Gun Rights for the Gun Shy
VIEW FROM THE RIGHT
Adam
Sparks, Special to SF Gate
Monday, May 12, 2003
©2003
SF Gate
"The strongest reason for people to retain
the right to keep and bear arms is, as a last resort, to protect
themselves against tyranny in government. No free man shall be
debarred the use of arms." -- Thomas Jefferson
I grew up in New York City's rough-and-tumble
Spanish Harlem in the 1960s. My highschool English teacher, who was
then a gray-haired grandma, doubled as our coach -- the rifle team's
coach. The range was in the school's basement, where we practiced
twice a week.
Our school was in a gritty neighborhood, replete
with five-story walk-up tenements -- it could have been a set for
"West Side Story." When the teen gangs weren't breaking into
cars, they were snapping their fingers and harmonizing their "doo-wa-diddie"s
on the street corners under the moonlight. It was there that our high
school supported a rifle team.
My experience was not all that unique. It was just
like that in cities across the country: Even San Francisco had high
schools, from Lowell to Lincoln, that had basement firing ranges. That
was in the decades before the politically correct gun-a-phobic
peaceniks took control over our schools. That was before the
self-esteem, whole-language, peace-and-love crowd commandeered our
youth and turned their brains into mush.
Ironically, during those days, the nation never had
a single school shooting and certainly no such thing as killing your
teacher for notoriety or a better grade. Guns were readily available
back then; it was a time that even teens could buy them in stores --
and with no waiting period. Fast-forward to the gun-a-phobic 21st
century: Now -- even though there are some 2,000 restrictive state and
federal gun laws and our kids all know guns are bad -- our nation's
violence, both with and without guns, has skyrocketed, with record
numbers of shootings at schools.
Nowadays, schools in most cities, particularly
liberal cities, have "violence-free zones" (that's kind of
like nuclear-free zones), and many, sadly, have metal detectors.
School violence, and the nature of the violence, are now so horrific
that single school shootings are so commonplace, they're barely
newsworthy.
Children are now taught to fear guns as the enemy,
rather to respect them. Educators would rather have elementary school
boys play with Barbie dolls than enact a pretend shootout at the OK
Corral. Showing any signs of testosterone is now punishable as a hate
crime. In San Francisco, the school board even went so far as to
propose a ban that would have prevented cops -- yes, cops -- from
coming into the schools with guns even when called in to make an
arrest.
That would have been San Francisco school policy
today if the police hadn't actually threatened not to show up at all.
Not many police are foolish enough to come into a violence-prone
school without arms, but the local gun-a-phobic politicians are. This
must have been a policy driven by a leftover residue of their
drug-induced halcyon days, when flowers were still the roughest things
of all. Drugs, body piercings, ripped pants hanging lower than your
butt and condoms are OK in our schools, but the Pledge of Allegiance,
God and rifle ranges? Not OK. Verboten. Connect the dots.
I can understand the knee-jerk reaction of many on
the Left to guns. After all, it was on April 20, 1999, that Eric
Harris and Dylan Klebold opened fire on fellow students at Columbine
High School in Littleton, Colo. They left 12 classmates and a teacher
dead, and 23 more seriously wounded. Harris and Klebold then committed
suicide. The Left's predictable reaction: "Guns did it -- get rid
of 'em."
Politicians are compelled to react and pass even
more gun laws. They have to look busy.
However, these new laws may actually be
exacerbating the problem. According to University of Chicago
researchers John Lott and William Landes, deaths and injuries from
mass public shootings fall dramatically after laws upholding the right
to carry concealed handguns are enacted. States from Alaska to Florida
give concealed-gun permits liberally, and some states, such as
Vermont, don't require a permit at all. The researchers' analysis of
data from an 18-year period, from 1977 to 1995, shows that the average
death rate from mass shootings plummeted by up to 91 percent after
such laws went into effect, and injuries dropped by more than 80
percent! Ironically, Colorado was in the midst of considering just
such a law at the time of the massacre at Littleton.
"People who engage in mass public shootings
are deterred by the possibility that law-abiding citizens may be
carrying guns," Lott concluded. "Such people may be
deranged, but they still appear to care whether they will themselves
be shot as they attempt to kill others."
Think about it. There are far fewer children today
who have legal access to, or familiarity with, guns, and yet the
violence is out of control. Maybe that conundrum offers a solution. A
July 1993 U.S. Department of Justice study, which received scant
publicity at the time it was released, found that "boys who own
legal firearms ... have much lower rates of delinquency and drug use
[than those who obtained them illegally] and are even slightly less
delinquent than nonowners of guns." It concluded, "For legal
gun owners, socialization appears to take place in the family; for
illegal gun owners, it appears to take place 'on the street.'"
The debate over the real meaning of the Second
Amendment to the Constitution is a relatively new one. The amendment
reads as follows: "A well regulated Militia being necessary to
the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear
arms shall not be infringed." The argument over its
interpretation is largely held in the minds of liberals, and the
pursuit of this conflict has been an outlet for their angst-ridden
gestalt.
To liberals, "gun control" really means
"gun confiscation." To a conservative, proper gun control
means knowing how and when to gently squeeze the trigger while holding
your breath. (That is not totally fair, of course, as many sincere
liberals are gun owners, and many understand the true meaning of this
amendment, though they are in the minority.)
How bad do most liberals hate guns and gun owners?
You know it's serious when Mayor Willie Brown is reduced to saying,
"I will
accept money from anyone and any group ... except Gun Owners of
California." It may come as a surprise to gun-grabbing
politicians such as New York's Charles Schumer or California's Barbara
Boxer, but 35 states now have concealed-weapons laws mandating that
the state "shall issue" a concealed-firearms permit, unless
it can show a compelling reason not to -- mental disorder, criminal
conviction, and so on. And in all these states, "studies
show crime has plummeted. After all, an armed society is a polite
society. Israel mandates that each family be armed and,
notwithstanding the terrorist violence, has a lower crime rate than
any European nation except Switzerland -- which, not so
coincidentally, also has a similar law mandating gun ownership.
To historians and constitutionalists, the meaning
of the Second Amendment is as plain as the nose on your face. Even the
courts, from our nation's founding until as recently as some 20 years
ago, have been clear. They consistently interpreted the amendment as
one that granted individual rights to citizens, much like the other
nine amendments, which, with the one in question, have collectively
come to be known as the Bill of Rights. And, fortunately, the courts
have stated how "Militia," as used in the Second Amendment,
should be interpreted.
More than 100 years after the passage of the Bill
of Rights, the U.S. Supreme Court proclaimed its decision in Presser
vs. Illinois (1886). Justice William B. Woods reaffirmed, "It
is undoubtedly true that all citizens capable of bearing arms
constitute the reserved military force or reserve militia of the
United States, as well as that of the states; and in view of this
prerogative of the general government as well as of its general
powers, the states cannot, even laying the constitutional provisions
in question out of view, prohibit the people from keeping and bearing
arms, so as to deprive the United States of their rightful resource
for maintaining the public security, and disable the people from
performing their duty to the general government."
More recently, in the last century, the court's
decisions continued with this interpretation in U.S.
vs. Miller (1939). The majority opinion echoed the earlier
conclusion, saying, "The signification attributed to the term
Militia appears from the debates in the Convention, the history and
legislation of Colonies and States, and the writings of approved
commentators. These show plainly enough that the Militia comprised all
males physically capable of acting in concert for the common
defense."
The amendments that comprise the Bill of Rights
granted rights to citizens, individual citizens, to protect them
against a new, worrisome and meddling power, the federal government.
No states had gun-control laws when the Constitution was passed.
Gun-grabbing liberals and their revisionist allies in black robes who
sit on many of the courts have now mangled the Second Amendment. They
see the need for prohibitions of and restrictions to guns, when the
Founding Fathers did not. Some courts today believe the Bill of Rights
offered protection not to individuals, but to the states themselves.
Anyone who has ever understood the history of the
birth of our nation and has made a unbiased attempt at understanding
the intent of the framers of our Constitution will not have to go far
to decipher the meaning of the text. America was a rural nation, and
every family had a gun for hunting, recreation and the protection of
family and country.
It's quite clear that the intent of the Founders
were to both respect and protect the rights of Americans to bear arms.
The only ones currently confused as to the meaning of the 2nd
Amendement are those wacky liberals sitting on the Federal 9th Circuit
Court of Appeals in San Francisco. They
ruled last week that citizens have no particular rights under the
2nd Amendment. This is in direct conflict with the previous Supreme
Court decisions. But hey, what do you expect from the most overruled
circuit court in the nation?
The Founding Fathers would never have undermined
the farmer/hunter/warrior's right to own a gun. As Samuel Adams wrote
in 1789, "And that the said Constitution be never construed to
authorize Congress to infringe the just liberty of the Press, or the
rights of Conscience; or to prevent the people of the United States,
who are peaceable citizens, from keeping their own arms."
One year earlier, George Mason had written, "I
ask, sir, what is the militia? It is the whole people, except for a
few public officials. To disarm the people [is] the best and most
effectual way to enslave them."
Most people know about Patrick Henry's 1775
"Give me liberty, or give me death!" speech, but few are
aware of the riveting introduction, which included, "They tell
us, sir, that we are weak; unable to cope with so formidable an
adversary. But when shall we be stronger? Will it be the next week, or
the next year? Will it be when we are totally disarmed, and when a
British guard shall be stationed in every house?"
No, Patrick, we shall never be stronger if the
gun-grabbing Democrats control the nation, led by the likes of Boxer,
Hillary Clinton and Dianne Feinstein. Then, everyone will be disarmed.
Everyone, except of course, the tyrants themselves.
Adam Sparks is a San Francisco conservative
writer.
He can be reached at adamstyle@aol.com.
©2003
SF Gate
