—– Original Message —–
From: “Dave Kopel” <[email protected]>
To: <Undisclosed-Recipient: ;>; <@cmconline.com>
Sent: Monday, February 28, 2000 3:07 PM
Subject: Second Amendment Project newsletter, Feb. 29, 2000

> Second Amendment Project Newsletter. Feb. 29, 2000.
> The Second Amendment Project is based at the Independence
> Institute, a free-market think tank in Golden, Colorado.

http://i2i.org

> =========================================================
>
> Table of Contents for this issue:
>
> 1. Web resources: Don Kates; Guncite; Bloomfield Press;
> Congressmen gives away free guns.
> 2. “Why the President is Wrong on Gun Control.” By Rick Castaldo
> (father of Columbine victim).
> 3. “The Founders’ Reading of Ancient History.” By David B. Kopel.
> >From the February 2000 issue of Chronicles.
> 4. “The Results Are in on British Gun Laws.” By Dr. Michael Brown.
>
> =========================================================
> 1. Web Resources
>
> A. Don Kates, who is perhaps the most important Second Amendment
> scholar of the twentieth century, now has a website.
> You can read Don’s forthcoming article from Homicide Studies
> and lots of other important material.
> http://www.donkates.com
>
> B. “Guncite” provides an excellent one-stop shopping of facts on all
> kinds of firearms issues.
> The site provides quick, documented information on almost
> every topic in the modern gun control debate.
> http://www.guncite.com
>
> B. “Congressman gives away free guns.
> Campaign to draw attention to Second Amendment website.”
> WorldNet Daily reports on U.S. Rep. Chris Cannon (R-Utah).
>

http://www.worldnetdaily.com/bluesky_bresnahan/20000208_xex_congressman_

.sht
> ml
>
> D. Bloomfield Press. http://www.gunlaws.com
> The website for Alan Korwin and his “Gun Laws” series of books,
> which supply the full text of gun laws for the U.S. and
> various states. Also, the site has many informative articles by
Korwin,
> including some excellent articles on the instant check.
>
>
> =======================================================
> 2. “Why the President is wrong on Gun Control.”
> By Rick Castaldo
>
> Bill Clinton once again used the Columbine tragedy as a prop in
> Pushing his big government, liberal agenda. To make matters
> much worse, he claimed to be acting in the name of my family.
> You see, my son is in a wheelchair because of Columbine.
> But our family doesn’t believe that more gun control is the
> right answer.
>
> In what was thankfully his last state of the Union speech, the
President
> asked for still more gun control. He offered a typical “big
government”
> solution on how to cut crime, asking honest Americans to fill out more
> forms, pay more money, and get another license. How much bigger would
he
> make the BATF so that it could administrator a new licensing law? How
many
> more of our tax dollars would disappear in fees and licensing costs?
Would
> his minions create a new federal agency that further intrudes into
> law-abiding citizen’s lives. Once again the President has shamefully
> demonstrated that he does not understand the problem. It’s the
criminals,
> stupid.
>
> Selected for special attention during the Clinton speech was Tom
Mauser,
> Who lost his son Daniel at Columbine. Mr. Clinton spoke about Mr.
Mauser,
> Who has dedicated himself to removing guns from the streets. Mr.
Clinton,
> disingenuous as usual, spun a good yarn about how Columbine has
galvanized
> people like Mr. Mauser to unite and work to reduce crime. Mr. Clinton
> would have us believe that everyone affected by Columbine feels more
> gun control is the answer. Although working to accomplish that is
certainly
> Mr. Mauser’s right, Bill Clinton is using him as a pawn, as he has
done
> with so many others during his political career. Passing more laws and
> instituting more regulation will not force criminals to change their
> behavior.
> Putting them in prison will.
>
> Does the President really believe that criminals are going take the
time
> to get owners licenses? Does the president believe criminals are
worried
> about consequences from the federal government? Does the president
> believe in anything other than big brother running our lives? Will he
> fire Janet Reno if she doesn’t prosecute the new laws? What will be
the
> fine for using a handgun when you have no license, Community service?
>
> After my son Richard was injured at Columbine, I did a little of my
own
> research. I found that there were literally thousands of laws
regarding
> guns, some twenty thousand, both Federal and State. The two murderers
at
> Columbine broke at least seventeen (maybe more) different laws.
Richard
> Was asked early on about how he felt about guns and if America needed
more
> laws.
>
> His response: a few more laws wouldn’t have made any difference at
> Columbine. I found that of some 6000 students who had brought guns to
> school, a federal crime, the Clinton justice department prosecuted 13.
Of
> the thousands of felons who violated the Brady Bill, Ms. Reno found
time
> to prosecute only a few. I wonder how many of these felons bought
their guns
> illegally when Ms. Reno let them walk. I wonder how many innocent
lives
> they impacted. I’m sure that if Mr. Clinton gets the license law
through
> Congress, she’ll do a better job. Right.
>
> My son and I both believe that if criminals received swift prosecution
> followed by meaningful punishment, crime would drop in this country.
It
> was interesting to note that Clinton took credit for dropping crime
rates in
> the U.S. As shameful as it is, the federal government has done
nothing to
> contribute to this trend. I give credit to a law and order agenda by
many
> of the Governors and Mayors recently elected, replacing the failed,
big
> government liberals. A few of the biggest cities in America account
for
> the huge decrease in crime. New York City alone accounted for a huge
> fraction
> of the decline in violent crime in this country. Of course that was
after a
> liberal was replaced with a mayor who put criminals in jail. It is no
> surprise that it has been accomplished by enforcing the law. It is
also no
> surprise that it isn’t Clinton clones who are doing it.
>
> Criminals will never change their behavior until our leaders change
> theirs. Passing more gun laws in this country won t help reduce crime.
> Where was the rush to outlaw fertilizer and diesel fuel following the
> Oklahoma City bombing?
>
> If politicians really care about the Columbine victims and all the
> Suffering they have endured, they should stop using us to score cheap
> political points. Mr. Clinton obviously doesn’t feel my family’s pain.
> ————-
>
> Richard Castaldo is the father of a student who was shot at Columbine,
and
> must now use a wheelchair.
>
>
>
> =========================================================
> 3. The Founders’ Reading of Ancient History. by David B. Kopel.
> >From the February 2000 issue of Chronicles.
> [This version is slightly different from the version
> published in Chronicles.]
>
> Why is the Second Amendment, like much of the rest
> of the constitutional limitations on abuse of
> government power, under such consistent attack?
> One of the most important reasons is depressing
> historical ignorance of most Americans, even those
> with a college education.
>
> When the new semester begins at your local
> liberal arts college, count the number of
> classes where the ultra-p.c. autobiography
> “I Rigoberta Menchu” will be required; compare
> this with the number of classes where Tacitus,
> Livy, Plutarch, or any other classical historian,
> will be required reading.
>
> The Menchu book has been proven to be a hoax; for
> example, she claims that she became a Communist
> because the Guatemalan army stole her father’s
> land. It turns out that her father just lost a
> boundary dispute with one of his relatives. She
> claims that she was a dirt-poor illiterate peasant.
> Actually, her family was far from poor, and she
> learned how to read at the private school her family
> sent her to. Yet American professors continue to insist
> that students, in order to acquire a well-rounded
> understanding of the human condition, must read
> lies from a Communist rather than true accounts
> of the story of Western civilization.
>
> But suppose that modern education was turned
> upside-down, and students were required to read
> Tacitus and Livy and other classical historians,
> rather than modern prevaricators. The Founders of
> the American Republic had all learned the sad story
> of the Roman Republic. What the Founders knew,
> and what very few current college students will
> ever learn, are lessons that illustrate the
> importance of a virtuous armed populace,
> as an essential check on the inevitable depredations
> of a central government and its standing army.
>
> Although the fact that almost all the Founders
> had a classical education is well known, Carl
> Richard’s excellent book The Founders and the
> Classics: Greece, Rome, and the American Enlightenment
> is the first book to examine exactly what the
> Founders learned from ancient history. Let’s
> look at some of the lessons which illuminate the Second Amendment.
>
> While the gun prohibition mentality declares the Second
> Amendment obsolete, the Founders understood that
> events of many years past could provide useful guidance
> for the present. John Adams wrote that whenever he
> read Thucydides and Tacitus, “I seem to be only
> reading the History of my own Times and my own Life.”
>
> While virtuous Romans and Greeks were models to the
> Founders, the anti-models were no less important.
> And no-one stood was worse than Julius Caesar,
> the murderer of the Roman republic.
>
> Nor did the founders believe that tyranny should be
> resisted only passively. Sarah Brady’s lead attorney,
> Dennis Henigan, claims that anyone who believes that
> illegitimate government can be resisted by force
> under the Second Amendment is an “insurrectionist.”
> Actually, the Founders carefully distinguished between
> legitimate resistance to tyranny, and illegitimate
> insurrection against lawful authority. In the Founders’
> eyes, the former was clearly appropriate.
>
> For example, after the imposition of the Stamp Act
> in 1765, John Adams praised “the same great spirit
> which once gave Caesar so warm a reception” and
> “which first seated the great grandfather” of King
> George III on the throne of England
>
> Caesar’s assassin Brutus was venerated, as was the
> much earlier Lucius Brutus, who was credited with
> leading the overthrow of the Rome’s Tarquin monarchy
> in 510 B.C.
>
> Thomas Jefferson lamented that so many good Romans
> chose suicide rather than life under an Emperor,
> when “the better remedy” would be “a poignard
> [a small dagger] in the breast of the tyrant.”
>
> Caesar’s use of the standing army to subdue Rome,
> after Caesar had subdued Gaul, was used by
> anti-federalists to show that even an army
> drawn from the best and most faithful and most
> honorable parts of society (in contrast to the
> British Redcoats, whose lower ranks were from the
> dregs of society) could still be used to enslave
> their country.
>
> Even those, such as James Madison, who felt at
> least a small standing army to be necessary
> were aware of the dangers. As Madison wrote in
> Federalist 41, “the liberties of Rome proved
> the final victim to her military triumphs.”
>
> Denunciations of the perils of standing armies
> frequently pointed to the many coups perpetrated
> by Imperial Rome’s standing armies. During the
> final months of Watergate, many citizens worried
> that President Nixon would mobilize the 82d
> Airborne Division, in order to retain power.
> This was precisely the fear of the imperial
> presidency articulated by George Mason: “When
> he is arraigned for treason, he has the command
> of the army and navy, and may surround the
> Senate with thirty thousand troops. It brings
> to recollection the remarkable trial of Milo at Rome.”
>
> Here, Mason was referring to the famous trial of
> T. Annius Milo in 52 B.C. Milo and Clodius
> were rival demagogues and gang leaders in the
> decaying Roman Republic. When Milo and his gang
> ran into Clodius and his gang on the Appian Way
> (the main intercity road), Clodius ended up dead.
> Milo was put on trial, with the great orator
> Cicero serving as his defense attorney. But
> while Cicero wrote a brilliant argument in
> Milo’s defense, he was intimidated into not
> delivering it as written, after Milo’s enemy
> Pompey surrounded the courtroom with troops.
>
> Although Milo was deprived of the benefits of
> Cicero’s eloquence, history was not. The
> written version of the speech survived, and was
> studied by the many high school and grammar school
> students in colonial America who were expected to
> read Cicero in the original in order to master the
> Latin language:
>
> “There exists a law, not written down anywhere,
> but inborn in our hearts; a law which comes to
> us not by training or custom or reading but
> by derivation and absorption and adoption from
> nature itself; a law which has come to us not
> from theory but from practice, not by instruction
> but by natural intuition. I refer to the law which
> lays it down that, if our lives are endangered by
> plots or violence or armed robbers or enemies,
> any and every method of protecting ourselves is
> morally right. When weapons reduce them to silence,
> the laws no longer expect one to wait their
> pronouncements. For people who decide to wait
> for these will have to wait for justice, too–and
> meanwhile they must suffer injustice first. Indeed,
> even the wisdom of a law itself, by sort of tacit
> implication, permits self-defense, because it
> is not actually forbidden to kill; what it does,
> instead, is to forbid the bearing of a weapon with
> the intention to kill. When, therefore, inquiry passes
> on the mere question of the weapon and starts to
> consider the motive, a man who is used arms in
> self-defense is not regard is having carried with a homicidal aim.”
>
> Thus, natural law and common sense make it “morally right”
> to use deadly force to defend against a deadly attack.
> James Wilson quoted the above words of Cicero, in full,
> in a lecture series he gave to the law students at the
> College of Philadelphia (later named “Penn”) in 1790.
> The lectures were attended by President Washington,
> Vice-President Adams, Secretary of State Jefferson,
> and other leaders.
>
> Today, more than half of all Americans live in states
> where an adult with a clean record can obtain a permit
> to carry a firearm for lawful protection. Handgun
> Control, Inc., which opposes armed self-defense in
> all circumstances, naturally opposes these laws, and
> claims that they will lead to murder. But Cicero
> points out the logical distinction in Roman law:
> carrying a weapon for lawful defense was perfectly
> lawful; only carrying with malign intent was a crime.
>
> Later in the written speech, Cicero declared,
> “Civilized people are taught by logic, barbarians
> by necessity, communities by tradition; and the
> lesson is inculcated even in wild beasts by nature
> itself. They learn that that they have to defend
> their own bodies and persons and lives from violence
> of any and every kind by all the means within their power.”
>
> This lesson, unfortunately, has been unlearned by too
> many modern Americans who live in what attorney
> Jeffrey Snyder, in his brilliant Public Interest essay,
> terms “A Nation of Cowards.”
> [http://www.saf.org/journal/6_nation.html.]
> The Founders greatly
> feared the vicious cycle of corruption of the
> citizenry fostered by Rome’s ever-expanding government.
> The Roman free bread program produced a vast body of
> citizens too lazy to work to earn their daily bread.
> Similarly, modern American police chiefs who warn
> citizens not to use force to protect themselves
> from force “have created a population of millions
> of people without the courage or character
> to protect themselves or their families from deadly assault.”
>
> The Roman historian Livy wrote a 142 volume
> history of Rome; 35 of the volumes survived
> to be available to the American Founders.
> Despite pressure from the Emperor Augustus
> Caesar, Livy refused to revise his history,
> which strongly supported Rome’s honorable
> past a republic, rather than its degraded
> present as an Empire.
>
> Livy tells us that in the days before the
> Republic was established, under the Roman
> King Servius Tullius (578-535 BC) “the right
> to bear arms had belonged solely to the
> patricians.” But then “plebeians were given
> a place in the army, which was to be
> re-classified according to every man’s
> property, i.e., his ability to provide
> himself a more less complete equipment
> for the field…” Thus, all citizens “capable
> of bearing arms were required to provide”
> their own weapons.
>
> This was obviously a militia.
>
> But when Rome moved away from a militia
> system, toward a mercenary standing army,
> the character of the citizenry began to
> decay, so that they eventually became
> unfit for self-government. Edward Gibbon’s
> The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire
> explains: “In the purer ages of the [Roman]
> commonwealth, the use of arms was reserved
> for those ranks of citizens who had a country
> to love, a property to defend, and some share
> in enacting those laws which it was their
> interest, as well as duty to maintain.
> But in proportion as the public freedom was
> lost in extent of conquest, war was
> gradually improved into an art, and
> degraded into a trade.”
>
> As the Roman standing army secured the
> vast Roman Empire against barbarian incursions,
> the people of the Empire, having lost their
> martial valor, lost their capacity for
> self-government. “They received laws and
> governors from the will of their sovereign,
> and trusted for their defense to a
> mercenary army,” Gibbon explained.
> The once-great Romans became, morally speaking,
> “a race of pigmies,” and an easy target
> for the German tribes whose conquest of
> decrepit Rome finally “restored a manly
> spirit of freedom.”
>
> >From the destruction of the Roman republic
> by Julius and Augustus Caesar, to the later
> conquest of the degenerate Roman people by
> the barbarians, what was the lesson drawn
> by Gibbon? “A martial nobility and stubborn
> commons, possessed of arms, tenacious
> of property, and collected into constitutional
> assemblies, form the only balance capable of
> preserving a free constitution against the
> enterprises of an aspiring prince.”
>
> To the American Founders, private ownership of
> the tools of liberty (such as firearms and
> printing presses) was important, but even more
> important than owning tools of liberty was
> understanding liberty’s importance. In the 1772
> annual oration in memory of the Boston Massacre,
> Joseph Warren recalled Roman history: “It was
> this noble attachment to a free constitution
> which raised ancient Rome from the smallest
> beginnings to the bright summit of happiness
> and glory to which she arrived; it was the
> loss of this which plunged her from that
> summit into the black gulph of infamy and slavery.”
>
> As Carl Richard summarizes, “The founders’
> immersion in ancient history had a profound
> effect upon their style of thought. They
> developed from the classics a suspicious cast
> of mind. They learned from the Greeks and Romans
> to fear conspiracies against that liberty.
> Steeped in a literature whose perpetual theme
> was the steady encroachment of tyranny on
> liberty, the founders became virtually obsessed
> with spotting its approach, so they might avoid
> the fate of their classical heroes. It is been
> said of the American Revolution that never
> was there a revolution with so little cause.
> Whatever his faults, George III was hardly
> Caligula or Nero; however illegitimate, the
> moderate British taxes were hardly equivalent
> to the mass executions of the emperors. But
> since the founders believed that the central
> lesson of the classics was the every illegitimate
> power, however small, ended in slavery, they
> were determined to resist such power.”
>
> The Second Amendment, besides its practical effect
> in ensuring that physical power will not be a
> government monopoly, helps to preserve a
> “noble attachment to a free constitution”
> by teaching the people that resistance to tyranny
> is not “insurrection,” but is the command of the Constitution.
>
> The ownership of firearms by modern Americans
> is important not just for practical reasons
> (such as protecting homes from criminal invaders)
> but for moral ones. A homeowner who never has to
> use his gun for self-defense still possesses something
> that his unarmed next-door neighbor does not: he has
> made the decision that he, personally, will take
> responsibility for defending his family. The armed
> homeowner’s self-reliance has powerful moral consequences,
> as does the disarmed neighbor’s decision that his
> family’s safety will depend exclusively on the
> government, and not on himself.
>
> The moral, character-building aspect of defensive
> firearms ownership is one of the most important
> reasons why tyrants–as well as more benign people
> who believe in the supremacy of the state–are so
> determined to disarm as many people as possible.
> Not only does firearms ownership interfere
> (as a practical matter) with government domination
> of society, firearms ownership creates a population
> which is independent and self-reliant, and which
> does not see itself as dependent on the state.
>
> Weapons prohibition has deadly practical consequences.
> The moral consequences are even worse, as our
> Founding Fathers learned from their study of the
> sad fate of the Roman people.
>
> =========================================================
> 4. “Results are in on British Gun Laws.”
> By Dr. Michael Brown
>
> Many advocates of gun control point to Great Britain as an example of
> a gun free paradise where violence and crime are rare.
>
> Well, there may be trouble in paradise. Our friends across the
> Atlantic did tighten their already strict gun laws, with the Firearms
> Act of 1997, making self defense with a firearm completely impossible
> for ordinary people. Obedient British subjects generally maintained a
> stiff upper lip as they surrendered their guns and their rights. How
> much did crime drop as a result of this sacrifice? It did not drop at
> all. In fact, according to the local newspapers, England is being
> swept by a wave of crime, including plenty of gun crimes.
>
> The London Times published a story on January 16th that sums up the
> situation rather well. The headline reads, “Killings Rise As 3
> Million Illegal Guns Flood Britain”. Armed crime rose 10% in 1998 and
> the numbers for 1999 may be even more dramatic. The British
> experiment with gun prohibition has resulted in the same outcome as
> other forms of prohibition. Since guns are banned, every criminal
> wants one and it is very profitable to smuggle them in. According to
> a police spokesman, weapons from Eastern Europe, some still new in
> their boxes, are turning up during investigations. Criminals now have
> unprecedented access to high quality guns at affordable prices.
>
> The Manchester Guardian, on January 14th, laments the fact that their
> city is being called “Gunchester”. Police sources were quoted as
> saying that guns had become “almost a fashion accessory” among young
> criminals on the street. Some gangs are armed with fully automatic
> weapons and the generally unarmed British police say that they risk
> confronting teenagers on mountain bikes brandishing machine guns.
>
> The Sunday Express sent a team of reporters out to investigate the
> problem and their story of June 20, 1999 said, “In recent months there
> have been a frightening number of shootings in Britain’s major cities,
> despite new laws banning gun ownership after the Dunblane tragedy.
> Our investigation established that guns are available through means
> open to any criminally minded individual.”
>
> The government is expected to respond by further tightening the laws
> on weapons of all sorts. Additional regulations controlling knives
> and airguns are said to be in the works, although this might be
> likened to beating a dead horse. The very act of armed self defense
> is already punishable by law. That right has been handed over to the
> government in return for a promise of protection.
>
> Perhaps motor vehicles need to be more heavily regulated as well.
> According to a commercial security report titled “New Wave in Retail
> Crime”, British bandits are using vehicles to smash storefronts in a
> type of crime called “ramraiding”, which would be impractical if
> shopkeepers had the option of arming themselves. The report states
> that, “Many retailers have actually gone out of business because of
> the repeated attacks on their premises.”
>
> This recent rise in crime is part of an upward trend that correlates
> well with the gradual tightening of gun control over the last several
> decades. The relationship between increasing gun control and rising
> crime is well documented in a scholarly 1999 report by Olsen and
> Kopel, “All the Way Down the Slippery Slope – Gun Prohibition in
> England”.
> [Available at http://www.goa-texas.org/kopel-2.htm ]
>
> The traditional view of England as a low crime society has also been
> seriously damaged by the 1998 study titled, “Crime and Justice in the
> United States and in England and Wales”, which is available from the
> U.S. Bureau of Justice Statistics. This report concludes that English
> crime rates in the period from 1981 to 1996 were actually higher than
> in the United States due to differences in the way crimes are
> reported.
>
> The negative result from gun control laws should not surprise us.
> American cities have had similar counterproductive results whenever
> gun control has been implemented locally. Reports from Australia are
> similar. It is no coincidence that crime typically goes up after a
> government enacts new gun restrictions. Several American researchers
> and criminologists have explored this effect. Whenever people give up
> their right to self defense in return for a promise of government
> protection, the results have been negative. No amount of social
> engineering will change this basic consequence of human nature.
>
> Unfortunately, the downward progression of gun control goes only one
> way. British subjects will never regain the basic human right to
> armed self defense.
>
> Proponents of gun control in America have a lot of explaining to do.
> Unfortunately, with the aid of their media allies, this new
> information will probably be ignored completely or brushed off with a
> few carefully chosen sound bites.
> ————–
>
> The author is an optometrist in Vancouver, Washington and moderator of
> an e-mail list for discussion of gun issues in Washington State.
> He may be contacted by e-mail at: [email protected]
>
> No payment is required for use of this column, but please notify the
> author if you use it and please include his email address for readers
> to respond.
>
> Dr. Michael S. Brown – moderator of the WA-CCW email list
> http://www.geocities.com/rkba2000
>
> ===========================================================
> As always, the Independence Institute website contains
> extensive information on:
>
> 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!
>
> IN THEIR OWN WORDS
> The Founding Fathers
> collected and edited by T.J. Stiles
> introduction by William Pencak
> (Perigee Books, 1999)
> Eye-witness accounts of the major events, from both sides in the
struggle.
> A wonderful book on the American Revolution.
> FF8136W (paperback) 359p. Price: $15.95
> http://laissezfaire.org/ff8136.cfm?AssociateID=L50
>