Part XIII: Rough Men
April 4, 2003
10:10 PM CST
"We sleep safe in our beds because rough men stand ready in the night to visit violence on those who would do us harm."
George Orwell’s famous quote rings in my head whenever I think about the concept of self-defense. Orwell is right, of course, but he is only partially right. The "rough men" of whom he speaks weren’t a gang of vigilantes, but were the police of his day, for whom a little violence inflicted on a villain was all part of a night’s work. By the time he wrote these words, the disarmament of British citizenry was well under way, but the police were still a figure of fear to the criminal class.
That’s not true anymore. The police, thanks to the legal vultures who stand ever-ready to visit violence on their wallets or careers, have seen to it that modern-day Western police forces are the most polite jack-booted thugs in history. I am struck, when watching the TV show "Cops", how the police are unfailingly polite even towards the basest of criminals—a cop threatened with a knife will continue to try to reason with the goblin, still calling him "sir", when what he should be saying is: "Want another hole in your chest, moron?"
But that’s not really the point of this essay. The essence of Orwell’s comment is that criminals are deterred from violence by the threat of returned violence against themselves. Now Orwell, although once a socialist, always saw the need for an armed citizenry. "That rifle on the wall of the labourer’s cottage or working class flat is the symbol of democracy. It is our job to see that it stays there." But there he was thinking in purely political terms—ie., that the laborer’s rifle is a guarantee against State excess, which is, of course, true.
The extension of that thinking, of course, applies equally well to the law-abiding citizen against the criminal. Only someone completely self-deluded would think that a robber, given the choice of two houses, would choose to burgle the house inhabited by an armed householder over that of an unarmed one.
And if we look at the burglary rate in, say, an urban area in the United States where many people are armed, and compare it with the burglary rate in an unarmed urban area in, say, London, the differences are not slight, but enormous. Clearly, where there is a large incidence of guns in an area, the unarmed enjoy lives untouched by crime, but that enjoyment comes as a result of their living alongside the "rough men" in the neighborhood.
This may come as a surprise to many, but I don’t have a problem with that. Gun ownership is not for everyone—drunks, psychotics, the depressed, even the fearful—none of those people should own guns (as a matter of choice and responsibility, of course, not by State fiat). Where I do have a problem is where the non-gun-owners seek to disarm the gun owners in their neighborhoods. This is not only silly—universal disarmament results in higher, not lower crime rates—but it’s also busybodied-ness of the worst kind. "I’m not prepared to defend myself, so therefore you shouldn’t be able to either." That’s not what they say, but it is what they feel.
Which brings me, in the end, to women, and to liberals.
The Mrs. once wrote an essay which described her journey from being a gun-fearing wussy in Beverly Hills to her being a gun owner and keen shooter in Texas. Most telling was this statement:
"I was still afraid of guns. I understood that other people were not afraid of them, my husband for one, but I was perfectly comfortable being protected by him, and didn’t think it was important that I was able to protect myself. Then, one time when my husband was away on a business trip, I heard a noise in the house. There I was, a gun not two feet from my reach, but I had no idea how to use it. I knew enough about the issue to know that a gun in the hands of an untrained user was more dangerous, and so I sat there, helpless, worried about the noise. The best I could hope for was that I’d be able to get to the phone and call 9-1-1. I knew right at that moment that if someone intended to harm my children, or me, there was nothing I could do to stop it. What I realized on that night was that I was not able to protect myself. And more to the point, I was not able to protect my children. I was lucky that time. The noise turned out to be nothing, but goodness gracious, that was irresponsible! 9-1-1 would never be able to reach us in time to stop me or my children from being hurt, the best anyone could ever hope for is that the cops would be able to catch the guy, but AFTER he’d done whatever it was he came to do.
"I expected other people to protect me. I expected my husband to do it when he was home and I expected a cop to be there to rescue me if something happened to my husband. Yet I was perfectly happy for a criminal to be shot, by someone else, if he threatened me or my kids. Shame on me.
"It was the realization of that hypocrisy that finally pushed me over the edge. I should not expect others to do for me what I am not willing to do for myself. I was the one whose morals were all screwed-up. How dare I think that someone else should risk his or her life for me (be it my husband or a police officer) if I wasn’t willing to lift a finger for anyone else or even myself?
"It was after this realization that the real meaning of the Second Amendment became crystal clear. Not only did I have the right to defend my country and myself, I had the RESPONSIBILITY to do so."
If someone were to ask me the main difference between a gun owner and a non-gun-owner, my response would be that gun owners have become aware of this responsibility, while non-gun-owners haven’t.
Let me take this a step further. Many non-gun-owners, like The Mrs. in her earlier life, just aren’t aware of the responsibility of a person to defend themselves and their own against the malevolent.
Unfortunately, a great number of people have gone a step further. Not only are they aware of the responsibility, but they have made a conscious effort to evade it. And that evasion lies at the heart of the gun-banners of today. Not content with evading their responsibility for themselves, they want to remove that responsibility from the human condition altogether, to make that evasion easier on their conscience.
Hence the incredible shrillness of the gun-control and gun-confiscation lobby. They grasp at straws to bolster their argument ("child safety", "assault guns", "Wild West shootouts", "cop-killer bullets", anything, regardless of its truth or value)—because they know that if they fail, their conscience will rebuke them forever for having shirked one of the most primary, and yes, primal, human instincts—that of self-protection, and protection of one’s family and property.
It is a particularly vile form of evasion, this attempt at complete removal of responsibility, but it is of a kind with other kinds of evasion as well: the responsibility of providing for one’s own welfare, instead of relying constantly on the charity of others or of the State; the responsibility of common sense, where one acts irresponsibly, yet expects others to pay for the consequences (eg. the shakedown of tobacco companies); and the expression of thoughts and ideas under the umbrella of "free speech", without accepting responsibility for the reactions of others to those words, and so on.
It is not surprising, therefore, that the home of such evasion should be the Democrat Party—the party of Big Government, of the Welfare State, of Trial Lawyers, of intrusive Nanny social policies, of hostility towards the military and yes, the party of Gun Control. It is also the party of Clintonism—the hidden meaning, the sly evasiveness, the amoral use of force and regulation for personal advantage, the draft-dodger President.
Unfortunately, these irresponsible shirkers have lately become very much aware of the much-derided "flyover country": the hicks, the rubes from the backwoods; the group which supplies the Armed Forces with most of their recruits; the people who own guns; the Rough Men.
What is becoming plain, even to the Shirkers, is that the only way they’ll ever get to sleep safe in their beds is if they have the Rough Men around, to visit violence on those who would do them harm. And this knowledge is driving them crazy, because it’s inescapable—and it means that their entire philosophy has been wrong all this time.
All the more interesting is that the Shirkers have tended to be the Comfortably Intellectual—the people who can always call the police, or their lawyer, or the United Nations, if trouble threatens.
Let me conclude with another Orwell quote: "Sometimes the first duty of intelligent men is the restatement of the obvious."
What must be especially galling to these "intelligent men" is that they are the ones who need the obvious restated.
