Year: 2008

Armed and Safe takes issue with Uncle’s old post about a certain demographic of people who, politically, it is unwise to frighten.  It is correct in one respect, that if we merely defer to people’s comfort level, we’ll end up like gun owners in the United Kingdom, who constantly did so, until that comfort level dropped to the point where sharp pointy things drive their political elite into hysterics.  We absolutely can’t defer to people’s discomfort when that discomfort is caused by ignorance and unfamiliarity, as is quite often the case with our cause.

The problem we ultimately face is, more than half our population fall into the category of being completely ignorant of firearms, and the broader culture that surrounds them.  In a representative form of government, this means we’re dependent on the acquiescence of this majority for the continued protection of that right.  If we lose that acquiescence, even the second amendment will not practically be a barrier to them.

I see no reason to increase the inevitability of that by essentially writing off the majority of the population as unpersuadable and uneducatable, by not thinking about how to tailor the pro-gun and pro-self-defense message so that a majority buy-in to our ideas. If changes in polling on support for gun control and gun rights are any indication, 9/11 and Katrina did quite a lot to convince Americans of the need for self-protection.  The gun rights side of the argument has been advancing, as people have seen Americans face situations where having a firearm might have been useful.

Uncle’s admonition shouldn’t be taken as a call to never push the boundaries, but it does suggest that attempting to crash through them can lead to disaster politically. The Civil Rights Movement committed to changing hearts and minds, and changing their political fortunes by working within the system.  It is a tragedy that the role armed self-defense played in the Civil Rights Movement has largely been lost to history.  We have to tell that part of the story.  But if the Black Panthers, who called for settling the issue through violence, had been the public face of the Civil Rights Movement, it would not have garnered the support it needed from mainstream Americans in order to get the landmark civil rights rulings, and subsequent civil rights acts.

In a functional and stable Republic, which largely respects the basic rights of its people, the population is going to abhor violence, or the threat of violence, as a means to solve political problems.  We’ve seen how well that type of system works in Iraq and Afghanistan.  There has to be a balance in the gun rights movement between our public rhetoric and our private beliefs.  If someone wants to polish their marksmanship, or learn about explosives, shaped charges, infantry tactics, and various other subjects, I think that’s their right as a free person.  But the moment the public believes we gun folks are learning these things to use violence as a political tool they are going to want to disarm us all in order to preserve the stability of The Republic.

Even in Alabama:

While Alabamians support gun ownership, they do think there should be some restrictions in certain cases. Sixty-seven percent of those surveyed said felons who have paid their debt to society should not have a right to own a gun while 77 percent said they favor prohibiting ownership of fully automatic weapons.

Speaking as someone who’d love to own a few title II firearms, if you can’t even get 30% of the public in Alabama to support legal machine gun ownership, you’ve got a long way to go on the issue.  Truth be told, I have my doubts it’s even achievable.  NRA has seemingly staked out a position that accepts the NFA and GCA restrictions on machine guns, while hinting at support for the status quo, and perhaps even a position against the 1986 Hughes Amendment.  Just getting the Hughes Amendment repealed would be a miracle.

I think this statement is mostly true:

I think that US gun ownership supporters are entirely too romantic about what widespread automatic weapons mean in societies where there is either no tradition that teaches about these kinds of weapons, or else in the course of war and disruption, such traditions have eroded.

It is not always the case, contra Heinlein, that an armed society is a polite society.  Sometimes it is simply a brutal and brutalizing society, and part of the enormous responsibility of gun owners is to teach and pass along a culture of responsible, individual gun use.  That is one reason why, paradoxically for the gun-controllers, a culture of responsible gun use requires that they be reasonably and openly widespread, widely and openly accepted but subject to social norms and cultural traditions of use.

Read the whole thing.  It’s well worth your time.  Too often in many of these civil conflicts, there aren’t really any “good guys” that are protecting themselves from “bad guys.”  You merely have two equally bad groups of people brutalizing each other, and the greater society.

While I’m skeptical that any international arms control agreement that the UN proposes can change this fact, it’s hard to deny that the proliferation of small arms into Africa and other areas of conflict has had a stabilizing effect.

I think where “good guys” can be easily identified, responsible nations shouldn’t be prohibited from supplying arms by international treaty.  But it’s simplistic to assume that in many of these third world conflicts, there’s anything to be gained by arming one group or another.  Too many of these societies are simply broken, and while there are, no doubt, good people being brutalized, arming them isn’t going to have much of an impact on the greater conflict.

Hat Tip to Dave Hardy

UPDATE: In the comments over at Dave’s I remembered one important point I wanted to make:

In societies which are completely broken, the strong brutalize the weak, and brutalize each other. Putting a rifle in a man’s hands does nothing if he doesn’t have the skill or motivation to stand up for his own life and liberty. We have a tradition of liberty and individual rights in this country which makes having an armed society work. If your cultural tradition is subservience to the strong, then having a gun accomplishes nothing for you.

I think you see this on a small scale.  I have a friend that lives in high crime area I won’t go to without being armed, but I do not suggest it for her because I do not believe she is capable of taking another life to defend hers.  I don’t understand it, but it’s how she is.  A firearm is merely a tool… the true weapon is your mind.

The Unforgiving Minute points out that Michigan has done away with its farcical “safety inspection” system, but did not go so far as it eliminate the requirements that handguns be registered.  Now you can carry out your unconstitutional indignities by mail instead of having to show up in person.  Not perfect, but an improvement, TD points out:

Historically-minded readers might be interested to know that this permit system was originally put in place by the KKK-backed “Public Acts of 1927″, a racist reaction to the case of Dr. Ossian Sweet, a black physician who dared to defend his home from a white mob in Detroit.

Not shocking.