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          (C) 1993 by The Public Interest.
_____

OUR SOCIETY has reached a pinnacle of self-expression and
respect for individuality rare or unmatched in history. Our entire
popular culture -- from fashion magazines to the cinema -- positively
screams the matchless worth of the individual, and glories in
eccentricity, nonconformity, independent judgment, and
self-determination. This enthusiasm is reflected in the prevalent notion
that helping someone entails increasing that person's "self-esteem";
that if a person properly values himself, he will naturally be a happy,
productive, and, in some inexplicable fashion, responsible member of
society.

And yet, while people are encouraged to revel in their individuality
and incalculable self-worth, the media and the law enforcement
establishment continually advise us that, when confronted with the
threat of lethal violence, we should not resist, but simply give the
attacker what he wants. If the crime under consideration is rape,
there is some notable waffling on this point, and the discussion
quickly moves to how the woman can change her behavior to
minimize the risk of rape, and the various ridiculous, non-lethal
weapons she may acceptably carry, such as whistles, keys, mace or,
that weapon which really sends shivers down a rapist's spine, the
portable cellular phone.

Now how can this be? How can a person who values himself so
highly calmly accept the indignity of a criminal assault? How can one
who believes that the essence of his dignity lies in his
self-determination passively accept the forcible deprivation of that
self-determination? How can he, quietly, with great dignity and poise,
simply hand over the goods?

The assumption, of course, is that there is no inconsistency. The
advice not to resist a criminal assault and simply hand over the goods
is founded on the notion that one's life is of incalculable value, and
that no amount of property is worth it. Put aside, for a moment, the
outrageousness of the suggestion that a criminal who proffers lethal
violence should be treated as if he has instituted a new social
contract: "I will not hurt or kill you if you give me what I want." For
years, feminists have labored to educate people that rape is not
about sex, but about domination, degradation, and control.
Evidently, someone needs to inform the law enforcement
establishment and the media that kidnapping, robbery, carjacking,
and assault are not about property.

Crime is not only a complete disavowal of the social contract, but
also a commandeering of the victim's person and liberty. If the
individual's dignity lies in the fact that he is a moral agent engaging in
actions of his own will, in free exchange with others, then crime
always violates the victim's dignity. It is, in fact, an act of
enslavement. Your wallet, your purse, or your car may not be worth
your life, but your dignity is; and if it is not worth fighting for, it can
hardly be said to exist.

The Gift of Life

Although difficult for modern man to fathom, it was once widely
believed that life was a gift from God, that to not defend that life
when offered violence was to hold God's gift in contempt, to be a
coward and to breach one's duty to one's community. A sermon
given in Philadelphia in 1747 unequivocally equated the failure to
defend oneself with suicide:

     He that suffers his life to be taken from him by one that hath
     no authority for that purpose, when he might preserve it by
     defense,  incurs the Guilt of self murder since God hath
     enjoined him to seek the continuance of his life, and Nature
     itself teaches every creature to defend itself.

"Cowardice" and "self-respect" have largely disappeared from public
discourse. In their place we are offered "self-esteem" as the
bellwether of success and a proxy for dignity. "Self-respect" implies
that one recognizes standards, and judges oneself worthy by the
degree to which one lives up to them. "Self-esteem" simply means
that one feels good about oneself. "Dignity" used to refer to the
self-mastery and fortitude with which a person conducted himself in
the face of life's vicissitudes and the boorish behavior of others.
Now, judging by campus speech codes, dignity requires that we
never encounter a discouraging word and that others be coerced into
acting respectfully, evidently on the assumption that we are
powerless to prevent our degradation if exposed to the demeaning
behavior of others. These are signposts proclaiming the
insubstantiality of our character, the hollowness of our souls.

It is impossible to address the problem of rampant crime without
talking about the moral responsibility of the intended victim. Crime is
rampant because the law-abiding, each of us, condone it, excuse it,
permit it, submit to it. We permit and encourage it because we do
not fight back, immediately, then and there, where it happens. Crime
is not rampant because we do not have enough prisons, because
judges and prosecutors are too soft, because the police are
hamstrung with absurd technicalities. The defect is there, in our
character. We are a nation of cowards and shirkers.

Do You Feel Lucky?

In 1991, when then-Attorney General Richard Thornburgh released
the FBI's annual crime statistics, he noted that it is now more likely
that a person will be the victim of a violent crime than that he will be
in an auto accident. Despite this, most people readily believe that the
existence of the police relieves them of the responsibility to take full
measures to protect themselves. The police, however, are not
personal bodyguards. Rather, they act as a general deterrent to
crime, both by their presence and by apprehending criminals after the
fact. As numerous courts have held, they have no legal obligation to
protect anyone in particular. You cannot sue them for failing to
prevent you from being the victim of a crime.

Insofar as the police deter by their presence, they are very, very
good. Criminals take great pains not to commit a crime in front of
them. Unfortunately, the corollary is that you can pretty much bet
your life (and you are) that they won't be there at the moment you
actually need them.

Should you ever be the victim of an assault, a robbery, or a rape,
you will find it very difficult to call the police while the act is in
progress, even if you are carrying a portable cellular phone.
Nevertheless, you might be interested to know how long it takes
them to show up. Department of Justice statistics for 1991 show
that, for all crimes of violence, only 28 percent of calls are
responded to within five minutes. The idea that protection is a service
people can call to have delivered and expect to receive in a timely
fashion is often mocked by gun owners, who love to recite the
challenge, "Call for a cop, call for an ambulance, and call for a pizza.
See who shows up first."

Many people deal with the problem of crime by convincing
themselves that they live, work, and travel only in special
"crime-free" zones. Invariably, they react with shock and hurt
surprise when they discover that criminals do not play by the rules
and do not respect these imaginary boundaries. If, however, you
understand that crime can occur anywhere at anytime, and if you
understand that you can be maimed or mortally wounded in mere
seconds, you may wish to consider whether you are willing to place
the responsibility for safeguarding your life in the hands of others.

Power And Responsibility

Is your life worth protecting? If so, whose responsibility is it to
protect it? If you believe that it is the police's, not only are you wrong
-- since the courts universally rule that they have no legal obligation
to do so -- but you face some difficult moral quandaries. How can
you rightfully ask another human being to risk his life to protect
yours, when you will assume no responsibility yourself? Because that
is his job and we pay him to do it? Because your life is of
incalculable value, but his is only worth the $30,000 salary we pay
him? If you believe it reprehensible to possess the means and will to
use lethal force to repel a criminal assault, how can you call upon
another to do so for you?

Do you believe that you are forbidden to protect yourself because
the police are better qualified to protect you, because they know
what they are doing but you're a rank amateur? Put aside that this is
equivalent to believing that only concert pianists may play the piano
and only professional athletes may play sports. What exactly are
these special qualities possessed only by the police and beyond the
rest of us mere mortals?

One who values his life and takes seriously his responsibilities to his
family and community will possess and cultivate the means of fighting
back, and will retaliate when threatened with death or grievous injury
to himself or a loved one. He will never be content to rely solely on
others for his safety, or to think he has done all that is possible by
being aware of his surroundings and taking measures of avoidance.
Let's not mince words: He will be armed, will be trained in the use of
his weapon, and will defend himself when faced with lethal violence.

Fortunately, there is a weapon for preserving life and liberty that can
be wielded effectively by almost anyone -- the handgun. Small and
light enough to be carried habitually, lethal, but unlike the knife or
sword, not demanding great skill or strength, it truly is the "great
equalizer." Requiring only hand-eye coordination and a modicum of
ability to remain cool under pressure, it can be used effectively by the
old and the weak against the young and the strong, by the one
against the many.

The handgun is the only weapon that would give a lone female jogger
a chance of prevailing against a gang of thugs intent on rape, a
teacher a chance of protecting children at recess from a madman
intent on massacring them, a family of tourists waiting at a mid-town
subway station the means to protect themselves from a gang of teens
armed with razors and knives.

But since we live in a society that by and large outlaws the carrying
of arms, we are brought into the fray of the Great American Gun
War. Gun control is one of the most prominent battlegrounds in our
current culture wars. Yet it is unique in the half-heartedness with
which our conservative leaders and pundits -- our "conservative
elite" -- do battle, and have conceded the moral high ground to
liberal gun control proponents. It is not a topic often written about,
or written about with any great fervor, by William F. Buckley or
Patrick Buchanan. As drug czar, William Bennett advised President
Bush to ban "assault weapons." George Will is on record as
recommending the repeal of the Second Amendment, and Jack
Kemp is on record as favoring a ban on the possession of
semiautomatic "assault weapons." The battle for gun rights is one
fought predominantly by the common man. The beliefs of both our
liberal and conservative elites are in fact abetting the criminal
rampage through our society.

Selling Crime Prevention

By any rational measure, nearly all gun control proposals are hokum.
The Brady Bill, for example, would not have prevented John
Hinckley from obtaining a gun to shoot President Reagan; Hinckley
purchased his weapon five months before the attack, and his medical
records could not have served as a basis to deny his purchase of a
gun, since medical records are not public documents filed with the
police. Similarly, California's waiting period and background check
did not stop Patrick Purdy from purchasing the "assault rifle" and
handguns he used to massacre children during recess in a Stockton
schoolyard; the felony conviction that would have provided the basis
for stopping the sales did not exist, because Mr. Purdy's previous
weapons violations were plea-bargained down from felonies to
misdemeanors.

In the mid-sixties there was a public service advertising campaign
targeted at car owners about the prevention of car theft. The
purpose of the ad was to urge car owners not to leave their keys in
their cars. The message was, "Don't help a good boy go bad." The
implication was that, by leaving his keys in his car, the normal,
law-abiding car owner was contributing to the delinquency of minors
who, if they just weren't tempted beyond their limits, would be
"good." Now, in those days people still had a fair sense of just who
was responsible for whose behavior. The ad succeeded in enraging a
goodly portion of the populace, and was soon dropped.

Nearly all of the gun control measures offered by Handgun Control,
Inc. (HCI) and its ilk embody the same philosophy. They are
founded on the belief that America's law-abiding gun owners are the
source of the problem. With their unholy desire for firearms, they are
creating a society awash in a sea of guns, thereby helping good boys
go bad, and helping bad boys be badder. This laying of moral blame
for violent crime at the feet of the law-abiding, and the implicit
absolution of violent criminals for their misdeeds, naturally infuriates
honest gun owners.

The files of HCI and other gun control organizations are filled with
proposals to limit the availability of semiautomatic and other firearms
to law-abiding citizens, and barren of proposals for apprehending
and punishing violent criminals. It is ludicrous to expect that the
proposals of HCI, or any gun control laws, will significantly curb
crime. According to Department of Justice and Bureau of Alcohol,
Tobacco and Firearms (ATF) statistics, fully 90 percent of violent
crimes are committed without a handgun, and 93 percent of the guns
obtained by violent criminals are not obtained through the lawful
purchase and sale transactions that are the object of most gun
control legislation. Furthermore, the number of violent criminals is
minute in comparison to the number of firearms in America --
estimated by the ATF at about 200 million, approximately one-third
of which are handguns. With so abundant a supply, there will always
be enough guns available for those who wish to use them for
nefarious ends, no matter how complete the legal prohibitions against
them, or how draconian the punishment for their acquisition or use.
No, the gun control proposals of HCI and other organizations are
not seriously intended as crime control. Something else is at work
here.

The Tyranny of the Elite

Gun control is a moral crusade against a benighted, barbaric
citizenry. This is demonstrated not only by the ineffectualness of gun
control in preventing crime, and by the fact that it focuses on
restricting the behavior of the law-abiding rather than apprehending
and punishing the guilty, but also by the execration that gun control
proponents heap on gun owners and their evil instrumentality, the
NRA. Gun owners are routinely portrayed as uneducated, paranoid
rednecks fascinated by and prone to violence, i.e., exactly the type
of person who opposes the liberal agenda and whose moral and
social "re-education" is the object of liberal social policies. Typical of
such bigotry is New York Gov. Mario Cuomo's famous
characterization of gun-owners as "hunters who drink beer, don't
vote, and lie to their wives about where they were all weekend."
Similar vituperation is rained upon the NRA, characterized by Sen.
Edward Kennedy as the "pusher's best friend," lampooned in
political cartoons as standing for the right of children to carry
firearms to school and, in general, portrayed as standing for an
individual's God-given right to blow people away at will.

The stereotype is, of course, false. As criminologist and constitutional
lawyer Don B. Kates, Jr. and former HCI contributor Dr. Patricia
Harris have pointed out, "[s]tudies consistently show that, on the
average, gun owners are better educated and have more prestigious
jobs than non-owners.... Later studies show that gun owners are less
likely than non-owners to approve of police brutality, violence
against dissenters, etc."

Conservatives must understand that the antipathy many liberals have
for gun owners arises in good measure from their statist utopianism.
This habit of mind has nowhere been better explored than in The
Republic. There, Plato argues that the perfectly just society is one in
which an unarmed people exhibit virtue by minding their own
business in the performance of their assigned functions, while the
government of philosopher-kings, above the law and protected by
armed guardians unquestioning in their loyalty to the state, engineers,
implements, and fine-tunes the creation of that society, aided and
abetted by myths that both hide and justify their totalitarian
manipulation.

The Unarmed Life

When columnist Carl Rowan preaches gun control and uses a gun to
defend his home, when Maryland Gov. William Donald Schaefer
seeks legislation year after year to ban semiautomatic "assault
weapons" whose only purpose, we are told, is to kill people, while
he is at the same time escorted by state police armed with
large-capacity 9mm semiautomatic pistols, it is not simple hypocrisy.
It is the workings of that habit of mind possessed by all superior
beings who have taken upon themselves the terrible burden of
civilizing the masses and who understand, like our Congress, that
laws are for other people.

The liberal elite know that they are philosopher-kings. They know
that the people simply cannot be trusted; that they are incapable of
just and fair self-government; that left to their own devices, their
society will be racist, sexist, homophobic, and inequitable -- and the
liberal elite know how to fix things. They are going to help us live the
good and just life, even if they have to lie to us and force us to do it.
And they detest those who stand in their way.

The private ownership of firearms is a rebuke to this utopian zeal. To
own firearms is to affirm that freedom and liberty are not gifts from
the state. It is to reserve final judgment about whether the state is
encroaching on freedom and liberty, to stand ready to defend that
freedom with more than mere words, and to stand outside the state's
totalitarian reach.

The Florida Experience

The elitist distrust of the people underlying the gun control movement
is illustrated beautifully in HCI's campaign against a new
concealed-carry law in Florida. Prior to 1987, the Florida law
permitting the issuance of concealed-carry permits was administered
at the county level. The law was vague, and, as a result, was subject
to conflicting interpretation and political manipulation. Permits were
issued principally to security personnel and the privileged few with
political connections. Permits were valid only within the county of
issuance.

In 1987, however, Florida enacted a uniform concealed-carry law
which mandates that county authorities issue a permit to anyone who
satisfies certain objective criteria. The law requires that a permit be
issued to any applicant who is a resident, at least twenty-one years
of age, has no criminal record, no record of alcohol or drug abuse,
no history of mental illness, and provides evidence of having
satisfactorily completed a firearms safety course offered by the NRA
or other competent instructor. The applicant must provide a set of
fingerprints, after which the authorities make a background check.
The permit must be issued or denied within ninety days, is valid
throughout the state, and must be renewed every three years, which
provides authorities a regular means of reevaluating whether the
permit holder still qualifies.

Passage of this legislation was vehemently opposed by HCI and the
media. The law, they said, would lead to citizens shooting each other
over everyday disputes involving fender benders, impolite behavior,
and other slights to their dignity. Terms like "Florida, the Gunshine
State" and "Dodge City East" were coined to suggest that the state,
and those seeking passage of the law, were encouraging individuals
to act as judge, jury, and executioner in a "Death Wish" society.

No HCI campaign more clearly demonstrates the elitist beliefs
underlying the campaign to eradicate gun ownership. Given the
qualifications required of permit holders, HCI and the media can only
believe that common, law-abiding citizens are seething cauldrons of
homicidal rage, ready to kill to avenge any slight to their dignity,
eager to seek out and summarily execute the lawless. Only lack of
immediate access to a gun restrains them and prevents the blood
from flowing in the streets. They are so mentally and morally deficient
that they would mistake a permit to carry a weapon in self-defense
as a state-sanctioned license to kill at will.

Did the dire predictions come true? Despite the fact that Miami and
Dade County have severe problems with the drug trade, the
homicide rate fell in Florida following enactment of this law, as it did
in Oregon following enactment of similar legislation there. There are,
in addition, several documented cases of new permit holders
successfully using their weapons to defend themselves. Information
from the Florida Department of State shows that, from the beginning
of the program in 1987 through June 1993, 160,823 permits have
been issued, and only 530, or about 0.33 percent of the applicants,
have been denied a permit for failure to satisfy the criteria, indicating
that the law is benefitting those whom it was intended to benefit --
the law-abiding. Only 16 permits, less than 1/100th of 1 percent,
have been revoked due to the post-issuance commission of a crime
involving a firearm.

The Florida legislation has been used as a model for legislation
adopted by Oregon, Idaho, Montana, and Mississippi. There are, in
addition, seven other states (Maine, North and South Dakota, Utah,
Washington, West Virginia, and, with the exception of cities with a
population in excess of 1 million, Pennsylvania) which provide that
concealed-carry permits must be issued to law-abiding citizens who
satisfy various objective criteria. Finally, no permit is required at all in
Vermont. Altogether, then, there are thirteen states in which
law-abiding citizens who wish to carry arms to defend themselves
may do so. While no one appears to have compiled the statistics
from all of these jurisdictions, there is certainly an ample data base
for those seeking the truth about the trustworthiness of law-abiding
citizens who carry firearms.

Other evidence also suggests that armed citizens are very responsible
in using guns to defend themselves. Florida State University
criminologist Gary Kleck, using surveys and other data, has
determined that armed citizens defend their lives or property with
firearms against criminals approximately 1 million times a year. In 98
percent of these instances, the citizen merely brandishes the weapon
or fires a warning shot. Only in 2 percent of the cases do citizens
actually shoot their assailants. In defending themselves with their
firearms, armed citizens kill 2,000 to 3,000 criminals each year, three
times the number killed by the police. A nationwide study by Kates,
the constitutional lawyer and criminologist, found that only 2 percent
of civilian shootings involved an innocent person mistakenly identified
as a criminal. The "error rate" for the police, however, was 11
percent, over five times as high.

It is simply not possible to square the numbers above and the
experience of Florida with the notions that honest, law-abiding gun
owners are borderline psychopaths itching for an excuse to shoot
someone, vigilantes eager to seek out and summarily execute the
lawless, or incompetent fools incapable of determining when it is
proper to use lethal force in defense of their lives. Nor upon
reflection should these results seem surprising. Rape, robbery, and
attempted murder are not typically actions rife with ambiguity or
subtlety, requiring special powers of observation and great
book-learning to discern. When a man pulls a knife on a woman and
says, "You're coming with me," her judgment that a crime is being
committed is not likely to be in error. There is little chance that she is
going to shoot the wrong person. It is the police, because they are
rarely at the scene of the crime when it occurs, who are more likely
to find themselves in circumstances where guilt and innocence are not
so clear-cut, and in which the probability for mistakes is higher.

Arms and Liberty

Classical republican philosophy has long recognized the critical
relationship between personal liberty and the possession of arms by
a people ready and willing to use them. Political theorists as
dissimilar as Niccolo Machiavelli, Sir Thomas More, James
Harrington, Algernon Sidney, John Locke, and Jean-Jacques
Rousseau all shared the view that the possession of arms is vital for
resisting tyranny, and that to be disarmed by one's government is
tantamount to being enslaved by it. The possession of arms by the
people is the ultimate warrant that government governs only with the
consent of the governed. As Kates has shown, the Second
Amendment is as much a product of this political philosophy as it is
of the American experience in the Revolutionary War. Yet our
conservative elite has abandoned this aspect of republican theory.
Although our conservative pundits recognize and embrace gun
owners as allies in other arenas, their battle for gun rights is
desultory. The problem here is not a statist utopianism, although
goodness knows that liberals are not alone in the confidence they
have in the state's ability to solve society's problems. Rather, the
problem seems to lie in certain cultural traits shared by our
conservative and liberal elites.

One such trait is an abounding faith in the power of the word. The
failure of our conservative elite to defend the Second Amendment
stems in great measure from an overestimation of the power of the
rights set forth in the First Amendment, and a general undervaluation
of action. Implicit in calls for the repeal of the Second Amendment is
the assumption that our First Amendment rights are sufficient to
preserve our liberty. The belief is that liberty can be preserved as
long as men freely speak their minds; that there is no tyranny or
abuse that can survive being exposed in the press; and that the truth
need only be disclosed for the culprits to be shamed. The people will
act, and the truth shall set us, and keep us, free.

History is not kind to this belief, tending rather to support the view of
Hobbes, Machiavelli, and other republican theorists that only people
willing and able to defend themselves can preserve their liberties.
While it may be tempting and comforting to believe that the existence
of mass electronic communication has forever altered the balance of
power between the state and its subjects, the belief has certainly not
been tested by time, and what little history there is in the age of mass
communication is not especially encouraging. The camera, radio, and
press are mere tools and, like guns, can be used for good or ill.
Hitler, after all, was a masterful orator, used radio to very good
effect, and is well known to have pioneered and exploited the
propaganda opportunities afforded by film. And then, of course,
there were the Brownshirts, who knew very well how to quell dissent
among intellectuals.

Polite Society

In addition to being enamored of the power of words, our
conservative elite shares with liberals the notion that an armed
society is just not civilized or progressive, that massive gun
ownership is a blot on our civilization. This association of personal
disarmament with civilized behavior is one of the great unexamined
beliefs of our time.

Should you read English literature from the sixteenth through
nineteenth centuries, you will discover numerous references to the
fact that a gentleman, especially when out at night or traveling, armed
himself with a sword or a pistol against the chance of encountering a
highwayman or other such predator. This does not appear to have
shocked the ladies accompanying him. True, for the most part there
were no police in those days, but we have already addressed the
notion that the presence of the police absolves people of the
responsibility to look after their safety, and in any event the existence
of the police cannot be said to have reduced crime to negligible
levels.

It is by no means obvious why it is "civilized" to permit oneself to fall
easy prey to criminal violence, and to permit criminals to continue
unobstructed in their evil ways. While it may be that a society in
which crime is so rare that no one ever needs to carry a weapon is
"civilized," a society that stigmatizes the carrying of weapons by the
law-abiding -- because it distrusts its citizens more than it fears
rapists, robbers, and murderers -- certainly cannot claim this
distinction. Perhaps the notion that defending oneself with lethal force
is not "civilized" arises from the view that violence is always wrong,
or the view that each human being is of such intrinsic worth that it is
wrong to kill anyone under any circumstances. The necessary
implication of these propositions, however, is that life is not worth
defending. Far from being "civilized," the beliefs that counterviolence
and killing are always wrong are an invitation to the spread of
barbarism. Such beliefs announce loudly and clearly that those who
do not respect the lives and property of others will rule over those
who do.

In truth, one who believes it wrong to arm himself against criminal
violence shows contempt of God's gift of life (or, in modern
parlance, does not properly value himself), does not live up to his
responsibilities to his family and community, and proclaims himself
mentally and morally deficient, because he does not trust himself to
behave responsibly. In truth, a state that deprives its law-abiding
citizens of the means to effectively defend themselves is not civilized
but barbarous, becoming an accomplice of murderers, rapists, and
thugs and revealing its totalitarian nature by its tacit admission that the
disorganized, random havoc created by criminals is far less a threat
than are men and women who believe themselves free and
independent, and act accordingly.

While gun control proponents and other advocates of a kinder,
gentler society incessantly decry our "armed society," in truth we do
not live in an armed society. We live in a society in which violent
criminals and agents of the state habitually carry weapons, and in
which many law-abiding citizens own firearms but do not go about
armed. Department of Justice statistics indicate that 87 percent of all
violent crimes occur outside the home. Essentially, although tens of
millions own firearms, we are an unarmed society.

Take Back the Night

Clearly the police and the courts are not providing a significant brake
on criminal activity. While liberals call for more poverty, education,
and drug treatment programs, conservatives take a more direct tack.
George Will advocates a massive increase in the number of police
and a shift toward "community-based policing." Meanwhile, the
NRA and many conservative leaders call for laws that would require
violent criminals serve at least 85 percent of their sentences and
would place repeat offenders permanently behind bars.

Our society suffers greatly from the beliefs that only official action is
legitimate and that the state is the source of our earthly salvation.
Both liberal and conservative prescriptions for violent crime suffer
from the "not in my job description" school of thought regarding the
responsibilities of the law-abiding citizen, and from an overestimation
of the ability of the state to provide society's moral moorings. As
long as law-abiding citizens assume no personal responsibility for
combatting crime, liberal and conservative programs will fail to
contain it.

Judging by the numerous articles about concealed-carry in gun
magazines, the growing number of products advertised for such
purpose, and the increase in the number of concealed-carry
applications in states with mandatory-issuance laws, more and more
people, including growing numbers of women, are carrying firearms
for self-defense. Since there are still many states in which the
issuance of permits is discretionary and in which law enforcement
officials routinely deny applications, many people have been put to
the hard choice between protecting their lives or respecting the law.
Some of these people have learned the hard way, by being the victim
of a crime, or by seeing a friend or loved one raped, robbed, or
murdered, that violent crime can happen to anyone, anywhere at
anytime, and that crime is not about sex or property but life, liberty,
and dignity.

The laws proscribing concealed-carry of firearms by honest,
law-abiding citizens breed nothing but disrespect for the law. As the
Founding Fathers knew well, a government that does not trust its
honest, law-abiding, taxpaying citizens with the means of self-defense
is not itself worthy of trust. Laws disarming honest citizens proclaim
that the government is the master, not the servant, of the people. A
federal law along the lines of the Florida statute -- overriding all
contradictory state and local laws and acknowledging that the
carrying of firearms by law-abiding citizens is a privilege and
immunity of citizenship -- is needed to correct the outrageous
conduct of state and local officials operating under discretionary
licensing systems.

What we certainly do not need is more gun control. Those who call
for the repeal of the Second Amendment so that we can really begin
controlling firearms betray a serious misunderstanding of the Bill of
Rights. The Bill of Rights does not grant rights to the people, such
that its repeal would legitimately confer upon government the powers
otherwise proscribed. The Bill of Rights is the list of the fundamental,
inalienable rights, endowed in man by his Creator, that define what it
means to be a free and independent people, the rights which must
exist to ensure that government governs only with the consent of the
people.

At one time this was even understood by the Supreme Court. In
United States v. Cruikshank (1876), the first case in which the Court
had an opportunity to interpret the Second Amendment, it stated that
the right confirmed by the Second Amendment "is not a right granted
by the constitution. Neither is it in any manner dependent upon that
instrument for its existence." The repeal of the Second Amendment
would no more render the outlawing of firearms legitimate than the
repeal of the due process clause of the Fifth Amendment would
authorize the government to imprison and kill people at will. A
government that abrogates any of the Bill of Rights, with or without
majoritarian approval, forever acts illegitimately, becomes tyrannical,
and loses the moral right to govern.

This is the uncompromising understanding reflected in the warning
that America's gun owners will not go gently into that good, utopian
night: "You can have my gun when you pry it from my cold, dead
hands." While liberals take this statement as evidence of the
retrograde, violent nature of gun owners, we gun owners hope that
liberals hold equally strong sentiments about their printing presses,
word processors, and television cameras. The republic depends
upon fervent devotion to all our fundamental rights.