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Ronald Reagan: The Gun Owner’s Champion

In our September 1975 issue, Ronald Reagan, then two-time
Governer of California, penned this column. A man of
conviction, Ronaldus Magnus was true to these words before
and during his eight-year presidency.

There are tales of robbery victims that are shot down in
cold blood or executed “gangland style.” There are stories
of deranged parents killing their children or deranged
children killing their parents. There are reports of
snipers. And now and then the headlines blurt out that an
assassin has struck again, killing a prominent official or
citizen. All of these stories involve the use of guns, or
seem to. As a result, there is growing clamor to outlaw
guns, to ban guns, to confiscate guns in the name of public
safety and public good.

These demands come from people genuinely concerned about
rising crime rates, persons such as Sheriff Peter Pitchess
of Los Angeles, who says gun control is an idea whose time
has come. They come from people who see the outlawing of
guns as a way of outlawing violence. And they come from
those who see confiscation of weapons as one way of keeping
the people under control.

Now I yield to no one in my concern about crime, and
especially crimes of violence. As governor of California
for eight years, I struggled daily with that problem. I
appointed judges who, to the best of my information, would
be tough on criminals. We approved legislation to make it
more difficult for persons with records of crime or
instability to purchase firearms legally. We worked to
bring about swift and certain punishment for persons guilty
of crimes of violence.

We fought hard to reinstate the death sentence after our
state Supreme Court outlawed it, and after the U.S. Supreme
Court followed suit, we won.

Now, however, the California court that sought eagerly to be
the first to outlaw the death penalty is dragging its heels
as it waits for the U.S. Court to rule. The Chief Justice
in California, whom I appointed with such high hopes, in
this regard has disappointed many of us who looked to him to
help again make our streets, our shops and our homes safe.
I find it difficult to understand persons like President
Ford’s new Attorney General, Edward H. Levi. Attorney
General Levi would ban guns in areas with high rates of
crime.

Mr. Levi is confused. He thinks somehow that banning guns
keeps them out of the hands of criminals. New Yorkers who
suffer under the Sullivan Act know better, they know that
the Sullivan Act makes law-abiding citizens sitting ducks
for criminals who have no qualms about violating it in the
process of killing and robbing and burglarizing. Despite
this, Mr. Levi apparently thinks that criminals will be
willing to give up their guns if he makes carrying them
against the law. What naivete!

Mightn’t it be better in those areas of high crime to arm
the homeowner and the shopkeeper, teach him how to use his
weapons and put the word out to the underworld that it is
not longer totally safe to rob and murder?

Our nation was built and civilized by men and women who used
guns in self-defense and in pursuit of peace. One wonders
indeed, if the rising crime rate, isn’t due as much as
anything to the criminal’s instinctive knowledge that the
average victim no longer has means of self-protection.

No one knows how many crimes are committed because the
criminal knows he has a soft touch. No one knows how many
stores have been let alone because the criminals knew it was
guarded by a man with a gun or manned by a proprietor who
knew how to use a gun.

Criminals are not dissuaded by soft words, soft judges or
easy laws. They are dissuaded by fear and they are
prevented from repeating their crimes by death or by
incarceration.

In my opinion, proposals to outlaw or confiscate guns are
simply unrealistic panacea. We are never going to prevent
murder; we are never going to eliminate crime; we are never
going to end violent action by the criminals and the
crazies–with or without guns.

True, guns are a means for committing murder and other
crimes. But they are not an essential means. The Los
Angeles Slasher of last winter killed nine men without using
a gun. People kill and rob with knives and clubs. Yet we
have not talked about outlawing them. Poisons are easy to
come by for the silent killer.

The automobile is the greatest peacetime killer in history.
There is no talk of banning the auto. With the auto we have
cracked down on drunken drivers and on careless drivers. We
need also to crack down on people who use guns carelessly or
with criminal intent.

I believe criminals who use guns in the commission of a
crime, or who carry guns, should be given mandatory
sentences with no opportunity for parole. That would put
the burden where it belongs–on the criminal, not on the law
abiding citizen.

Let’s not kid ourselves about what the purpose of prison
should be: It should be to remove criminals from
circulation so that they cannot prey upon society.
Punishment for deterrent purposes, also plays a part.
Rehabilitation, as many experts, including California
Attorney General Evelle Younger, have discovered, is not a
very good reason for imprisoning people. People don’t
rehabilitate very well in prison.

There is an old saying that slaves remain slaves while free
men set themselves free. It is true with rehabilitation,
also. Criminals rehabilitate themselves, there is little
you and I can do about it. But back to the purpose of this
article which, hopefully, is to make the case against gun
control.

The starting point must be the Constitution, because, above
all, we are a nation of laws and the foundation for our
laws, or lack of same, is the Constitution.

It is amazing to me how so many people pay lip service to
the Constitution, yet set out to twist and distort it when
it stands in the way of things they think ought to be done
or laws they believe ought to be passed. It is also amazing
to me how often our courts do the same thing.

The Second Amendment is clear, or ought to be. It appears
to leave little, if any, leeway for the gun control
advocate. It reads: “A well regulated militia being
necessary to the security of a free state, the right of the
people to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed.”

There are those who say that, since we have no militia, the
amendment no longer applies; they would just ignore it.
Others say nuclear weapons have made the right to keep and
bear arms irrelevant, since arms are of little use against
weapons of such terrible destructive power. Both arguments
are specious.

We may not have a well-regulated militia, but it does not
necessarily follow that we should not be prepared to have
one. The day could easily come when we need one.

The nuclear weapon argument is even more silly. Many wars
have been fought since World War II and no nuclear bomb has
been dropped. We have no assurance that the next world war
will be a nuclear war. But, regardless of any possible
merit they might have, both these arguments beg the
question, which is: Shall the people have a right to keep
and bear arms?

There is little doubt that the founding fathers thought they
should have this right, and for a very specific reason:
They distrusted government. All of the first 10 amendments
make that clear. Each of them specifies an area where
government cannot impose itself on the individual or where
the individual must be protected from government.

The second amendment gives the individual citizen a means of
protection against the despotism of the state. Look what it
refers to: “The security of a free state.” The word “free”
should be underlined because that is what they are talking
about and that is what the Constitution is about–a free
nation and a free people, where the rights of the individual
are pre-eminent. The founding fathers had seen, as the
Declaration of Independence tells us, what a despotic
government can do to its own people. Indeed, every American
should read the Declaration of Independence before he reads
the Constitution, and he will see that the Constitution aims
at preventing a recurrence of the way George III’s
government treated the colonies.

The declaration states this plainly: “But when a long train
of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably the same
Object evinces a design to reduce them under absolute
Despotism, it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off
such government and to provide new Guards for their future
security.”

There is no question that the first 10 amendments are a part
of those “new guards” for their future security. And one of
the most basic of those guards is the right to keep and bear
arms.

There are those in America today who have come to depend
absolutely on government for their security. And when
government fails they seek to rectify that failure in the
form of granting government more power. So, as government
has failed to control crime and violence with the means
given it by the Constitution, they seek to give it more
power at the expense of the Constitution. But in doing so,
in their willingness to give up their arms in the name of
safety, they are really giving up their protection from what
has always been the chief source of despotism–government.

Lord Acton said power corrupts. Surely then, if this is
true, the more power we give the government the more corrupt
it will become. And if we give it the power to confiscate
our arms we also give up the ultimate means to combat that
corrupt power. In doing so we can only assure that we will
eventually be totally subject to it. When dictators come to
power, the first thing they do is take away the people’s
weapons. It makes it so much easier for the secret police
to operate, it makes it so much easier to force the will of
the ruler upon the ruled.

Now I believe our nation’s leaders are good and well-meaning
people. I do not believe that they have any desire to
impose a dictatorship upon us. But this does not mean that
such will always be the case. A nation rent internally, as
ours has been in recent years, is always ripe for a “man on
a white horse.” A deterrent to that man, or to any man
seeking unlawful power, is the knowledge that those who
oppose him are not helpless.

The gun has been called the great equalizer, meaning that a
small person with a gun is equal to a large person, but it
is a great equalizer in another way, too. It insures that
the people are the equal of their government whenever that
government forgets that it is servant and not master of the
governed. When the British forgot that they got a
revolution. And, as a result, we Americans got a
Constitution; a Constitution that, as those who wrote it
were determined, would keep men free. If we give up part of
that Constitution we give up part of our freedom and
increase the chance that we will lose it all.

I am not ready to take that risk. I believe that the right
of the citizen to keep and bear arms must not be infringed
if liberty in America is to survive.

The Second Amendment IS Homeland Security!!!