hasn't made a difference. In fact, it appears gun control laws may indirectly increase the availability of illegal guns to criminals while preventing law-abiding citizens from owning them for self-protection! Once we put the legal and lawful gun manufacturers and dealers out of business through silly, unworkable, and expensive requirements such as microcoding and chipping, the black market will quickly rise up to provide guns to criminals. That's how markets work. A nobel prize was awarded to the individual who recognized this!

The Second Amendment Foundation reported that due to the burden of the Brady checks, police spend even less time on the beat at an enormous cost to taxpayers. We ignore people like Cho with obvious problems and instead collect data on thousands or millions of people who will never use their guns for anything more than plinking or possibly warning criminals to back off.

The gun-grabbing is out of control, with some of the best and brightest actually believing gun control will stop violence. Since their strict gun ban was instituted, the United Kingdom has seen a growing problem of the elderly being attacked with no means of self-protection. And our own ignorant legislators are counting on flawed technological solutions that are unworkable.

I recommend something completely different. Let's bring back recreational shooting to the schools. Yes, you heard me right. I was traveling in France when I was 22 and saw porn magazines and postcards everywhere. At first I was shocked, and then I noticed the kids weren't even paying attention to it. It suddenly occurred to me--that's how my generation was with guns. We were around them all the time, and most of us at least learned basic safely rules and skills for an emergency.

When I was in elementary school, little boys routinely drew war planes, bombs, guns, tanks, and whatever they saw in their world in school. They got to cathartically and creatively deal with the dissonance of the morals and ethics they were learning with the realities of war, injustice, and hatred all around them. And they grew into productive adults!

There is no separate "gun culture." Guns were the tools of our freedom from the King of England, and guns first were used to keep blacks enslaved and later kept them safe from night riders in the southern US. Even Condoleezza Rice remembers her father protecting his family with a gun because the police just weren't going to help. Guns level the playing field for women, people of short stature, people with disabilities, and the elderly.

We need to undo most of our gun control laws. Dave Kopel goes a step further and argues that we need to spread the right to keep and bear arms to the international community. He cites Christopher J. Schmidt's article titled "An international right to keep and bear arms" in the February 2007 issue of the William and Mary Bill of Rights Journal, where Schmidt asserts the Second Amendment is one of the rights the international human rights community has resisted. We need to trust the people. Without trust by legislators and other government officials, the people don't trust in return. As parents, we need to stop the moralizing holier-than-thou attitude and model positive behaviors for our kids, including safe firearm use.

Kids who enjoy shooting sports can apply for college scholarships and compete in the olympics. Shooting sports require discipline, focus, and self-control.

I advocate for more guns in our society rather than less. I would like to see more school air rifle teams, "shall-issue" concealed carry in all states, Genie Jennings' "safety zones" model rolled out, and every law-abiding citizen receiving firearms safety training if they desire it.

Our founders warned us that we must have the means to protect ourselves against aggressors and tyrants. The legislators, judges, and bureaucrats themselves are moving closer to tyranny every day. We need to reverse this trend. Let's keep the U.S. experiment alive.