In 2000, Jews For the Preservation of Firearms Ownership posted an article by Dr. Sarah Thomson which explained in psychological terms exactly how gun control advocates shield themselves from reality . When I read this, I thought it was an interesting idea, but it seemed a little extreme to say that the bulk of gun control advocates are feel the way they do not merely because of ignorance, but because of complete irrationally.
My experiences with antigun nuts since then, and a bit of thought, have made me realize just how nutty these people really are. For example, one time when a libertarian friend and I were doing outreach at my college, two obnoxious socialists started trying to talk us into corners on a variety of issues. They would not address any of our rebuttals with anything more than a derisive "interesting" or "I see" and quickly fired off more questions. When they randomly got to September 11 and we explained how armed passengers or pilots could have prevented the tragedy, one of them asked something like "What happens if people just start shooting in the air around the plane?" to which my friend replied "I don't think people are that retarded." I sat there wondering if maybe these guys were.
Amusing anecdotes aside, such comments are typical in the gun control debate. Too often, claims are made that armed passengers or pilots would shoot each other over minor disputes and bring down the plane in doing so, or that guns are too complicated for anyone not trained by the government to use. Of course, these claims are ludicrous.
1. Armed people interact on a daily basis without shooting each other. I am one of the estimated 80 million gun owners in the United States. Sure, people anger me sometimes, but that does not mean I (or over 99.9% of gun owners) want to shoot them over it.
2. Large commercial aircraft would not be destroyed by a few holes in the fuselage. Even if cabin depressurization occurred, this would only rip the airplane apart if it happened to be in a movie at the time. Passengers and staff who wished to carry firearms aboard planes would probably be restricted to frangible ammunition that would not penetrate the fuselage anyway, but even if someone were to break the rules, a huge catastrophe would not result.
3. Firearms are not very complicated to use with a little bit of training, which can be received at courses offered all over the country. It is especially silly that antigun nuts would trust their lives to a pilot's ability to fly a complex aircraft, but would not trust him to be able to possess a simple handgun without randomly killing someone.
Of course, none of this is groundbreaking to seasoned defenders of the right to keep and bear arms. Such people are used to hearing the hysteria and misperceptions of hoplophobes. But is such hysteria the result of mere ignorance, or of irrationality?
When the arguments in favor of gun control are examined for their underlying premises, all that can be found are ridiculous ideas that would be funny if they weren't so widespread. We will first examine the above example a little more.
1. Could someone reasonably be ignorant of the fact that most gun owners do NOT shoot people over disagreements? You could say hoplophobes might not realize just how many gun owners are in America, but they must know that there are a lot of them. America is, after all, that scar on the face of otherwise gun-free Western Civilization. I would submit that gun control advocates are just not thinking rationally about the world around them.
2. Perhaps it is ignorance fueled in part by Hollywood that leads people to believe that airplanes will be ripped apart by depressurization resulting from small arms fire. But is it rational to actually believe that airplanes are this fragile? I would not say so. How are these machines able to fly if they fall apart so easily? And who would travel on them?
3. I will accept that a person who has never used a firearm might rationally believe that they are complicated to use (although it is still a bit outrageous to think so). However, this relates to a premise commonly found in the gun control debate, and in debates involving libertarianism in general. This premise holds that government agents are somehow mentally and perhaps physically superior to common citizens.
This premise is also ridiculously irrational. Government workers are merely individuals who happen to work for a certain employer. Their badges do not make them any more capable of making life or death decisions than the individuals in the seats next to them. Are they better trained? Maybe in some cases, but is a cop who passed a pistol certification course ten years ago and then requalifies annually really more capable of using firearms than a jewelry store owner who practices at the range almost every weekend? I would not expect this to be the case. This is obviously not meant to bash police officers, but to bash the mentality of always depending on them to save us.
We see the belief in the superiority of government officials throughout the arguments of gun control advocates. "What could a private citizen need an assault rifle for?" they ask. Well, what do government agents need them for? To engage multiple targets in a gunfight. Sometimes private citizens need to do this. Why should a person be denied the chance to defend himself with the best weapon he can afford (or to defend himself at all, depending on what the specific debate is) simply because he is a privately-trained or self-trained shop owner and not a government-trained police officer? (Of course, taxpayers buy guns for the government, and a lot of gunfights result from inhuman government policies, but don't even get me started on this…)
We see that hoplophobes want government to be as well armed as possible, and private citizens to be as poorly armed as possible. I like to define gun control as the doctrine resting on the principle that humanity will be safe if the most effective murderer of the 20th century controls all weapons. Yes, governments kill people - lots of people as it turns out. Can antigun nuts really be ignorant of this fact? I think that most Americans with at least some high school education must know that the German government murdered its own subjects as recently as 1945, and anybody who watches or reads any news knows of recent government organized massacres in Kosovo and Iraq (obviously there have been many more murderous regimes, but these seem to have received the most press as of late). It is doubtful that most gun control advocates are ignorant of government genocide.
So, with so much genocide in the twentieth century, how can people feel safe if the government is the only one armed? How can people say that the Second Amendment has no place in 2005 America? I think that it is largely because of three silly underlying beliefs.
1. The "It can't happen here" belief: It seems that many people honestly believe bad things happen only to other people. Many have commented that the shock of September 11 was not only a result of the magnitude of the atrocity, but also because it shattered the idea of the American continent being immune from terrorism. This is one example of the "It can't happen here" belief. Another example is the all too commonly held view that Americans could never be the victims of government oppression so severe that only force could stop it. We have courts, protests, media, and voting that would supposedly prevent such things from happening. One might say that this results from ignorance of history (Indian massacres, WWII Internment Camps, Waco, etc.), but faith in an altruistic U.S. government really is based on nothing but rhetoric and the blind loyalty people seem to be calling "patriotism" these days. It is irrational.
2. The "being helpless = being safe" belief: This relates not only to faith in the state, but also to the idea that individuals not associated with the state are pathetic. Both these ideas are important foundations of statism, and both are irrational. Antigun nuts simply do not believe that individuals are capable of making life or death decisions unless they are employed by the government. Because one cannot trust himself not to shoot someone over an argument or if a gun were to "go off," the government must be trusted to protect him. Such beliefs lead to the conclusion that the less one is able to protect oneself, the safer one is. This is not only irrational; it is ridiculous.
3. The "violence is uncivilized" belief: Some antigun nuts (and other assorted snobs) like to think that they are "above" using violence to solve problems. While I am a strong believer in the morality of retaliatory force, I do not really have a problem with people who feel that it is a mark of moral superiority to not defend one's own life (although I doubt that I could admire them). What I do have a problem with is the inconsistent nature in which such people often apply their principles. They are perfectly fine with using the force of others (like the police) to protect their lives (and often to enforce their favored form of behavior). It is as if only police and predators use violence and helpless citizens are caught in the middle.
I have only scratched the surface of these irrational beliefs, and will leave it to psychologists to say how people get them.
Of course, the stereotyping and deceit used by antigun nuts in order to ridicule their opposition is another example of the irrational nature of gun control advocacy. Right now I am using critical thinking (and a little humor in case anyone noticed) to ridicule my opposition; I am examining their arguments, finding the dubious premises upon which they lie, and questioning their rationality. Antigun nuts, on the other hand, display their prejudice by resorting to unfounded derogatory comments ranging from the asinine (e.g. "Gun owners are all stupid knuckle-dragging rednecks afraid the commie guv'mint is gonna come git em and take away their assault guns that they say they need for hunting") to the downright juvenile (e.g. "He just needs guns because he has a small wiener!")
Finally, the way antigun nuts treat the Second Amendment smacks of false reasoning. Even if one is ignorant of the various quotes that show federalists and antifederalists in agreement that each individual citizen should be armed, the Second Amendment, which most antigun nuts claim to be familiar with, is very clear in its meaning. However, they act as if the phrase "A well-regulated militia being necessary to the security of a free state," negates the following clause that "the right of the people to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed." Sometimes they even act as if gun rights advocates are hiding the first phrase from people because they do not want them to realize that the right to keep and bear arms applies only to people serving in the National Guard. This is ridiculous on several levels. The National Guard (formed over a hundred years after the Bill of Rights was ratified) is not a replacement for privately formed militias by any means. It is a locally based reserve arm of the United States military and its members do not keep their military arms, they only bear government-owned arms when they are told to do so. Such a meaning would also require the term "people" in the Second Amendment to not include ALL people, but only those in government service. Because the Bill of Rights is about placing limits on government power, how can a statement that means "States can form National Guard units under federal control, and only people who are in such units may bear arms" be consistent with the goal of the Bill of Rights? Antigun nuts also sometimes like to say that the Second Amendment was written so Americans could defend against an English invasion, as if the Bill of Rights is focused on limiting the English government and not on limiting the US government. The appalling amount of genocide in the last hundred years, as noted above, demonstrates that the need for civilians to be armed against government excess is at least as necessary now as it was in 1791.
The advocates of gun control probably have their reasoning abilities impaired by clinging to the beliefs of the mystical state and the incapability of the individual to make moral decisions without coercion. These are false beliefs that libertarians hope to shatter by exposing them for the garbage that they are. I guess this is one reason hoplophobes hate us so much.
The more I think about statist policies, the harder it gets to take them seriously.
i- Thompson, Sarah, M.D. "Raging
Against Self Defense: A Psychiatrist Examines The Anti-Gun Mentality,"
2000 http://www.jpfo.org/ragingagainstselfdefense.htm.
Yes, I am aware of the phrase "victim disarmament" as derogatory term
for gun control, but I do not like it because it seems to imply that
everyone is a victim.
Darian Worden is a sophomore at Rutgers University where he co-founded the Rutgers Libertarians (http://rlibertarians.tripod.com). He is involved in several libertarian projects and organizations and can be reached at dw1776@hotmail.com.