Demythologizing Liberal Illusions: Gun Control vs. American Freedom
By J. Curtis Lovelace
FrontPageMagazine.com | November 21, 2001

ON SEPT. 11, 2001, enemies of liberty brought their war against the West to
the shores of America, which means now is an opportune time to dig deeply
into the foundations of freedom, including that great bulwark the 2nd
Amendment.

But it’s not just the historic situation that now confronts us that
recommends a reading of Richard Poe’s The Seven Myths of Gun Control. Even
before September 11, Poe’s book would have merited a reading, not just
because it is so very well and entertainingly written but also because
understanding the roots of freedom is always part of accepting Benjamin
Franklin’s challenge to keep this republic.

Poe is a journalist and editor of FrontPageMagazine.com. He knows how to
decipher the meaning of statistics and how to break through the wall of
politicized information that so often dominates discussion of this issue,
especially as it has come to be portrayed by the major media.

Poe has organized his material into seven myths that the mainstream media
and liberals in general have passed off as truth, and what I’ll do is
briefly discuss them in turn before examining his treatment of a model
country when it comes to guns and freedom.

*** Myth No. 1: Guns increase violent crime. Both Australia and England have
already banned personal ownership of guns, but violent crime is not down in
either country. In fact, Poe reports, in Australia violent crime is up in
every category. From 1997 to 1999, murders were up 6.5%, and attempted
murders rose by 12.5%. Increases were also reported in assaults, kidnappings
and armed robberies.

Things are not much better in the mother country, which ranked second on a
list of violent crime “among industrialized nations.” No. 1 on the list is
Australia. Meanwhile, the United States, assumed by many to be the most
violent of all nations–and a nation in which gun ownership is still
possible–isn’t even among the top 10.

*** Myth No.2: Pulling a gun on a criminal endangers you more than the
criminal. Offering both statistics and personal anecdotes, Poe argues that
aimed resistance by private citizens is effective. “Most criminals,” Poe
writes, “are not the fearless supermen portrayed in films such as Predator
II. Most are not skilled martial artists capable of plucking a loaded gun
from a determined adversary’s hands. By and large, they are cowards who prey
on women and old people, seeking to avoid a fair fight at all costs.”
According to Poe, in 98% of “reported cases, criminals flee the moment they
realize their intended victim is armed.”

*** Myth No. 3: Guns pose a special threat to children. We’ve probably all
seen the gut-wrenching billboards telling us how many children will die of
gunshot wounds any given day. But, Poe says, the statistics marshaled in
support of this myth are hardly to be believed.

For one thing, because of rather broad definition of a “child,” the
statistics overstate the number of children killed by guns. “When citing gun
death figures,” Poe writes, “antigun activists typically categorize people
up to twenty years of age as ‘children.’ This allows them to include the
astronomical death toll among black and Hispanic young men involved in drug
trafficking.” Poe argues that more children die each year from such causes
as automobile accidents, drowning, fires and bike accidents than from
firearms.

*** Myth No. 4: The 2nd Amendment applies only to militiamen. Gun-banners
like to portray the 2nd Amendment as something that applied to colonial
America, but not our “modem” era. But, as Poe points out, even noted liberal
constitutional scholar Lawrence Tribe believes the 2nd Amendment “guarantees
to each and every American a right to keep and bear aims.” [See also
"Emerson Decision Upholds Individual's Right to Bear Arms," HUMAN EVENTS
last week, page 12.]

*** Myth No.5: The 2nd Amendment is an obsolete relic of the frontier era.
“Frontiersmen needed guns, we don’t,” is one of the cries of the
establishment elite. But, says Poe, Americans need guns not only to protect
ourselves from would-be criminals, but also from the possibility of attack
by one’s own government, a possibility that clearly is not merely a
theoretical possibility. An unarmed citizenry is the dream of every tyrant,
Taliban or otherwise.

“Deterrence works,” Poe writes. “As horrifying as nuclear war might be, we
stand ready for it. Our missiles rest in their silos, ready to fly. Because
we are prepared for nuclear war, we have enjoyed fifty-five years of nuclear
peace. So it should be with the armed and vigilant citizenry prescribed by
our founding fathers. Their readiness to fight provides the best insurance
that such a fight will never be necessary.”

*** Myth No. 6: We should treat guns the same way we treat cars, requiring
licenses for all users. Clearly, the licensing of cars has not stopped the
carnage on the highways, and the licensing of guns will stop gun crimes only
if gun-toting criminals obey all the laws. Poe asserts that the real reason
for licensing is so that police can have a record of every legally owned gun
in America. And to understand why the power establishment would like every
gun licensed, see the next myth.

*** Myth No. 7: Reasonable gun-control measures are no threat to law-abiding
gun owners. It does seem, at times, that gun-owners are being unreasonable
in their quest for fewer controls. But the point is not so much today’s
tactical restriction as it is tomorrow’s loss of rights. Poe contends, as do
many others concerned for the rights of gun-owning Americans, that licensing
is merely a pathway to confiscation. “Once we have submitted to universal
licensing, registration, and background checks,” he writes, “we will be
helpless to prevent the next step: Confiscation.”

One can question whether gun-banners know what the word “reasonable” means.
In my own state of Massachusetts, law-abiding gun-owners are treated worse
than pedophiles and other convicted criminals. I recently moved, and as a
gun-owner, I am required to report my move and new address to the chief of
police in the old town, the chief of police in the town to which I move and
a state agency–all by certified letter in a specified time period.
Criminals don’t have to do that

“We stand at a crossroads today;” Poe writes. “For the first time since our
Constitution was drafted, a major component of the Bill of Rights–the right
to keep and bear arms–is in danger of being jettisoned.” Any reasonable
person might ask, if one right can be excised from the Constitution, might
another right, under different circumstances, also be deleted? Which one is
next, freedom of speech, freedom of assembly? And how long before America
stops being America?

Big Lessons From Small Nation

Having lived in Switzerland, I enjoyed Poe’s extensive case study of that
country as an armed nation with little violent crime.

“No country in the world is more heavily armed, man for man, than
Switzerland,” Poe writes. Yet, “it can be argued that the peace and freedom
enjoyed by generations of Swiss may be the direct result of that country’s
long tradition of what it calls ‘armed neutrality.’”

Switzerland “has the highest per capita firepower in the world.” Yet that
small, peaceful nation “has managed to stay out of both world wars and to
avoid dictatorship, invasion, and revolution.”

Poe reports that the murder rate in Switzerland is about the same as that of
Japan, where guns are outlawed. The murder rate is much lower than that of
England, Canada, Australia and New Zealand.

Family life may be an important factor in this regard. Families are more
stable in Switzerland than in most places in the world. According to Poe,
“the percentage of children born out of wedlock was 8.7 in 1998–the lowest
in Europe. The percentage of women who work outside the home is also lower
in Switzerland than in any other European country. Families spend much of
their free time together. Studies have shown that Swiss teenagers prefer the
company of their parents to that of their peers.”

So whether one is examining the stats or history of Switzerland–from the
overthrow of Austria to the Swiss refusal to side with the Nazis, who had
plans to invade Switzerland–Poe uses that Alpine country as an attractive
model for the possibility of an America that is safe and free, guarded at
her flanks by the watchful eye of an intact 2nd Amendment.

But what is it that drives liberals to embrace restrictive gun laws? One
assumes the problem is not sheer lack of intelligence. Clearly they can
understand the logic of the bumper sticker that reads: “When we outlaw guns,
only outlaws will have guns.” So it is not stupidity that drives liberals to
more restrictive gun laws.

Liberals, however, do use tax dollars to create dependency (though they
dress it up with the word “interdependence”), which is often camouflaged as
compassion. This dependency, however dressed up, is essential to the liberal
vision of a power structure that organizes life around the state.
Cradle-to-grave dependency is an ideological dream come true to the person
who believes that ultimately the state can be trusted to know and do what’s
best for the people.

Where does gun control fit in this scheme of dependency? Well, it’s part of
an approach that fosters the creation of the biggest class of dependents of
all–the entire citizenry. Though liberals rarely state their view this
baldly, the logic of the liberal vision suggests that people in particular
and society as a whole will be better off when all law-abiding citizens need
to wait for the police to show up to protect them from gun-wielding
criminals.

But, clearly, cradle-to-grave protection from violent crime is a promise
government cannot keep if a people wishes to keep its freedom. The
government wasn’t there September 11 when ordinary American citizens paid
the ultimate price to protect other Americans and avert even greater tragedy
by attacking the Islamic hijackers and downing a jet plane in Pennsylvania.

By disarming law-abiding citizens, however, liberals would put an entire
society at risk of attack–by neighborhood criminals, by international
terrorists, or even from a misguided governments has the guns to force
people to accept its law and “compassion” should they need a little
convincing (for their own good, of course).

“Guard with jealous attention the public liberty” urged Patrick Henry.
“Nothing will preserve it but downright force. Whenever you give that force
up, you are ruined.”

This book is a plea to not give into a statist dependency that would spoil
the dream of freedom in America and enslave Americans in the name of
compassion, the greater good, or of whatever slogan pollsters think will
manipulate the masses toward predetermined ends. And while the final option
for protecting that dream may be “downright force,” as Henry said, that
force may never have to-be employed if lessons of books like this are
applied.

Mr. Lovelace is a writer for Human Events.