An American Patriot in Los Angeles

By Timothy Wheeler, M.D.

Last week saw the bruising of liberal sensibilities with the timely opening of The Patriot in America’s movie theaters. Mel Gibson brilliantly plays South Carolina widower Benjamin Martin during the Revolutionary War. Battle-weary from the French and Indian War, he finds himself inexorably pulled into the fight against British tyranny.

Plenty of politically incorrect themes are splashed across the big screen, including manliness, patriarchalism, and lots of guys with guns. During a pre-release screening in Los Angeles, some viewers were said to gasp in shock at seeing Martin hand rifles to his two young sons. The father has schooled them well in marksmanship, reminding them, “Aim small, miss small.”

But Gibson’s character resorts to this drastic measure only after the British have murdered one of his boys, burned his home, and carried off his eldest son, Gabriel, to be hanged. An enraged Martin and the two younger sons follow the Redcoats, ambush them, and save Gabriel.

To understand how anyone could condemn such a courageous act it is instructive to fast-forward to the present in Los Angeles. Some city officials seem to be guided not by honor and family unity, but by a bureaucracy that corrodes those ideals. In perhaps the best argument yet for school vouchers, the City Council is considering a ban on the drill rifles used by students in its Junior Reserve Officer Training Corps (ROTC). The rifles are disabled and completely incapable of firing a single round. Still they are guns, school officials say. Banning the drill rifles is only consistent with the district’s zero tolerance policy on guns at school.

The durable mindlessness of this reasoning is not lost on the students themselves. Hollywood High sophomore Francisco Rodriguez wrote in the Los Angeles Times, “In ROTC the instructors explain the history of guns, how to carry them and how to be responsible whenever we see a gun at home or at school by putting it away. It gives us an understanding of the weapon.” Such an understanding is precisely what school officials are laboring to prevent.

Mr. Rodriguez articulates an understanding Americans have had since colonial times: young people can and should be educated about guns and their proper use. Generations of American kids, in cities and on farms, have learned how to shoot straight and to avoid misusing guns under the watchful eye of adults, usually fathers.

The U.S. Department of Justice’s own research (www.ncjrs.org/pdffiles/urdel.pdf) has shown that boys who own legal firearms have much lower rates of delinquency and drug use than those who possess guns illegally. The legal gun owners are even slightly less delinquent than boys who do not own guns.

Could the good records of the law-abiding gun owners possibly be the result of loving parental guidance? Not in the zero-tolerance world of Los Angeles school officials, who view all guns as evil and all facts as irrelevant. These postmodern Puritans would have sentenced Benjamin Martin to anger management classes.

In schools across the country, shooting teams are being disbanded in misguided attempts to prevent more tragedies like the Columbine massacre. In the process, a great teaching opportunity is being abandoned. What better classroom than the shooting range to teach the precious lessons of concentration, discipline, and moderation? What better way for teachers to show trust in young students and in return to gain their trust?

It is ironic that as we emerge from the bloodiest century in history we are discarding the spirit of self-defense, the first law of nature. Rather than accepting the historical inevitability of evil among nations and people, we seem to be wishing away the possibility that we may again have to go to war, or that a street thug will choose us as his next victim. Such childish thinking is far more dangerous than a junior ROTC student with a rifle.

Indeed, that illogic fuels the war on the entire culture of gun ownership. As opportunities to learn about firearms dwindle, so do opportunities to learn the virtues inherent in responsible gun ownership. Far from protecting them from danger, keeping our children from learning about guns leaves them defenseless in situations where that knowledge could be life saving.

The best lesson we can teach our children about guns is that they are powerful tools that can be used for good or bad. In defense against lethal aggression a gun is a piece of safety rescue equipment, a lesson that Martin’s sons learned so well. In the gravest extreme of danger the father and his young sons prevailed and survived, but only because the patriot taught his children well. Will we do the same for our children?