I’ve been asked by more than a few people to explain why I’m such a gun nut. There are actually three reasons: the enjoyment I derive from shooting; the role of guns in self-defense; and the issue of guns and civic responsibility. Let me take these in order.
Personal pleasure.
It makes one something of an anomaly to admit a love of guns and of shooting, especially in these times of girly-men, of men afraid to admit they’re men, or of men who have become too "civilized" to contemplate violence. No one has ever explained it better than Jeff Cooper, in his fine book The Art of the Rifle: "There is an enchantment cast upon almost any man when he holds a rifle in his hands." Cooper also points out that when a man holds a rifle, he becomes almost godlike: suddenly, he has the ability to deal death and injury to another over a considerable distance--to send, as it were, a thunderbolt of Zeus. For some men, unquestionably, this power is going to be abused, just as some men will always drive a fast car at reckless speeds. For the vast majority of men, however, this power produces precisely the opposite effect: they are humbled by the power they hold, and they become more responsible in its use. That is why, in a nation of well over seventy million gun owners, only a tiny fraction, less than half a tenth of one percent, use a gun to commit a crime each year.
I love shooting for many reasons. In the first place, holding a gun means that I am not helpless in the face of aggression coming from another. I also love the very act of shooting, for one simple reason: it is the ultimate form of self-control. If I pull the trigger, and the bullet doesn’t go where I wanted it to go, I, and I alone, am at fault. (It has been my experience that 99% of guns are more accurate than the shooters--and that is certainly true in my own case.) In other words, I have to practice self-control when I shoot: there is no point in losing my temper when I miss, no point in blaming the gun, bullet or sights. I simply have to take a deep breath (not too deep, because hyper-ventilating causes my hands to shake), and try again. It is a constant process of self-improvement, and to achieve a goal of perfection, or even near-perfection, brings me immeasurable satisfaction.
At the end of every shooting session at the range, I come back at peace with myself and with the world. The noise of shooting, the power I’ve unleashed (and which I’ve had to control), the calmness which I’ve had to achieve, all combine to bring me into a state of Zen-like stillness.
It’s something everyone should experience. I’ve taken many people shooting with me, a lot who have never shot before. Without exception, they’ve all come away as fans of the sport, and wanted to do it again.
There’s another thing that’s not just personal: and it’s a guy thing. Guns are almost perfect machines. When you take one apart, and see what I call its "simple complexity", you are in awe as to what happens--cams move, sears disengage, springs coil back, metal moves along metal, all within tolerances of thousandths of an inch, and all within a couple millionths of a second. Then you reload, and do it all over again. I have a rifle in my collection which was made in about 1906, and it still works as advertised. Find me another machine that still works about as well as the day it was made a hundred years ago, has detonated and contained a mini-explosive device many thousands of times, lasted through who knows what weather, endured rough handling and neglect, and traveled through at least two continents (it was made in Sweden, for the Army). Like I said, the love of so perfect a mechanism is a guy thing.
In any event, I make no excuses for my attachment to guns, nor do I care about the opprobrium or condescension of others. I have far more than one gun, for the same reason that other people own far more than one CD album, and more than one performer withal. I don’t need more than, say, two or three guns (actually, I once worked out that eight would be about my minimum), but gun ownership has little to do with need anyway. Except for self-protection, and I’m going to talk about that next.
Self-defense
With a gun, I can also defend my family and property from evildoers (or, as Cooper wonderfully calls them, goblins).
Men, especially men living in Western societies, have become something less than men over the past fifty years. We have become gentled, more civilized, more refined, and more, well, more like women. Unfortunately, however, fifty years of social conditioning cannot easily overcome tens of thousands of years of genetic conditioning, which is why little boys still prefer to have swordfights than host dolls’ tea-parties, and why men still get into fistfights. It is an instinct that will not be denied, much to the dismay of those who would attempt to suppress it or deny its existence. We are called "animals" or "troglodytes", as though this streak of violence is something to be looked down upon or denigrated. But when push comes to shove, men will still defend themselves, out of instinct.
This defense of "self" extends to family. Every man I know would cheerfully put themselves in harm’s way to protect their children--it is the most basic male instinct, after sex. And of course this drives authority figures and the societal nannies crazy. "Leave that to the police," they implore, "Don’t get involved." Bullshit. Where I and my family are concerned, safety is first and foremost my own responsibility, and I will not abrogate that responsibility to others. A pox on those who would make me do otherwise.
Of course, if I could sue the police for not giving me complete protection, then I might feel differently (or not--don’t count on it). But the Supreme Court has repeatedly found that the State cannot be at fault for not protecting its citizens--so if the cops take 25 minutes to respond to your 911 call, and in those 25 minutes a goblin kicks open your door, shoots you and your wife, rapes your 11-year-old daughter, and beats your baby to death, that’s just tough luck.
Uh-huh. Thanks, but no thanks. From where I stand, if a goblin tries to assault me and mine, the proper role of the police is to take my statement, and because I don’t know the number, to call for the hearse to pick up the goblin’s corpse.
As with all things, there is a great deal of responsibility to be exercised in self-defense. I wouldn’t chase after the goblin down the street, shooting at his worthless ass, tempting though the action may be. Once he’s out of reach or off my property, then he becomes police business. They just have to follow the blood trail.
The very idea of abrogating one’s own personal protection to the State would have thrown the Founding Fathers into peals of laughter--it is a concept completely without historical foundation, and deserves no currency today, either. Defense of the people as a whole, however, is a different thing altogether, so let’s look at that now.
Civic Responsibility
We’ve moved from the purely personal, to the family, and now we’ll look at the civic nature of gun ownership. Here’s the Second Amendment, my personal favorite:
“A well-regulated Militia, being necessary for the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed.”
I’m not going to parse it word by word--or on second thoughts, maybe I should, given all the crap that liberal idiots have tried to throw over its intent. Let’s deal with the low-hanging fruit first.
The “militia” does not mean the frigging National Guard, which came into being over 150 years after the American Revolution. There are essentially two versions of the word militia: the way it was understood by the Founding Fathers and other original patriots, and the actual legal definition.
For the former, we only have to rely on the actual words of one of them (and the others agreed, as you will see):
“I ask, sir, what is the militia? It is the whole people. To disarm the people is the best and most effectual way to enslave them.”
That’s George Mason, speaking during Virginia’s ratification convention in 1788. He makes no mention of state governments, nor of standing armies (like the National Guard), which the Founding Fathers regarded with as much liking as for a snake in a bedroll.
The United States Code of Law narrows the definition somewhat, but not overly so:
“The militia of the United States consists of all able-bodied males at least 17 years of age...” ~~Title 10, Section 311 of the U.S. Code.
Note that the U.S.C. doesn’t say “as maintained by state government” or any other nonsense--it’s an unequivocal statement of all able-bodied males.
Oh, and one more thing about that pesky first phrase: “regulated” does not mean “beset by rules and laws”: that’s the modern meaning. In 18th-century English, “regulated” meant “trained and equipped”, in other words: ready for action. Hell, we’ve even lost that because of the abolition of the military draft. Aaargh.
Now for the next phrase of note, the ”security of a free State” one. Note that security of a free State does not just mean of the country as a whole--but by using that other pesky word “free”, the Founders made it plain that the whole concept of a free state is that which requires security. It doesn’t just mean a state free from Nazi tyranny, for example, but also a state inherently free, from its own government if necessary.
How do I know they meant that? Let’s roll the tape, Simon:
“If the representatives of the people betray their constituents, there is no recourse left but in the exertion of the original right of self-defense which is paramount to all forms of positive government.”—Alexander Hamilton.
Need another? Sure.
“No man shall ever be debarred the use of arms. The strongest reason for the people to retain the right to keep and bear arms is, as a last resort, to protect themselves against tyranny in government.”—Thomas Jefferson.
And one last one:
“Arms in the hands of the citizens may be used at individual discretion for the defense of the country, the overthrow of tyranny or private self-defense.”—John Adams.
Those phrases make the blood of government lackeys run cold, or rather, they should.
Now for the penultimate phrase: ”the right of the people to keep and bear arms”. Not just “the people who can afford to buy a gun license”, or “only the police” or “only Mayor Daley’s bodyguards"--it says, “the people” without qualification. Can’t be much plainer than that, really--
-- except perhaps for the last phrase: ”shall not be infringed.” Note carefully that the Second does not say, “Congress shall not” or “government shall not” or “Mayor Daley shall not”. The use of the passive voice is quite intentional: it is a clear, universal statement that the right to keep and bear arms cannot be circumscribed, by anyone or by any institution.
It is, of course, no coincidence that the right to have guns is one of the earlier freedoms outlined in the Bill of Rights. Without guns in the hands of the people, all the other freedoms are easily negated by the State. If you disagree with that statement, ask yourself if the Nazis could have gassed millions of Jews, had the Jews been armed with rifles and pistols--there weren’t enough SS troops to do the job. Lest we forget, in the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising of 1943, a couple of hundred Jews armed with rifles and homemade explosive devices held off two fully-equipped German divisions (actually about 8,000 men) for nearly two months.
Using the Germans during the First World War as another example, the thing that caused German officers and their troops most concern was the appearance of francs-tireurs: individual citizens who, from their homes and villages, shot at and killed German officers and soldiers as the Fourth Army made its way through Belgium. The Germans considered this form of fighting to be completely at odds with the rules of warfare, and began to slaughter civilian hostages as reprisals.
Why was the mighty Fourth Army (of some six million men) so afraid of a few irregular snipers? Because they knew that they could never defend against a million pinpricks--their morale would suffer, and they’d spend all their time policing the Belgian countryside, instead of invading France and fighting the French Army.
I take my civic responsibility very seriously. I am the epitome of the franc-tireur: a man who would defend his country from invasion, who can use a gun, and who would not hesitate to risk his life in its use. I suspect that, if the chips were down, there may be another seven-odd million men like myself in the United States.
This country will never be conquered militarily--and it has nothing to do with our Armed Forces, because they are just the first line of defense. The rest, the militia, are more than a match for any army, at any time--as long as we still have our guns.
And one last word on the subject: the next politician who assures me that he’s not going to go after my hunting rifle with his latest “reasonable” gun law, is going to get a punch right in the face. The Second Amendment isn’t about hunting, buddy. Don’t insult me by thinking I’ll swallow that lie.
Perhaps the best statement I’ve heard about “government vs. citizens” with regard to the gun issue came from a politician, Rep. Suzanna Gratia Hupp of Texas, who said:
“How a politician stands on the Second Amendment tells you how he or she views you as an individual… as a trustworthy and productive citizen, or as part of an unruly crowd that needs to be lorded over, controlled, supervised, and taken care of.”
Finally, I’m going to shut up and roll the credits, quotes of people who have said it, all far more eloquently than I, and who can explain the original intent of the Second, because they wrote it: Thomas Jefferson, John Adams, Alexander Hamilton, and James Madison all understood the importance of private gun ownership in a free society.
Jefferson:
Adams:“And what country can preserve its liberties, if its rulers are not warned from time to time that this people preserve the spirit of resistance? Let them take arms… The tree of liberty must be refreshed from time to time, with the blood of patriots and tyrants.” (in a letter to William S. Smith in 1787. Taken from Jefferson, On Democracy p. 20, S. Padover ed., 1939)
Hamilton:“Arms in the hands of the citizens may be used at individual discretion for the defense of the country, the overthrow of tyranny or private self-defense.”
“If the representatives of the people betray their constituents, there is no recourse left but in the exertion of the original right of self-defense which is paramount to all forms of positive government.”
And Hamilton again:
Madison (in Federalist No. 46, predicting that encroachments by the federal government) said that these would provoke ”plans of resistance” and an ”appeal to the trial of force.” Madison also said (still in Fed. No. 46):“The best we can hope for concerning the people at large is that they be properly armed.”
“[T]he advantage of being armed, which the Americans possess over the people of almost every other nation, the existence of subordinate governments, to which the people are attached, and by which the militia officers are appointed, forms a barrier against the enterprises of ambition, more insurmountable than any which a simple government of any form can admit of. Notwithstanding the military establishments in the several kingdoms of Europe, which are carried as far as the public resources will bear, the governments are afraid to trust the people with arms.”
And Thomas Paine:
“The supposed quietude of a good man allures the ruffian; while on the other hand, arms, like laws, discourage and keep the invader and the plunderer in awe, and preserve order in the world as well as property. The same balance would be preserved were all the world destitute of arms, for all would be alike; but since some will not, others dare not lay them aside… Horrid mischief would ensue were one half the world deprived of the use of them...”—Thoughts on Defensive War in 1775
While Tench Coxe said:
“Congress have no power to disarm the militia. Their swords, and every other terrible implement of the soldier, are the birthright of an American… The unlimited power of the sword is not in the hands of either the federal or state government, but, where I trust in God it will ever remain, in the hands of the people.”—(Pennsylvania Gazette, Feb. 20, 1788)
While we’re about it, let’s also quote again another of the great men, Patrick Henry, commenting on the Second Amendment in 1788:
Guard with jealous attention the public liberty. Suspect everyone who approaches that jewel. Unfortunately, nothing will preserve it but downright force. Whenever you give up that force, you are ruined… The great object is that every man be armed. Everyone who is able might have a gun.”
And another from Mr. Henry:
“Are we at last brought to such humiliating and debasing degradation, that we cannot be trusted with arms for our defense? Where is the difference between having our arms in possession and under our direction, and having them under the management of Congress? If our defense be the real object of having those arms, in whose hands can they be trusted with more propriety, or equal safety to us, as in our own hands?”—(3 J. Elliot, Debates in the Several State Conventions 45, 2d ed. Philadelphia, 1836)
Even the British used to have the right idea (they don’t nowadays):
Some more modern quotes:“No kingdom can be secured otherwise than by arming the people. The possession of arms is the distinction between a freeman and a slave. He, who has nothing, and who himself belongs to another, must be defended by him, whose property he is, and needs no arms. But he, who thinks he is his own master, and has what he can call his own, ought to have arms to defend himself, and what he possesses; else he lives precariously, and at discretion.”—
James Burgh (Political Disquisitions: Or, an Enquiry into Public Errors, Defects, and Abuses) [London, 1774-1775]
“The right of citizens to bear arms is just one guarantee against arbitrary government, one more safeguard against the tyranny which now appears remote in America, but which historically has proved to be always possible.”—Senator Hubert H. Humphrey (D-MN)
From George Orwell, the author of Animal Farm and 1984, himself a socialist:
“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.”
From another Brit (an expat):
“The certainty that a potential victim is unarmed is an encouragement to armed criminals. Less guns, more crime.” and “...it is interesting to note that of the 150 or so law enforcement officers killed every year in the U.S., one in four is shot with his own weapon. The moral of that is: If you are defending yourself with a gun against someone bigger than yourself, be much less scrupulous about shooting him than police officers have to be.”—John Derbyshire
And, from the foremost practitioner of passive resistance and non-violence:
“Among the many misdeeds of the British rule in India, history will look upon the act of depriving a whole nation of arms, as the blackest.”—Mahatma Gandhi (Autobiography, by M.K. Gandhi, p.446)
And from the world’s gentlest human being:
“If someone has a gun and is trying to kill you, it would be reasonable to shoot back with your own gun.”—The Dalai Lama (May 15, 2001, The Seattle Times), speaking at the “Educating Heart Summit” in Portland, Oregon, when asked by a girl how to react when a shooter takes aim at a classmate.
And lastly, opinions from a couple of bad guys:
“Gun control? It’s the best thing you can do for crooks and gangsters. I want you to have nothing. If I’m a bad guy, I’m always gonna have a gun. Safety locks? You’ll pull the trigger with a lock on, and I’ll pull the trigger. We’ll see who wins.”—Sammy “The Bull” Gravano, Mafia hit man
--A system of licensing and registration is the perfect device to deny gun ownership to the bourgeoisie.--—Vladimir Ilyich Lenin“The most foolish mistake we could possibly make would be to allow the subject races to possess arms. History shows that all conquerors who have allowed the subject races to carry arms have prepared their own downfall by so doing. Indeed, I would go so far as to say that the supply of arms to the underdogs is a sine qua non for the overthrow of any sovereignty.”—Adolf Hitler (H.R. Trevor-Roper, Hitler’s Table Talks 1941-1944)
Some worthy websites:
The Unabridged Second Amendment
The True Meaning of Gun Control
Jeff Cooper’s Commentaries (a must-read!)
Keep & Bear Arms
And lastly, just a humble boast (two 15-shot strings, at 75 yards):
Oh sheesh, it didn’t take long before someone took me to task about my position on guns. (See The Gun Thing Part I on this site
“Are you saying that people should be allowed to own rocket-launchers and nuclear bombs?”—Anon
Firstly, Mr. or Mrs. or Spinster Anon, let me award you the Hackneyed Cliche Of The Week award. Secondly, the short answer is, No, I don’t.
Here’s my list of commonsense gun laws (it won’t take long to read, I promise):
Note that I use “possess” in its broadest sense—it means you can carry a gun if you want, without a permit, or keep it locked in a closet likewise. Like Vermont does. Note too that there’s no bullshit about “assault rifles”, high-capacity magazines, silencers, “cop-killer” bullets or any of that other crap. Nor do I care about sawed-off shotguns. It’s not the tool, moron, it’s the criminal act itself that’s illegal.
Incidentally, I would also propose a mandatory death sentence for anyone convicted of using a gun in the actual commission of a crime, but we can discuss that thread at another time.
So there ya have it. Up yours, Mayor Richard Daley, Senator Dianne Feinstein and Sarah Brady.
Update:
[Thoughtful Reader Sam sent me a letter to debate a position I took in The Gun Thing, Part 2. The letter was deeply thought-provoking, which is why I thought I’d debate it here rather than in Reader Mail.]
“Kim,
I applaud you for being the first person I’ve come across (other than myself) who sees and talks about the distinction between the language in the second and first amendments (’be infringed’ versus ‘congress shall not’ ). However, I need to take you to task for some of your views expressed in ‘Commonsense Gun Laws’.
“Up until a few years ago, I also was of the opinion that it was a good thing to restrict felons from owning guns. However, the rapidly changing environment and our dead-in-all-but-name Bill of Rights forced me to actually think about the issue of crime and punishment.
“Firstly, ‘convicted felons’ and weapons:
“Here’s the basic philosophy simplified: creating a distinction between the class of people who (at some time) committed a crime and those that haven’t (yet) is a very bad thing.
“Two really huge reasons in explanation:
“1. When a real, tangible barrier exists to restoration of one’s stature in the community, there is an inherent, tangible barrier to rehabilitation. (If, upon examination, the truth and ramifications of this statement are not obvious, then please ask me why that is so, or what are the effects of this barrier).
“2. If you decide that any given person (who just happens to have a felony conviction of armed robbery in his past) does not need to own/possess/carry a weapon (gun) for—oh, let’s say—self defense, then you have accepted the argument that any other person (who did not happen to get convicted of armed robbery—yet) does not need one, and one has then accepted implicitly that the right to keep and bear arms is not a ‘natural’ right. (Pick the penalty, pay the price, and let one return to humanity—or otherwise brand their forehead and release them back into society and stop talking about rehabilitation /equality/ ...)”
Actually, I agree with you more than you realize, because I’ve struggled with the same issues myself for years. The idealist in me says that a right is a right, and cannot be infringed upon, by anyone or any institution.
But upon closer inspection, this is not so. Certainly, we abridge the rights of criminals by imprisoning them (depriving them of liberty), by taking away their right to vote, and, in extreme cases, depriving them of life (for murder).
In all those cases, the reason for which we step all over their rights is a simple one: the criminals have chosen to step outside the moral bounds of society, and infringed upon the rights of others—whether it be by theft (loss of property), or murder (loss of life). Retribution, in this case, is a simple matter—what they have done to others, they have done to themselves (or, in the Biblical sense, an eye for an eye).
What troubles you, and troubles many people, is that once a felon is released from prison, he has paid his debt to society, and should therefore be allowed all his rights (hitherto denied him by being in prison). That makes logical sense, but it’s also flawed reasoning.
You see, repaying your debt to society is only part of the punishment. By stepping so far outside the mores of society, you also have to prove to society that you have reformed, and will not repeat your crime. Thus, for example, convicted forgers are not allowed to work in financial institutions ever again, and may not follow certain other kinds of profession, either.
An egregious crime such as armed robbery is so abhorrent to society that we have to force the criminal to provide us with a reason to restore his full rights as a citizen. Sadly, of course, most convicted criminals continue to commit crimes—only a tiny percentage are one-timers.
Here’s where the movie Casablanca did us all a grave disservice, by immortalizing the cynical line of Police Captain Louis Reynaud: “Round up all the usual suspects.” Actually, this is a perfectly acceptable criminal investigation technique—because people, and especially criminals, are creatures of habit. The first place to look for a perpetrator in a child molestation case, therefore, is among released child molesters living in the area—and the percentage of times that this leads to the guilty party is downright depressing.
That’s my problem with allowing felons convicted of violent crimes to own guns upon their release from prison: the idealist in me says, “Why not?”, but the realist in me says, “Not so fast.”
And in saying “Not so fast”, I do feel that the system may be open to change. If some mope robs a 7-11 store when he’s nineteen, serves fifteen years in the slammer, and then gets a job, a wife, kids, house, and proceeds to walk along the straight and narrow for the next twenty years, why shouldn’t he, at age 54, be allowed to buy a gun to hunt, or for self-defense?
Under this scenario, the question becomes: what’s a decent amount of time to allow to elapse for a man to prove he has not only paid his debt to society, but also become a model citizen since? Ten years? Fifteen?
Some states allow convicted felons to own a gun, but the guns may not leave the property of said felon—which makes sense to me too, especially when the felon has a wife and kids. Why should they be denied the right of self-defense for a crime that was committed by another?
But the plain fact of the matter is that as a violent criminal, you have chosen to step outside, far outside society—and if you suffer serious consequences for the rest of your life, that’s just too damn bad, because that’s how serious the consequences are. If you’re worried about self-defense, you’ll just have to defend yourself with a baseball bat or a kitchen knife. And if you understand that the consequences don’t just apply to you, but to anyone who is close to you, that’s just a part of it—just as the family of the guy you crippled in the 7-11 robbery also has to live with the consequences of your actions, forever.
The second part of Sam’s letter was a little easier to answer, having to do with what constitutes a “personal weapon”, or, as I described it in Part 2, a weapon of mass destruction. Readers may recall that I described a WMD as a weapon which cannot be carried by one person, and one which is capable of killing many people at the same time. Here’s the second part of Sam’s letter:
“Secondly, on the matter of weapons classification:
“Simplified philosophy: when one cannot draw a clear and easily distinguishable line of definition then the line is at best useless and at worst a danger to the underlying issue/undertaking.
“Some basic/huge reasons for what is wrong with your classification (i.e. WMD):
“1. In California they passed a ban on “assault weapons”; how do you distinguish between a semi-auto hunting rifle and a semi-auto MAK-90? A certain quantity of gasoline can become a WMD… as we’ve seen, an airplane becomes a pretty effective one, and probably a twin engine Piper crammed with fuel would probably do the job on a slightly smaller building, ... not to mention the blast focusing capabilities of water barrels in combination with readily made explosives… (need I continue?)
“2. (see 2 Above) Are you accepting the gun grabber’s argument that making it illegal magically prevents the bad guys from having them? And as far as the rocket launcher goes, wasn’t it Washington who insisted that people should own military grade weapons?*
“What good does the FFL do? Instead of [your 5 laws], let’s replace those 20,000+ laws with zero, and then we’ll attack the tax code.
“I hope I have been able to plant some seeds of reason that may affect your views on ‘the gun thing’. It took me years to shake off the indoctrination of my early education and then actually try to understand what those guys were writing/talking about (Constitution).”
How about this for a classification: Weapons of mass destruction can be described as those which are best used to defend the nation, and not the individual. (Included in this would be: rockets, Claymore mines, hand grenades, flame throwers, crew-served heavy machine guns or artillery pieces.)
Note that specifically excluded from a “military-only” classification are battle rifles with select-fire capability (eg. a fully-automatic AK-47, M3 Grease Gun or H&K MP-5 would be just fine, in private hands). I know that the line starts getting fuzzy when you look at some of the light machine-guns, but in the spirit of common sense, let’s apply the worthy judge’s words (used to describe pornography): “I can’t define it, but I know it when I see it.”
Note also that a private citizen would not be forbidden to own a machine gun; he’d just have to be a licensed owner (like the Class III license of today). All other guns, however, could be purchased without restriction of any kind.
As for explosive components (gasoline, petroleum jelly, Piper aircraft etc), there’s no reason why these should be of any concern to anyone—that’s a straw man I have no problem burning down.
And using California’s legislative lunacy as an example for anything would best be applied in the negative—in other words, whatever they do, you’d be pretty safe to do the opposite (in almost every situation, not just as applied to guns).
If letters like this do anything, they serve to clarify our thinking. On the two topics Sam has addressed, however, my thinking has been clarified for some time, but I always welcome the opportunity to explore the topic and its nuances further.
At some point, idealism always collides with common sense—and when making rules which would abridge the rights that are contained within those ideals, I am hugely skeptical. But at some point, you have to listen to what the data tells you, and to make a cold, clear decision as to where to draw the line—to do otherwise is just plain foolish.
Common sense, therefore, tells us that violent criminals are not to be trusted with guns, because they are statistically far more likely to use those guns to inflict harm on others than they will use them in self-defense or as members of the militia. (I’m prepared to ameliorate that position, as I described above, but I’m not entirely sold on it, either.)
Common sense also tells us that law-abiding individuals have little need of weapons of mass destruction—indeed, the risk of private ownership far outweighs any potential benefits of their ownership.
As with all things, it’s important where you draw the line; and when it comes to guns, I draw the line at a position which largely takes into account, and punishes, criminal behavior, but also gives law-abiding citizens the greatest degree of freedom possible.
I don’t think that’s too unreasonable.
*Not Washington, but Tench Coxe: “Their swords, and every other terrible implement of the soldier, are the birthright of an American.” I’m not sure whether old Tench would have included artillery in the “every other”—he probably would have considered a cannon as a terrible implement of the army, but there you have it.
This from my Reader Mail:
“I liked Guns Part 1, and thanks. My questions involve ‘infringement’-- aren’t all these [gun control] laws plainly infringement? If the law says you can’t own a gun in Chicago, isn’t that infringing on your constitutional right to “bear arms”? And if so, why isn’t NRA or other fighting such laws?” —J.
Oh boy. As the man said, you’ve exposed a great huge hole in our attitude towards guns. This requires an article rather than just a brief reply, so here goes.
It all started long, long ago in Liberal Land…
From the Morton Grove, IL website.
”On June 8, 1981, the Morton Grove Village Board of Trustees passed the history-making ban on handgun possession, as well as the sale of handguns. The Village Board’s 4-2 vote led the Village into nation-wide prominence as the first community to ban the possession of handguns within its boundaries. This decision subsequently became the battleground for pro-gun and anti-gun factions across the country and worldwide. The ordinance survived three separate legal challenges. One suit was heard in the Illinois State Supreme Court and another, the U.S. Court of Appeals. On October 3, 1983, the U.S. Supreme Court refused to hear the case, leaving intact the decision by the U.S. Court of Appeals which ruled that Morton Grove’s handgun ban did not violate citizens’ right to keep and bear arms according to the Second Amendment.”
Ever since then, because of those poxy liberal bastards in Morton Grove, many other municipalities have felt free to trample all over the Second Amendment. (The City of Chicago likewise banned handgun possession, California has banned guns which look nasty, and so on.)
Why the Supremes refused to hear the case remains beyond comprehension--I guess because, if memory serves, Morton Grove argued that they weren’t trying to ban all firearms, just those nasty lil’ handguns.
The fact is that you can bear arms (guns) in Morton Grove, just not a specific kind of gun.
However, Chicago, under Bitch Ex-Mayor Jane Byrne, took it one step further and instituted gun registration (of all guns), which is, to my mind, blatantly illegal. Here’s the relevant piece of legislation which supports my contention:
18 US 926. - Rules and Regulations (pertains to the duties of FFL dealers in maintaining sales records.)
3. No such rule or regulation prescribed after the date of the enactment of the Firearms Owners’ Protection Act may require that records required to be maintained under this chapter or any portion of the contents of such records, be recorded at or transferred to a facility owned, managed, or controlled by the United States or any State or any political subdivision thereof, nor that any system of registration of firearms, firearms owners, or firearms transactions or dispositions be established. [emphasis mine]
And here’s a U.S. Supreme Court Decision:
”A state may not impose a charge for the enjoyment of a right granted by the federal constitution. The power to impose a license tax on the exercise of these freedoms is indeed as potent as the power of censorship which this Court has repeatedly struck down… a person cannot be compelled ‘to purchase, through a license fee or a license tax, the privilege freely granted by the Constitution.’ ”
~~ MURDOCK V. PENNSYLVANIA 319 US 105 (1942)
This seems as plain as day to me. Gun registration is illegal. End of story.
There are many in this country, and I happen to be one of them, who think that the whole business of concealed-carry weapon permits is illegal too. If the CCW permits were free, then I might perhaps go along with them. But the minute you put a cost on the permit, it becomes illegal--a license tax on the exercise of a constitutional freedom. What if you can’t afford to buy one?
Moreover, the CCW in essence creates a state registry of gun owners, which is explicitly forbidden under the U.S. Code (above).
But it gets worse.
I also happen to think that the Illinois State Constitution itself stands in violation of the U.S. Constitution, vis-a-vis the issue of gun ownership (and no, I don’t know why this hasn’t been challenged, either):
SECTION 22. RIGHT TO ARMS
“Subject only to the police power, the right of the individual citizen to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed.”
Subject to the police power? So if the fuzz decide that only they themselves can own guns, that’s okay? In the United States, constitutions are about limiting government power, not adding to them. Can you imagine what Madison, Jefferson or Adams would have said had someone tried to insert language into the Second Amendment which read:
”Subject only to the whim of the state governor, the right of the citizen to bear arms shall not be infringed.”
They’d have reached for a rope, damnit. The Second Amendment is about ensuring the rights of the citizen to be armed, despite the wishes of government or State bureaucracy. The Illinois constitution is flat-out illegal.
Finally, as to who should oppose these un-Constitutional issues: it’s not going to be the National Rifle Association. Despite the liberal media propaganda, the NRA is hopelessly accommodating with the gun control movement. They are known to legislators all over as “people who you can do business with.”
When Charlton Heston held up that flintlock musket and gave the “cold dead hands” spiel to Al Gore during Campaign 2000, it typified the NRA, to my way of thinking. Nobody’s interested in your museum-piece, Chuck.
Had he held up an unlicensed AK-47 “assault rifle” in a speech delivered in California (thus openly defying California state law), then I’d have been impressed.
The NRA are a bunch of pussies, and have a vested interest in the continuance of Second Amendment infringement--otherwise they’d go back to being a safety- and musketry-training organization.
As everyone knows by now, I am an ardent supporter of the citizen’s right to be armed, for all sorts of reasons:
This position is not necessarily absolutist, however. If someone has committed a crime of violence, especially one which included a gun, they should not be permitted to own guns for a long, LONG time. On the other hand, I happen to think that using a gun to commit a felony should carry a mandatory death sentence anyway, so the issue would be largely moot under the reign of King Kim.
Still, I have to concede that gun owners as a group are not without their fair share of assholes, either. Here’s a list of some of the sub-groups.
What is painfully obvious, or at least should be, is that just as not all U.S. House Democrat Representatives are socialist loonies like the revolting Maxine Waters, all these gun-owning jerks comprise a miniscule proportion of the total number of gun owners. Just like Waters, however, these idiots get the lion’s share of the media coverage.
One of Kim’s Laws states that at least 10% of any group of people are assholes. This does not seem to be true of gun owners, however. If Gun Morons, for example, consisted of 10% of all gun owners, then we would have perhaps ten- or twenty thousand children dying through gun-related accidents a year. Instead, the actual death total from this cause is less than two dozen (yes, that’s right--once you take out gangbangers and suicides, the latest numbers available show an annual nationwide total of seventeen children under the age of 14 dying from accidental gunshots).
Every hunting season brings stories of horror about innocent people shot by careless/bloodthirsty hunters. Uh huh. Except that when you take the total number of hunters (over sixteen million--see Rant 04/18/2002) into account, the percentage of accidental/careless shootings is insignificant. Yes, I know, one is too many. But basing public policy on the top and bottom of the bell curve is not only silly, but ultimately harmful.
There is of course one last group of total jerks among the ranks of gun owners:
There was / is a write-in feature on the BBC News website, whereby people could write in about the gun “problem” in the United States. Here’s how the piece opens (with a lie):
“Public outcries at a series of high profile shootings across the US have led to repeated calls for a tougher line against the country’s prominent gun culture.”
Outcries from whom? Sarah Brady? The Violence Policy Center? The New York Times editorial committee?
Sorry, the people in and around the Maryland Shooter’s little playground didn’t respond to the attacks by calling for stricter gun control: they bought guns, 300% more than the previous year.
Leaving aside the issue of the BBC sticking their fat noses where they don’t belong, it became clearer than ever to me just how little people in Britain (and more than a few in Europe) seem to understand the principles of American government. Let me illustrate with just a few examples (and I’ll paraphrase the arguments).
1. “The U.S. doesn’t need the archaic Second Amendment anymore.” This is a simple one to answer. As I pointed out to the writer, there are three considerations revolving around private gun ownership. They are:
a.) freedom from foreign invasion
b.) freedom from government tyranny, and
c.) freedom to protect oneself, one’s family, and one’s property from the depredations of others.
All three of those considerations were specifically addressed by the authors of the Constitution, and by the Founding Fathers themselves (scroll down to see their actual words). When all three of those considerations become themselves archaic in the human condition, then we can talk. Until then, forget it.
2. “The U.S. needs to repeal the Second Amendment.” I always love this suggestion, because there are so many issues surrounding that simplistic statement that it becomes risible. Okay, for the benefit of any Brits or Euros who don’t have a clear picture:
a.) The Bill of Rights (that would be the first 10 amendments to the Constitution) enumerate, but do not guarantee, the freedoms contained within. Why do they not guarantee them? Because those freedoms are regarded as “God-given” (or “natural”, if you’re an atheist), and they can no more be repealed than breathing can be declared against the law. But:
b.) The Bill of Rights was included with the Constitution as part of the Federalists’ reassurance for the states, to enumerate the protections of the citizens of those states from an overbearing federal (ie. central) government. Call it the underlining, bold-type statement which would allow the states to ratify the Constitution in good faith and join together to create the republic. Repealing all or part of the BoR could, by changing the terms of the agreement, possibly negate the original ratification and allow secession from the United States—the Civil War, all over again. Unlikely, but not altogether impossible.
c.) Any politician submitting a bill calling for the repeal of any of the freedoms in the BoR would not make it past the next election—and he would, in all probability, face impeachment and recall by the voters of his state and/or district. [Yes, if the voters don’t like their representative, they can recall him outside of the election process.]
d.) The mechanics of repealing any part of the Constitution (never mind the BoR) are daunting. Assuming the repeal of the 2A made it out of the House with a two-thirds majority, it would still have to make it through the Senate with the same (two-thirds) majority, and then be ratified by a super-majority (ie. three-quarters) of the fifty states’ legislatures (or 38 out of 50). (Note for the populists: a plebiscite or referendum wouldn’t count—it’s a states-only business.) The amendment of our Constitution is, by design, a steep hurdle to overcome, and we undertake it with extreme reluctance.
e.) Even assuming the 2A was repealed, a huge number of Americans would simply ignore the repeal, and continue to carry and own their guns (and I am one of those). The expression “from my cold dead hands” is often said, but would not be universally followed if the Gun Police came knocking. Nevertheless, if only 2% of all known gun owners did respond to gun confiscation with extreme violence, that’s over a million really angry, and armed, citizens. That’s the ugly reality that faces any would-be gun confiscators. Americans are not docile citizens. Our nation was born by rebellion and bloodshed in the name of freedom, and we’re not that afraid of doing it again, if we have to.
3. “The politicians are in thrall to the NRA.” Actually, even if every single member of the NRA, all four million, did exactly what the NRA told them to do, it would be insignificant, vote-wise. In point of fact, the NRA (and all the other 2A organizations combined) represent the beliefs and sentiments of well over seventy million gun owners—and on the issue of guns or gun control, gun owners vote. So the NRA is really only a mouthpiece for gun owners—and truth be told, a considerable percentage (myself included) think the NRA are a bunch of compromising weasels.
4. “How can Americans NOT support greater gun control, when tens of thousands of people are killed by gunshot each year?” Actually, the “tens of thousands” of casualties is largely a myth (and by the way, as more and more states have accepted the rights of citizens to carry handguns, the homicide rate has dropped each year. Conspicuous among the places where homicide rates are rising, are places with no such rights, such as Chicago, New York and Washington D.C.).
Anyway, the latest actual statistics (for Y2000) read as follows:
Leading causes of death:
Heart Disease: 710,760
Cancer: 553,091
Stroke: 167,661
Chronic lower respiratory diseases: 122,009
Accidents: 97,900
Diabetes: 69,301
Influenza and pneumonia: 65,313
Alzheimer’s Disease: 49,558
Kidney diseases: 37,251
Septicemia: 31,224
Suicide: 29,350
Liver disease: 26,552
Hypertension/renal disease: 18,073
Homicide (all causes): 16,765
Pneumonitis: 16,636
All other combined: 391,904
Total deaths by gunshot: 28,663
Circumstances of gunshot deaths:
1. Suicide: 16,596 (53%)
2. Homicide: 10,806 (38%)
3. Accident: 774 (2.7%)
4. Police: 258 (0.9%)
5. Unknown: 229 (0.8%)
As a percentage of the total U.S. population:
-- Gunshot homicide deaths (10,806) : 0.0036%
And for comparison purposes:
-- Death by alcohol (19,358): 0.0062% [excl. alcohol-related accidents]
In other words, you’re almost twice as likely to die of alcohol poisoning than by gunshot-homicide. Far more likely if you’re not a drug dealer disputing your “turf”.
Yes, incidents such as Columbine and Maryland grab headlines. It should be remembered that such isolated incidents, horrible as they may be, are not comparable to the bleak future of an entire nation of people permanently enslaved by foreign or local tyranny, or by a citizenry too frightened to venture out of doors for fear of criminals.
Remember George Orwell’s gloomy description of totalitarianism: “To imagine the future, imagine a boot stepping on a human face—forever.”
For as long as We The People are armed, this will never happen. And no amount of wailing by foreigners, peoples or governments, will count for anything in this “debate”, because there is no debate.
Our Bill of Rights is not negotiable—not one single part, not ever.
There seems to be some confusion about my position on the National Instant Criminal Background Check System (NICS), the “instant-check” system handled by the FBI, and originally spawned by that Tool of Satan, the “Brady Bill 2.”
Here’s why I don’t support it in its current format, and why I would support it in a better format.
Given that we don’t want convicted felons to be able to buy a gun (and I’m not going to argue about that one), it seems reasonable that there should be a background check when someone attempts to buy a gun from a registered gun dealer.
The way it should work is that the stupid FBI [redundancy alert] should have on their silly little database a list of all convicted felons, and only convicted felons* (supplied by the various states)—so when someone’s name is called in by a dealer, the check is what we database geeks refer to as a “null check”—the onus is on the FBI to prove that the name being referred to should not be allowed to buy a gun. And this is done by their answering a simple “yes” or “no” to one question: “Is this name on your list of felons?” If the answer is “yes”, the sale is denied, and all sorts of shit can hit the fan. If the answer is “no” (which it will be about 99% of the time), then the sale goes through, and no record of that call may be kept by the FBI.
In this way, the onus is on the state concerned, and on the FBI, to ensure that the list of Bad Guys is kept up to date. If the state screws up, or the FBI, then it’s not the fault of the dealer for processing the sale. (The onus should always be on government to prove their case, not on the citizen to prove his worthiness.)
And finally, the check has to happen within 3 minutes, which is how long any simply database check should take, or else the transaction should be allowed, by default—I refuse to allow Government to hide behind “the system’s down” bullshit—and they can fix/update the system during the night, when no transactions take place anyway. The current default is three days, which is total bullshit. And I refuse to accept the “volume of traffic” excuse, either: a typical Visa card issuer processes well over a million transactions a day—you’d think the FBI could handle a few lousy thousand.
That’s not how the system works now, of course, which is why I think that NICS (and its proponents) should be tossed into a garbage compactor.
* “convicted felons” does not mean “anyone the court feels like.” If a man has a restraining order against his ex-wife (the most common example), he has not been convicted of any crime, and there is no reason to deny him the purchase of a gun. If he shoots her, of course, he gets either a looooooong prison sentence (if she’s wounded) or else the Big Sleep (if he kills her). But our Constitution does not contain any mention of “prior restraint” or “the precautionary principle”. We do not take away people’s rights because of what they “might” do.
This letter came to me, and I started to answer it in Reader Mail, but the issues raised are too critical not to be featured here.
Quick question - I’m generally pro-gun ownership, but I don’t see why you oppose a registration and licensing system. First, do you think that driver’s licenses, license plates, and road tests are a bad idea? If so, then I can understand (though I disagree) with your position, which I’d characterize as anti-regulation absolutist.
But if you support or are at least indifferent to the infrastructure that surrounds car ownership, why would you be opposed to national serial numbers and gun ownership licenses?
Let’s get a couple of basic misconceptions out of the way first. Driving is not a Constitutionally-protected individual right (despite what many people seem to think), but gun ownership is. People are not, in fact, required to have a driver’s license, if they never drive on the public thoroughfare. When people drive on government-built and -maintained roads, the implicit deal is that government can impose a tax on you for the maintenance thereof, and has a right to determine that you are capable of driving, as a matter of public safety.
“Aha!” you may think, “isn’t gun ownership a question of public safety too?”
Well, that depends on your definition of “public safety”. Yes, public safety is threatened when an occasional jerk shoots at people for no reason (the Texas Tower shooter in 1966 and the current thing in Maryland being good examples).
But there is a more fundamental definition of “public safety”: and that includes both the security of the nation, and the security of the people from tyranny. The protection of these two “public safeties” far outweighs the harm caused by the occasional crime spree by disturbed individuals. And they are occasional: excluding suicide and “righteous shootings” (ie. when a criminal is shot by the police or by a citizen in self-defense), death by gunfire in the United States is a statistical irrelevance, given the prevalence of guns and gun owners in the public domain. But that’s not what I want to discuss here.
America’s Founding Fathers were all keen students of history, and they saw what happened when the citizens of a state were disarmed: sooner or later, they were oppressed by tyranny, whether imported, or local. Their deep and abiding suspicion of government, and the need to keep the country safe from foreign invasion, were uppermost in their minds when they penned the U.S. Constitution and the Bill of Rights.
So the right of a free people to be armed is not an issue for negotiation, ever.
“But why not licensing or registration?”
Well, the Founding Fathers were not the only keen students of history. One of the basic disadvantages of the State knowing who is armed and who isn’t, is that the State knows who has to be disarmed, if they are to impose any kind of tyranny. The Weimar Republic in 1920s Germany imposed universal gun registration, largely in an attempt to control the gangs of political thugs (Nazi, Communist, Socialist, Spartacist, whoever) roaming the streets. The German people, being largely a law-abiding lot, complied. When the Nazis came to power, one of their first acts (in 1933, as I recall), was to begin disarming the German people, most especially the Jews—and we all know how that turned out eventually.
“But come on,” you may say, “modern-day Nazis aren’t going to take over the United States; that’s impossible.”
Yes, you’re right. Modern-day Nazis will never take over the United States, because the citizens are armed. The problem with tyranny is that by the time it’s there, it’s too late to do anything about it. As with all bad things, it’s easier to control or get rid of tyranny early on, or even better, to prevent it from taking root at all. The best guarantee against tyranny is an armed citizenry.
Another of the characteristics we inherited from the Founding Fathers was their suspicion of overweening government. And it’s not up to us to trust government— we don’t, and with good reason, which is why governmental power in the United States is so circumscribed. In fact, government has to trust us, or we’ll replace them with one which does.
“But,” you may say, “there are real benefits to registering guns and gun owners, in terms of fighting violent crime.”
Not true. Canada has demanded registration of handguns and handgun owners since 1934, and to date, not one crime has been solved as a direct result of any gun- or owner registration. The downside, the loss of freedom engendered by gun owner identification, is too egregious for the dubious and unproven benefits for crime policing.
“What downside?”
By allowing licensing, we give the State the ability to deny a license. But the State cannot deny us a Constitutional right, unless we specifically say it can (such as by our voting to deny convicted felons or the insane the right to own firearms). Our legal assumption of innocence until guilt is proved, covers this eventuality. Egregious betrayal of the public trust (or gross incompetence) is the only reason for the withholding of a Constitutional right.
But licensing takes it to the next step: that of official discretion to issue—which is a fundamental contradiction of the Second Amendment, and indeed of any of our Constitutional freedoms. ”Because the Sheriff says you can’t” is not sufficient reason to deny a Constitutional right. Far better not to give the Sheriff the power in the first place.
As we saw earlier in the case of Nazi Germany, by giving the State the ability to identify gun owners, we give the State the ability to disarm us.
This is not a situation of “Trust us, we’ll never do that.” We would be incredibly naive to fall for that nonsense. In all of history, assumption of government benevolence has been betrayed, sooner or later, and the greater the power of the State, the sooner comes the betrayal.
Gun owners know the underlying motives behind gun registration, and we are not reassured or fooled by the weasel denials of politicians. Licensing and registration constitute infringement, and that’s prohibited by the Second Amendment. Anyway, we know the progression.
First would go certain types of handguns, then all handguns, then “assault rifles”, then “sniper rifles”, then “high-powered” rifles, and so on. All because we allowed the State to know who owns guns, and what guns we own. For a modern-day example, we have only to look at Great Britain, which followed precisely that path.
Closer to home, California has attempted to do the same with “assault rifles” (definition: semi-automatic rifles which look scary). The result is that only a tiny percentage of Californians have “registered” their scary-looking semi-auto rifles—and there is a potential tragedy in the making, because I am convinced that a large number of Californians will never register their AK-47s, and justifiably so. California has made these people criminals, simply because they lack a piece of paper. The apprehension of these “criminals” is not a pleasant prospect, and will not occur without bloodshed. This is why California has not attempted to track down and punish people with non-registered semi-automatic rifles—in itself a good reason for the citizenry to be armed.
And let’s be honest: no amount of gun registration can protect the public from a deranged individual who wants to kill total strangers—there were mass murderers in the Soviet Union, where private firearms ownership was illegal. Colin Chapman, the New York Subway Killer, purchased his gun perfectly legally, as did David Berkowitz, the Son of Sam killer. Licensing would not have prevented either of them from playing their murderous little reindeer games. The only way either of those mopes could have been prevented from buying handguns was if there were no handguns for sale—but that doesn’t work either. Even in England, where private handgun ownership is all but impossible, people are still getting killed by criminals with handguns.
So, to summarize, the concept of universal licensing and registration is a non-starter.
In the first place, the potential downside of allowing registration is too high a risk to take, in terms of our freedom and public safety. And we don’t need to justify our fear of a downside: history has done that for us.
In the second place, a huge number of people will simply ignore any such law, which means that the law will be useless. Over 200 million guns in circulation means that the job of registration is too large a task, and too costly a task (in so many different senses of the word) to be attempted. In Canada, this has proven to be the case, and they have a smaller and far more docile populace than the United States.
So we have two reasons against the proposition of registration and licensing: un-Constitutionality, and impracticality. The first makes the proposition illegal, the second renders the proposition unworkable; both in concert doom it outright.
I’m sorry this has been so long an answer. But the questions of the right to be armed, and the various infringements thereof, are not issues which can easily be encapsulated with a simple answer.
Unless you would accept the answer to your question “Why not gun and gun owner registration?” to be answered with:
“Because the Constitution says it’s none of the government’s damn business.”
I’m aware that a whole bunch of people out there buy guns and ammo from Wal-Mart (not to mention all the other household stuff), and that’s fine. A couple of people know that I don’t especially care for Wal-Mart myself, and have written to talk about it.
I’ve worked in and around the retail industry for over twenty-five years, for small operations and huge chains, and on two continents, so I know a little whereof I speak. Here are my thoughts on the matter.
1. I don’t like one organization, especially a retailer, to have a huge (or near-monopolistic) market share. I don’t think it’s healthy for the economy, despite the short-term consumer savings that a large organization brings to the market. When most of the smaller operations get put out of business, the community suffers, both economically and in spirit.
2. Despite the folksiness of their public demeanor, Wal-Mart is a pretty damned predatory company in their dealings with both suppliers and competitors. They go after competition with a ferocity and lack of conscience that are truly disturbing. That’s fine, of course—it’s good business—but at some point, that attitude will turn around and bite the consumer too. When you become the only game in town, eventually you become arrogant. If Wal-Mart tries to deny that this will happen to them, they’re ignorant of history: it always happens. Always.
3. Most insidiously, when one store becomes the sole channel for a specific product, it becomes progressively easier for that product to be controlled by legislation. When there’s only one faucet, it’s easy to stop the flow of water—when there are thousands, it’s more difficult.
4. Along the way, eventually, product choice becomes narrower when only one or two stores control all the sales. When all a store cares about is what sells now, the more esoteric items disappear because they either don’t move quickly enough for the store to generate profit, or the price is increased to generate a larger profit. So you either won’t find it, or it will be too expensive. This is Retailing 101.
That’s it. I don’t think that Wal-Mart is good for the country in the long-term: near-monopolies seldom are.
As far as the gun business is concerned, I don’t think Wal-Mart is good for the country right now. To their credit, they’ve made guns and ammunition cheaper in rural areas, and many people swear by them. But when you live in Wahoo, WY and Wal-Mart is the only game in town, don’t think for a moment that you’re going to have the ultimate gun store in Wal-Mart, because you won’t.
Frankly, Wal-Mart doesn’t give a shit about the gun business. It’s just another product category to them, like shirts or jeans, and most of their decisions are made at head office in Bentonville, not at the local level. If guns and ammo become too problematic for them in terms of regulation, product movement or return on investment, they’ll drop the category without a second thought—once again, that’s good business, and you can’t fault them for it—but gun owners will be totally screwed.
Sure, the gun store is more expensive: because he doesn’t have the daily profits from other categories like toys, CDs and sweatshirts to keep him in business. I know how it works: you shop around at the local gun stores, get all the information from the guys behind the counter, and then go to Wal-Mart because that Remington 870 is $80 cheaper there. Congratulations. You got a great deal—and shafted the guy whose entire living depends on your dollars. If you’ve done this kind of thing before, and this paragraph didn’t give you a twinge of conscience, you ought to be ashamed of yourself.
Wal-Mart can survive without selling guns and ammo. Your local gun store can’t. Think about it.
Every so often, I get mail that is so misdirected that I have to respond to it here, rather than in Reader Mail. The writer is a Brit who has crossed pens with me a couple of times before. This particular email whined about how Britain isn’t really becoming a totalitarian state (despite surveillance cameras on every street corner, RIPA, the move to abolish jury trials, gun banning, etc), but here’s the part I really want to take on:
“In any country there is a balance between freedom and responsibility. We can all feel thankful that your police have finally caught the lunatic going on a shooting spree in the vicinity of Washington. 10 people dead but millions living in fear before the killer was caught napping, literally. But the USA is still not willing to advocate some degree of gun control. Letting anyone buy a lethal weapon without proper licensing and tracing is letting freedom go too far. It’s about time you considered whether your site is being responsible in its paeans to weapons of death.”
Let me start with the obvious ones:
1. My First Amendment right allows me to say whatever the fuck I want, without fear of someone else deciding for me whether it is “responsible” or not. My own good sense tells me where to draw the line, and it should be quite clear that I’ve done so, unless of course the reader is gun-averse (more on this, later).
2. More than a few people have written to me for advice in how to use a gun, which guns to buy, how to teach their kids how to shoot, and so on. Yes, there is an outside chance that one of them might one day use a gun to rob someone else; but one of these writers may equally use his new gun to defend himself from a robber or potential murderer. Given the average profile of people who write to me, the second eventuality is far more likely than the first. And let me tell you, I would be the proudest man in the world if one day someone wrote to me to tell me that—with the gun I’d recommended to him—he’d wasted some goblin who had broken into his house and was threatening his wife and kids.
3. The word you need to understand is “hoplophobia”, a term coined by Jeff Cooper to describe an irrational fear of weapons (from the Greek oplo: weapon). A fear of weapons is an irrational fear—it runs counter to ages of genetic human conditioning whereby weapons have provided a measure of comfort against the fear of harm. Yes, guns can cause death, and they do. In the United States each year, guns also prevent crime, anywhere from 1.5 million to 2.5 million times.
What you refer to as “paeans” are nothing of the sort. I write about guns the way other people write about their favorite cars, or their favorite books or movies—I talk about guns with respect and affection. I’m not afraid of guns—and if my writing helps others overcome their fear, then that’s wonderful.
The history of the United States has proved that a free, armed citizenry is the guarantor of a nation’s wellbeing. We’ve had no Hitlers, no Stalins, no Pol Pots, and for that matter, no “Bloody Marys” invading our country nor infesting our government, nor will we— as long as We The People are armed, and can defend ourselves. In my earlier post, I mentioned that gunshot homicide affects less than four thousandths of one percent of the population—when you weigh that against the three hundred million-plus people who have lived here free of tyranny for over two centuries, it is a tiny price to pay.
And yes, there was slavery in the U.S. for the first 80-odd years of our history, but the institution of slavery was eventually ended—with guns, lest we forget.
Let me conclude this Rant by quoting another of my readers:
“It’s a no-brainer that this country, however imperfect, is a vastly superior domicile than any other on Earth. It’s also a no-brainer, after observing the REAL history of just the twentieth century, that America will not remain free if we allow ourselves to be disarmed.”
Yup.
I was asked the other day what I have against certain cartridges, specifically the .40 Smith & Wesson and the .357 SIG for handguns, and the plethora of new rifle cartridges (Ultra Mags, Short Mags and so on).
Simple answer: I have nothing against them. Our culture and economy flourish because we insist on choice. I refuse to get into a discussion of “need” for choices, because when you talk about “need”, the unanswerable question is, ”Who decides what you need, and when?” It’s unanswerable, because no one should decide what we need-- the market decides what stays and what goes, and we make our choices as part of the “market”.
However, one of the problems we face is that in the relentless pursuit of choice, some excellent options may get lost, just because they’re old and no longer worthy of production.
A while back, I read an article written by Craig Boddington, entitled “Cartridges We Can Live Without.” Now I know that writers seldom pick their own topics-- they’re usually assigned them by editors-- but this article prompted me to write a seething letter to the editor of the magazine, the subject of my letter being “Gun Writers We Can Do Without.” [Unsurprisingly, they declined to publish it, the craven wussies.]
What raised my ire on this specific occasion was Seyfried’s assertion that the venerable 7x57mm ("7mm Mauser") cartridge was pass�, being no longer on a par with some of the new “wonder” cartridges. Well, excuse me. Considering that the late Great White Hunter “Karamojo” Bell used to hunt elephant with the 7x57, it’s a little silly to think that the slow-moving, long bullet won’t do pretty much anything you ask of it. I once went hunting with an old surplus Mauser in 7x57mm, and the professional hunter (PH) nearly refused to take me out with such an “underpowered” rifle. One dead eland later, killed with a single shot, changed his mind. (The eland typically weighs well over half a ton.)
Now I know that new products are a good thing. Research and development make for improvement, on just about anything. But there is an implicit danger in this, that being that the “tried-and-true” can sometimes be forced out simply because of economics. Indeed, were it not for the fact that the European shooting market still enjoys the 7x57, I doubt very much whether any U.S. company would still make the old girl. The fact remains, though, that the 7x57, while admittedly inefficient by today’s cartridge standards, still has many attributes (low recoil, astounding penetration) which endear it to many shooters, myself included.
The problem with new cartridges is that you need new rifles to shoot them with-- and over the past few years I think that most new cartridge development has been done to sell new rifles, rather than to improve a similar cartridge’s shortcomings. And the market being what it is, a number of fine old cartridges have been simply lost, because they weren’t popular enough. In the cold light of capitalism, this is a good thing. In the gun world, well, I’m not so sure.
Because when a cartridge is no longer made, unless you learn to handload your own, your rifle becomes an expensive club, or mantlepiece ornament. And that just plain sucks. If the newer cartridges were that much better than the ones they’d replaced, that would be one thing. But, since 1950, most newer cartridges are only marginally better than some they’ve “replaced.”
Here’s a short list of cartridges developed since the advent of the metallic cartridge, with their dates of introduction. And please don’t write to me and ask me how come I left off your favorite .278-08 Ackley Improved—the list is indicative, not comprehensive or definitive. (* = rare and can be difficult to find these days, bold = Kim’s favorites)
Rifle Cartridges:
.45-70 Government: 1873
.32-20 Win: 1882
8mm Lebel: 1886
.22 Long Rifle: 1887
.303 British: 1888
8x50Rmm Mannlicher: 1888
7.5x55mm Swiss: 1889
7.62x54Rmm Russian: 1891
7x57mm Mauser: 1892
.30-40 Krag: 1892
6.55mm Swedish Mauser: 1894
.30-30 WCF: 1895
Actually, I could argue that a rifleman would do just fine with cartridges developed before 1900 (unless hunting Cape buffalo or elephant, perhaps), but let’s be charitable and give the first half of the 20th century its due:
.32 Win Special: 1902
8x57mm Mauser: 1905
6.5x50mm Arisaka: 1905
.30-06 Springfield: 1906
.35 Remington: 1906*
.470 Nitro Express: 1907*
.404 Jeffery: 1909*
.35 Whelen: 1910 (?)
.416 Rigby: 1911
.375 H&H Magnum: 1912
.250 Savage: 1915*
.300 Savage: 1920*
.25-06 Remington: 1920
.50 Browning: 1923
.270 Win: 1925
.300 H&H Magnum: 1925
.22 Hornet: 1930
.257 Roberts: 1934*
.220 Swift: 1935
.22-250: 1937 (as a wildcat; later, as a production item, in 1965)
.270 Weatherby Mag: 1943
7.62x39mm Russian: 1943 (as a combat round only)
.257 Weatherby Mag: 1944
.284 Weatherby Mag: 1944*
.300 Weatherby Mag: 1948
.222 Rem: 1950
.308 Winchester: 1952 (aka. 7.62x51mm NATO)
.243 Win: 1955
That’s it: two world wars, countless other conflicts, and millions of game animals would all attest to the power and value of those cartridges. Here’s a picture of some of the older cartridges:
All other cartridges made since 1955 have been attempts to gild the lily, with the possible exception of the following:
.458 Winchester Magnum: 1956
.223 Rem: 1957
.338 Winchester Magnum: 1958
.22 Win Magnum: 1959
7mm Remington Magnum: 1962
7mm-08 Remington: 1980
There have been dozens of others introduced, but truthfully, the only ones really worth the trouble are the ones listed. I’ve left off the “experimental” cartridges like those of John Lazzeroni, Rick Jamison, Layne Simpson and J.D. Jones, because they have a limited following (so far).
The fact that the U.S. Armed Forces’ current main battle rifle is chambered in .223 (5.56mm) doesn’t mean anything. The fine gun writer Chuck Hawks makes a powerful case that the .243 (6mm) would be a better compromise between portability and knockdown power than the .223 varmint round (and let’s face it, military high command decisions have a pretty spotty track record anyway). Even the 7mm-08 was just an attempt to tame the recoil of the .308, and the venerable 7x57mm fills that slot more than adequately, as would the .300 Savage, which, lamentably, has almost disappeared.
I consider the latest flock of “Short Magnum” and “Ultra Magnum” rifle cartridges to be essentially marketing ploys, whose sole purpose is to drive new-gun sales. Not one of them really brings anything new to the party, the writings of the manufacturers’ pimps (aka. gun magazine writers) notwithstanding.
It’s even worse for handguns. With the exception of the .44 Magnum, which was essentially an improvement of the .44 Special cartridge for handgun hunting purposes, we could have ended all handgun cartridge development in 1940. The improvement of bullet and propellant performance, of course, is another thing—improved bullet design has turned a marginal cartridge like the .380 ACP into an acceptable self-defense one.
Handgun Cartridges:
.45 Colt: 1873
.38 Long Colt: 1892*
.30 Mauser: 1893*
.32 ACP (7.65mm Browning): 1899
9x19mm Parabellum: 1902
.38 Special: 1902
.45 ACP: 1905
.44 Special: 1907
.25 ACP: 1908
.380 ACP: 1912
.38 Super: 1929
7.62x25mm Tokarev: 1930
.357 S&W Magnum: 1935
That’s just about all you’d ever need, right there, for almost any handgun purpose, especially if you add the .22 LR to the list as a dual-purpose round. The only other major handgun cartridges worthy of mention since 1950 have been:
.44 Remington Magnum: 1955
.454 Casull: 1957
.41 Rem Magnum: 1964
10mm Auto: 1983
.32 H&R Magnum: 1984
.40 S&W: 1989
.357 SIG: 1998
.480 Ruger: 2001
.500 S&W Mag: 2002
and I’m not so sure about the last half-dozen, either. As Jeff Cooper puts it (talking about the .40 S&W), they are a solution to a non-existent problem, or the answer to an unasked question.
Here’s the critical conclusion to be drawn from all this: it seems quite clear that in the confines of physics, cartridges have about topped out in terms of capability. In other words, we’ve climbed the steep curve of performance improvement, and are now on the flat slope of diminishing returns.
Bullet design and development of propellant have the only real chance of making serious improvements to cartridge efficiency, but it’s clear that if the gun business is going to grow, the change will have to come from a different kind of gun altogether, or a different kind of bullet.
In the meantime, leave my precious 7x57mm alone.
And this is the point. While I’m all for cartridge development, it’s clear that the continuing drive to improve gun sales by new cartridge introduction (for that is what it has become) may result in many fine old cartridges losing favor and being discontinued-- meaning that at some point in the future, if you want to keep your 8mm Mauser rifle in ammo, you’ll have to reload them yourself.
Or maybe I’m just a fuddy-duddy who should been alive in about 1910. [loud chorus of “Yes, you are, you old fart” in the background]
A couple people have asked me about choosing rifle scopes, but truthfully, I’m the wrong guy to ask. If I know a lot about a topic, I’m comfortable talking about it in detail; if I know a little, I’ll talk a little, ask a few questions, and listen a lot; and if I know very little, I’ll pass.
Scopes fall into the last category with me: I seldom use them, unless hunting in wide-open countryside (not my favorite environment anyway), and the technicalities of scopes bore me.
That doesn’t stop me from having any opinions, though, from a user’s perspective. I’ve seen many a hunt (not mine) screwed up because some guy dropped his rifle and busted the scope (hence my insistence that rifles always have iron sights as backup). And it has been my experience, once again with other people’s experience, that variable-power scopes (eg. 3-9x, 4.5-10x) are just one more unnecessary thing to go wrong.
What I’ve noticed is that people have a “favorite” power on their variable scopes, and once they’ve found it, they seldom change it—turning it, in essence, into a fixed-power scope, only more fragile.
And guess what that “favorite” power is? About 5x. Which is why I prefer to use a fixed-power scope of either 4x or 6x magnification.
Because I’m stupid about the tech stuff, though, my modus operandi for buying a scope is simple: buy the most expensive fixed-power scope I can afford, and use that.
I have one stupid preference, though: I prefer a “post"-type reticle (the thingy you aim with), sometimes called a “German 3 Post” or “picket post"):
Of course, I can’t make shots at extreme distances (the post is too big for really fine shooting). But as my eyesight is lousy anyway, most super-precise long-distance shots are beyond my capability—and as the post is easier to see in the scope, it makes low-light shooting easier (eg. at dusk and in deep-woods). Ditto, it’s easier to make a “running shot” with a post, as I’ve discovered on more than one occasion.
Bausch & Lomb apparently have a thing called a “Command Post”, which apparently allows you to create a 3-post reticle out of a regular “plex” (crosshairs) type of reticle, but annoyingly, it’s only available on their variable-power scopes.
A lot of people have mocked me about this preference, but the hell with them. I am generally unable to put all my shots into a 3"-sized target at 300 yards. At 300 yards, I’m lucky to get all my shots into a 6” circle.
But when it’s late dusk, and I have to make a quick, almost instinctive shot at something running perhaps a hundred yards away, I’ll get the shot in, with regularity.
Post reticles are not popular in the United States, because it seems that everyone fancies themselves as a pinhole-shooter, so I invariably have to special-order the scopes with a post, which makes them more expensive [sigh], and which means I’ve had to get used to the normal plex reticle because I am a Cheap Bastard. Oh well, maybe when the lottery is won…
A little while ago, someone asked me the purpose of my website, other than as an outlet for my bad temper and hatred of socialists / Democrats / gun-controllers [multiple redundancy alert].
Not that I need another reason than that of course, but I realized that what’s going on here is that after reading my stuff, people have come to realize that they don’t have to be ashamed of wanting to own a gun, of wanting to protect their families, of wanting to protect themselves, and of understanding that the Second Amendment isn’t about hunting, buddy.
I haven’t really kept an accurate count, but over the past year well over a hundred people have written to me to ask my advice on buying and using their first gun. Almost all have written back to tell me what a blast it was, and how they’d got hooked (or re-hooked, in some cases) on shooting.
I found that there were three major themes running through the letters:
The Gratuitous Gun Pics section started off because I just felt like posting pictures of cool guns, and talking about them from a (relatively) non-technical perspective—more as old friends than as machines, how fine they look, how effective they are, and how much fun they are to shoot.
Nearly three hundred guns later, if I skip a GGP for one day, I get a storm of letters complaining about the missing picture. Good grief, when I suggested that I may have run out of guns to talk about, people whined louder than Florida Democrats in 2000.
Clearly, people have a continuing need to read about guns, to talk about them, and to be reassured that the nonsense emanating from VPC or the Brady Bunch is just that.
From that, I’ve stumbled across a worthy (albeit lofty) goal:
I want to turn America back into a nation of riflemen.
And I’m going to do just that, by golly, not by making big speeches or founding (yet another) gun-rights organization—we have enough of both of those.
Nor am I going to rebut the gun-controllers’ lies and fear-mongering by posting scholarly articles of rebuttal—enough people do that already, and better than I can.
What I am going to do is this: I’m going to subvert the gun-controllers’ agenda by helping people buy their first gun, by getting existing gun owners to buy more guns and to shoot more, and by getting people to teach their kids how to shoot.
Above all, people need to be reminded that a gun as a tool is a vital possession—you’ll hardly ever need one, but when you do need it, nothing else will suffice. And when it’s not needed, shooting is just plain fun.
And if I can only do all that one person at a time, then that’s what I’ll do, for the rest of my life if I have to.
Remember: We are a nation of riflemen. We slipped for a while, during the latter half of the twentieth century, and allowed the agenda of the statists and the fearful to take root in the national consciousness.
That’s all over and done with. If 9/11/01 showed us anything, it’s that we are all vulnerable, no matter where. And yes, I know that a gun won’t help you if someone crashes an airliner into your office building—but in times of danger, people need something to help them feel, well, not so helpless.
That’s what guns are for. And for whacking clay pigeons, Commies, targets, deer, terrorists, varmints, empty cans, and goblins.
I know that this may sound like a lofty, or impossible goal for just one person. I don’t care, because it’s a worthy goal, and anyway, I always considered myself above despair—and if I’ve managed to persuade a hundred people to become gun owners inside a year, those hundred themselves need only persuade one other person, or teach one kid to shoot, and the tide will be irresistible.
So here’s the thing, in simple terms.
"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.
As someone who has dedicated myself to turning America back into a Nation of Riflemen, I’ve been really remiss in guiding people along the first steps. The most common question I get asked is: If I want to become a shooter, where do I start in terms of the gun(s) I should get?
Now, I try to answer each letter on a personal basis—everyone has different needs and concerns—but really, what is needed is a basic idea.
So here we go with some recommendations (others may differ; void where prohibited).
I always recommend that the beginner shooter should learn with a .22 pistol, preferably a semi-automatic. Firstly, a .22 pistol has no recoil to speak of, and the ammo is cheap, so practice can be frequent (which it should be for everyone, but the beginner most of all). Secondly, the act of shooting a semi-auto is less of a hassle than that of a revolver (like learning to drive a car with auto, instead of a stick shift). But that’s really a question of taste. As for which gun, I’d recommend one of these:
My favorite is the Buckmark (I own three, and may still get a fourth), but other people are just as appreciative of the other two guns. It all depends on how it feels in your hand. The Beretta, if it matters, is quite a bit more expensive than the other two.Now, some people prefer to start shooting with a revolver—there’s a little more control in that each shot requires preparation (as opposed to a semi-auto where you just pull the trigger). That being the case, if you want a .22 revolver, then there are three I’d recommend, without reservation:
And speaking of self-defense, let’s talk about that next.
Here’s what I recommend:
1. As a home-defense piece, the shotgun is the best idea, with a couple of reservations: a shotgun is somewhat unwieldy in close quarters (such as inside a room), and if loaded with buckshot, a shot can go through walls and perhaps injure someone on the other side. With those reservations in mind, here’s my recommendation:
A 20-gauge pump-action shotgun—easy to learn to use, no recoil to speak of, plenty of action on the other side of the barrel. Any one of these would be good:
(Don’t let the “youth” designation put you off. The smaller stock makes for a more-handy weapon in a confined space, and, in a pinch, your wife could use it as well.)If you just HAVE to have a 12-gauge pump-action, then the Mossberg 500 as above will do fine, or get the tried-and-tested Winchester 1300 Defender or Remington 870, also as above. Ithaca makes excellent 12ga. pump-action shotguns, too. Be warned, however, that the 12ga. recoil takes some getting used to—ignore the sneers of the Macho Brigade: trust me, it’s not a small concern.
2. Now, as for a “bedside” gun, here’s what I have to say on the subject:
Short version: get a short-barreled revolver in .38 Special. Here you can get a secondhand gun without any qualms: this is a gun you’ll shoot a little to get used to, practice with a couple of times a year and just have around. (It also makes for an excellent carry piece —I carry one as a backup gun, myself.) And speaking of which…
3. Finally, we get to the most problematic area, the “carry” gun. Of all the different types of application, this is the one which will be most heavily influenced by personal choice. The hard-and-fast criteria are:
During the winter months, when I’m wearing a coat, I carry a .45 pistol; in summer months, when the clothing is lighter, I carry a snub-nosed .38 Special revolver.
I used to make all sorts of hard rules about carry guns, but it’s pointless, really. What you’ll carry is what you’re most comfortable carrying and shooting. Here are a few recommendations:
My only caveat with a carry piece (and especially a smaller gun) is that you must, repeat must load it with premium defensive ammo like Federal Hydra-Shok, Winchester SXT, Remington Gold Saber or CCI/Speer Gold Dot. Glaser Safety Slugs are also an option—in several of my guns, the first round to come out of the muzzle is a Glaser, the rest are premium hollowpoints.
In any event, try all different types of ammo—then pick one that feels the best to you, and buy up a decent supply (minimum 100 rounds). Practice your shooting at least once a month: your life may depend on it. Practice drawing and firing (with an empty gun, duh) constantly, until it becomes second nature and you don’t have to think about it.
Oh, and incidentally, here’s what I think all “beginner armories” should contain:
There you have it: what I consider the basis of a decent firearm portfolio—one that will satisfy quite admirably the requirements of a citizen militia. And, as a side benefit, it will give you endless hours of shooting fun, too.
Finally, remember that without ammo, a gun is just an expensive club. Always have enough on hand ("enough" being at least 1,000 rounds of .22 LR, and 100 rounds for each other gun). Don’t listen to the fools who ask, “Why do you need so much ammo?” Gun ownership is not about “need”—it’s about preparedness.
Shoot safely, be prepared, and keep ‘em in the X-ring.
I’ve had the pleasure of answering many emails sent by people who want to know more about the Gun Thing. While several required a specific answer, there were a number of common issues, and so I’ve decided to address them in one essay.
Gun Prices
By the same token, however, if your budget is that tight, then a review of the gun is pointless, because you’re basing your purchase decision only on price.
The reason I hesitate to recommend super-cheap guns is that you never know whether you’re going to get an okay gun, or a total stinker—and that’s the problem. I know people who swear by their little Taurus pistols, but I also know people who can’t wait to get rid of that Phoenix because of its unreliability and propensity to break.
Most guns will do just fine, regardless of price, up to a point. If you’re going to shoot 50 rounds a year, a cheap gun will suit you fine. But if you start putting any real stress on a gun (even a .22), like 200-500 rounds a month, then you’ll soon find out where all the compromises were made, in order to get that price down.
What you’re buying for that extra money is consistency and reliability, most of the time.
By the same token, however, it takes a great deal more workmanship (ie. time, money and materials) to turn a good gun into a great gun. The difference between a new revolver which costs $200 and one which costs $500 is far greater than the difference between a $700 revolver and a $1,000 one, even though the price difference of $300 is the same. The “quality curve” is steep in the lower price range, and almost imperceptible in the upper range. (This does not take into account collector value, of course: we’re talking about standard new pieces here.)
Let’s be quite clear on the concept involved. The gun is a mature product: the Mauser 98 action was invented in the late nineteenth century, and has barely been improved on since. In fact, the major “improvements” in the 98 action have come about through advances in steel manufacturing, and not in design. Using modern steel, a copy of the Mauser action could last almost indefinitely.
The same is more or less true about handguns, especially revolvers. Not many design changes have come into play since the 1940s—the workings of a modern double-action revolver would be instantly recognizable to a gun designer of the early twentieth century.
As for semi-automatics, there have been more changes and there is a greater diversity of design. It will be interesting to see, however, whether a modern-day Glock pistol (which was a remarkable change in semi-auto design) will still be shooting in 2099 with the same degree of reliability as a Colt 1911 (made in, say, 1920) can shoot today.
With both rifles and pistols, however, it is really important for the individual to recognize their own abilities before spending a ton of money to “improve” their existing gun or in buying a “premium” model. Using myself as an example: I shoot my Springfield 1911 about as well as I can shoot one of the premium 1911 models, such as Ed Brown or Les Baer.
The Springfield has been as reliable as any premium 1911—so far.
So from a cost / benefit perspective, there is little justification for spending the extra $1,000 on either of the latter two pistols, when that $1,000 buys me over a hundred extra boxes of .45 ammo (that’s more than 5,000 rounds)—where my pistol skills are measurably improved by the extra practice (and never mind all the pleasure derived from the extra shooting).
And speaking of ammo, let’s talk about that issue.
Using .22 LR as an example, most budget .22 ammo will suffice for practice purposes, because the occasional “non-fire” is no big deal. Likewise, the even burning of the powder is not that critical either, when all you’re doing is shooting at soda cans.
Once you start demanding more of your ammo, however, the quality becomes more of an issue. If you’re hunting, a misfire can be problematic, and in serious target shooting, an uneven burning of the powder can cause an open group in the target.
(This is not an exaggeration. If you shoot a lot of .22, you will, after a while, be able to detect the difference in the recoil caused by uneven powder burn.)
When it comes to other ammunition, price difference manifests itself in different ways other than the reliability of the burn: in the quality of the bullet, the type of primer, and even in the quality of the brass.
Once again, however, the needs of the individual shooter should drive the price of ammo they purchase. A hunter who requires a quality bullet like the Swift A-Frame or Nosler Partition will need to spend more on his ammo than a dilettante shooter like myself, who shoots hundreds or even thousands of practice rounds for every round fired at a beastie.
This is why so many people are driven to reloading, by the way. Yes, it is cheaper to “roll your own”, but because your time is unimportant relative to the quality you seek, you can spend a great deal of it resizing cases, experimenting with different makes or quantities of powder. Such experimentation and quality control, of course, are pretty much impossible for an ammo manufacturer.
Fiinally, however, it should be noted that ammo produced in the early twenty-first century is of greater quality and consistency than that produced even in the 1970s—a fact acknowledged by most expert reloaders—so the decision to reload should be made to address the financial savings (which are considerable) and the realization that the improvements in quality are going to be made far further up the quality curve than would have been the case in, say, 1985.
And let me issue the standard warning when it comes to cheap ammo: if it’s really cheap, there’s a reason for it.
This is especially true if the caliber is “obsolete”, militarily speaking (8x54Rmm, 8x57mm, .303 Brit, 7.7mm Jap, and so on). Also, older ammo may be corrosive when fired, so exercise extreme caution with it—that $10 savings in ammo cost is going to look really puny if you have to replace your barrel after a year.
Check all your mil-surp ammo carefully before shooting. (This is obviously not true of current mil-surp ammo such as .223 / 5.56mm NATO or .308 / 7.62 NATO, which is produced in such vast quantities that its per-cartridge cost is negligible, comparatively speaking.)
Storage: Several people have written to me to ask how long ammunition can be stored.
There is probably more misinformation on this topic than on any other.
First, let me make the caveats: Unless you purchased and stored the ammo yourself, it is wise to check all ammo for signs of deterioration. This is particularly true of military-surplus stuff, which may have been well greased then stored in sealed cans—but it also may not have been treated with such care.
The chances are that if you come across some ammo of 1950s manufacture that has been stored in sealed cans, you can shoot it without fear. I myself have fired WWII-era 6.5x55mm Swede, .303 and 8x57mm ammo without incident, and likewise Korean War-era .30 Carbine. However, I didn’t even load the stuff into the rifles until I’d inspected each and every cartridge. Col. Jeff Cooper claims to have fired WWI-era .45 ACP ammo in his 1911, but even he admitted to some misgivings about it.
Ammo will not last forever.
However, if you store new factory ammo in a cool, dry environment, there is no reason why that ammo should not last up to fifty years. Certainly, one can shoot 1970s-era ammo today without qualms. (Do not “grease” your ammo before long-term storage, by the way: petroleum-based lubricants can cause primer failure, turning all your ammo into duds. Simply keep it dry—advice from the old days is just as relevant today as it was back then.)
I myself store my ammo inside military ammo cans, which are reasonably weather- and waterproof, and store the ammo cans in a cool, dry area. If you’re going to store ammo in your uninsulated garage, you may want to drop a few silica gel sachets into each can a couple of times a year, to ensure that the ammo stays dry.
One thing I do, however, is to make the ammo age issue moot, by writing the date of purchase on the box before storing it. Then I shoot the older ammo first, and thus “rotate” the ammo responsibly.
Okay, I said “responsibly”, but the fact remains that very little of my ammo lasts longer than five years in the locker—which is what I recommend to every shooter. Only my bulk ammo (7.62x39mm, .30 Carbine and 6.5mm Swede—don’t even ask me how much I have of those) may last me longer than that, and even then, most is of recent manufacture or else still wrapped in sealed containers.
Triggers. Without exception, most factory trigger workings can be improved upon by a quick visit to the gunsmith. When you consider the tolerances and smoothing required, it’s actually amazing that factory triggers are as good as they are.
Whatever, I recommend that everyone who buys a new pistol first shoot about 200-300 rounds through it, then take it to a reputable gunsmith for some work on the trigger. I do not recommend that anyone who is not a qualified gunsmith work on a trigger. More accidental discharges are caused by amateur trigger jobs than any other cause, and if your hunting buddy started bragging about his self-machined “2lb. trigger pull”, it’s time to hunt in a different ZIP code than he does.
Barrels. I’m not going to get into the argument over the merits of “cut” vs. “button” rifling (to name but two kinds). Here’s a quick discussion of rifling techniques for those interested in the topic.
Suffice it to say that most gun barrels leave the factory as (very) adequate bullet-delivery tubes—good enough for 95% of all shooters, anyway.
If you’re getting frustrated at your inability to get sub-1” (aka. sub-MOA) groups, and feel you must have that Volquartsen or Lilja barrel on your 10/22, be my guest. Just be aware that a great many people find that their groups do not improve after such a step, and then realize that the +1” groups are caused by, ahem, “operator error”.
All that said, however, I’d also recommend that if you just bought an old rifle and can’t get it to shoot worth a damn, you may want to have the barrel checked in case its previous owner(s) shot out the barrel. (This obviously does not apply to guns where changing the barrels would reduce their appeal, eg. a WWI-era Mauser, ‘03 Springfield or P.14 Enfield, which are not, generally, sub-MOA guns anyway.)
But I have to say this: in my fairly-considerable shooting experience, you have to work really hard to destroy a rifle barrel. Shooting corrosive ammo and not cleaning the gun afterwards is one way, of course, but it should be realized that most gun barrels have been made of good steel, and are really affected only by massive use (eg. over a thousand rounds of ammo in the case of rifles, over ten thousand rounds for a handgun) or serious ill-treatment.
Many keen shooters think that you should never fire more than five rounds through a rifle at a time, without allowing time for the barrel to cool, because the barrel may be damaged.
Nonsense.
I remember taking Miss Gertrude to the range for some friends to shoot. She absorbed well over two hundred rounds that afternoon, with little more than a few minutes break between shooters, and the barrel was just fine when I checked it later that week.
That said, of course, I don’t expect sub-MOA accuracy out of the old lady, and if you have a favorite hunting- or target rifle, you might well heed the advice of the pros, to some degree. But any rifle barrel should be able to take forty rounds (ie. two boxes) in a single range session without complaint—and if your barrel does show damage after this, it’s time to replace the barrel because it was no damn good to start off with.
One additional point: the “hotter” your cartridge, the quicker your barrel will deteriorate. The .220 Swift, still one of the fastest cartridges ever produced, has a well-earned reputation as a “barrel-burner”—and at 4,000fps, rapid barrel wear is to be expected. Ditto for all the magnumthumpenblitzenboomer cartridges like the Weatherbys and more recently, the .338 UltraMag. Rule of thumb: “magnum” in the cartridge description means shorter barrel life, not that you’re going to shoot more than a dozen rounds of .30-378 Weatherby Mag at one sitting anyway—not without shoulder reconstruction surgery afterwards.
But military cartridges, and “normal” cartridges like the .243 Win impose nothing like that kind of stress, so you can pull the trigger thousands of times before worrying about shooting out your barrel.
When it comes to pistol barrels, the stakes are raised somewhat. In the case of .22s, forget about it. I shot a small S&W revolver a while back (I forget the model) which has probably had 50,000 rounds through it, and I still managed to get 1.5” groups at 10 yards.
In the larger calibers, such as .44 Mag or even .45 ACP, however, even five thousand rounds are going to “leave a mark”, as it were. Fortunately, replacement of a pistol barrel is no big deal—especially in the case of semi-automatics, where “drop-in” barrels can be ordered from Brownells. Even revolver barrel replacement, while it should be done by a gunsmith, is a simple task.
Just be aware that for older pistols, barrel replacement may be somewhat more problematic, and considerably more expensive.
Stocks. I’m not talking about putting prettier wood on your rifle, of course: that’s pure aesthetics, and I’ll never say no to that (subject to the mil-surp reservation as above). If your rifle is shooting inconsistently, and you’ve ruled out operator error, it may require re-bedding of the action to make sure that the stock is not touching the barrel in the wrong places. I’m not going into the details of this, because others (like this guy or this guy, to name but two) can talk about it with far more authority than I can. Suffice it to know that this is one way of improving a rifle’s performance, and, I should add, it isn’t a game for amateurs, either. Be my guest if you want to try it, but have a spare stock handy.
Changing the grips on your handgun, of course, can be done to make the gun feel more comfortable in your hand, or to “fit” your hand better, and this may well improve your competency and skill. This is no small thing: everyone knows that if grips are too big for your hand, you can’t shoot properly. But a bad ergonomic fit, even if the grips are properly sized, is just as harmful to good shooting: I can’t shoot Beretta’s new Neos pistol, for example, because the space-age grips do not allow me to align sights and target properly.
If there is no other advice I can give pistol shooters, it’s this: always, always have more than one magazine for your semi-auto pistol. Two is better (but only just), and four to six extra mags is the best of all.
When I purchased my Springfield 1911, I also purchased two Chip McCormick PowerMags, because I’d had excellent results from them in the past. It’s just as well I did. The Springfield magazine was so awful, I tossed it after the first range session: half a dozen misfeeds in 50 rounds was, quite frankly, unacceptable. Even worse, of course, was that I didn’t know whether the misfeeds were the fault of the pistol or the magazine. The former would require gunsmithing ($$$), and the latter simple replacement. When I swapped to the PowerMags, everything worked as advertised, and still does. (In case anyone is interested, I have about six PowerMags which I use exclusively in the 1911. I have a couple of Colt factory mags which I also use in the Camp 45, just because I had them lying around, and I keep them loaded up with snakeshot cartridges, just for fun.)
Rule of Thumb for semi-auto pistols: Feeding problems are caused by the magazine, not by the pistol.
Which leads me to my final point about magazines.
Many people write to me and ask me whether it harms a magazine to store it loaded. Does the loading place undue strain on the spring? Will the spring “give out”?
The simple answer is “No”, but with a couple of reservations.
The spring steel used in good magazines is amazing stuff. Simply put, the metallurgy results in the steel having almost no “flow”, so a magazine kept loaded will operate as well in six months’ time as it would the next day.
Now here are the caveats.
1. The only way a manufacturer can produce a magazine cheaply is to use cheaper steel—the mag case can be made thinner, of course, but then it won’t fit properly, so they’re pretty much stuck with using the same kind of steel as everyone else does, and frankly, it doesn’t matter much because that’s not where the action is. Good spring steel is, to no one’s surprise, appallingly expensive, and is consequently made in several quality grades. This is why Ed Brown and McCormick 1911 mags are so costly—they use the highest quality spring steel.
2. There is no excuse to keep a magazine loaded for longer than two months—if you’re not practicing at least that often, shame on you anyway. In other words, the prospect of magazine spring failure will be non-existent if you “cycle” your mags with some frequency. (Just remember, however, that the more you use a spring, any spring, the sooner it will fail.)
3. When magazines are stored loaded for a really long period of time, the springs have been known to weaken, but not to the degree you’d expect. How long is “really long”? I know personally of people who have fired guns which had been kept loaded and unfired for decades—and the only problems encountered were that the first or last rounds failed to chamber properly. I myself fired a .25 ACP Baby Browning which had been stored unfired for fifteen years, and the magazine fed flawlessly.
This does not mean that you can load it and leave it. As I said earlier, the problem will be non-existent if you practice often. But, just to be on the safe side, if you know that you’re not going to shoot a gun often, it would be best to leave the magazine empty. This is particularly true if the gun is not your primary carry- or self-defense piece: an heirloom, a “fun” gun, whatever. My P.08 Luger, for example, is stored with an empty mag, simply because I don’t shoot it often (maybe a couple of times a year). Ditto for some of my other magazine-fed .22 pistols and rifles, which are used with similar frequency.
But for my 1911, M1 Carbine, Camp 45 and Buckmark pistol, the issue of cycling the mags is irrelevant, because I shoot each piece at least once a month, and every mag is cycled at least twice in that period. (The Camp and M1 carbines are kept loaded because they are SHTF guns, the 1911 is my primary carry- and self-defense piece, and the Buckmark gets about 300 rounds a month through its barrel.)
Finally, I’m going to offer a compromise, because not everyone is as fanatical keen on shooting as I am.
If you know you’re not going to shoot your gun that often, but still want it to be loaded, then load the mag with one round less than its total capacity (seven in an eight-rounder, for instance). If you’re using one of the high-capacity mags (eg. 15-round pistol or 30-round rifle), load the mag with two rounds less. This will reduce the stress on your magazine spring considerably—the degree of stress is diminished—but to be frank, the whole issue is of relative unimportance.
If you use your magazines often, you should probably replace the springs every couple of years or so anyway (or have them replaced by a gunsmith—unless you enjoy chasing springs all over the room). And if you don’t use your magazines often, I don’t want to talk to you.
I would recommend, however, that you make no compromises where it counts. Your self-defense piece should be of the absolute highest quality you can afford—and in many cases, a quality second-hand piece is better than a new cheapie.
When it comes to hunting and self-defense ammo, by the same token, I make no compromises whatsoever. I may practice with the cheapest stuff available (I am a notorious Cheap Bastard), but when something is going to die at the other end of the muzzle, I want to make sure that it happens as quickly and efficiently as possible.
But unless you’re Dirty Harry, you’re not going to shoot the expensive self-defense ammo often—fifty rounds a year, just to keep yourself in shape, compared with five hundred to a thousand rounds a year of cheap practice stuff. Ditto with premium hunting ammo: that Speer Nitrex at $25 per 20-round box should last you at least a year, but the mil-surp practice ammo (at $10 per 100) will enable you to have many happy hours at the range, keeping your eye in and your shooting discipline honed.
So let me conclude with the standard Kim salutation:
Shoot safely, shoot often, and keep ‘em in the X-ring.
From Reader Todd, who (unfortunately for him) lives in the People’s Collective of New York:
My first instinct is to agree that all households should be armed; yet I have a question about it. If a goblin comes strolling into my home in the middle of the night and I come out of the bedroom loaded for such, isn’t it possible that I have created a distinctly more dangerous situation for me and my family if I don’t/won’t have the resolve to drop the scum bag? I mean, most good Americans like me have never shot anybody and I am concerned that I may get stage fright. Practicing at the range is fine for honing the technical aspect but what about the emotional end? If this is an issue, how do I prepare for it should the situation arise?
It’s an excellent question, and one I should have addressed a long time ago.
Civilized people, quite correctly, shrink from causing harm or death to another human being. This is perfectly normal, and is indeed laudable. (Sociopaths, of course, have no such compunction, which is why they themselves should be killed.)
And quite apart from any legal issues, the moral issue of taking a life is a weighty and terrible one.
Probably the best way to approach this issue is to look at how an army teaches its recruits to kill, and it follows three different paths simultaneously.
The first is through rigorous practice. As Todd points out, practice hones the technical aspects of shooting, which is well and good—it behooves everyone to shoot accurately, and competently.
Continuous practice, however, achieves another objective: it turns an unnatural act into an instinctive one. This is why professional golfers spend countless hours on the driving range and in the practice bunker: they’re training their muscles and instincts to make the shots as automatic as possible, so that under the stress of competition, the stroke will be identical to the thousands of ones they’ve practiced.
The same is true of self-defense. Under circumstances of great stress, your instincts take over—and those instincts should include the firing of a gun, that will have come about through hours of practice. There is no other way.
Any other outcome is a bad one. Hesitation may cause a struggle for the gun, and poor marksmanship can have undesirabe consequences, too.
And practice with a “silhouette"-type target, not one of those silly “bullseye” things.
The second way an army teaches its recruits to kill, is by dehumanizing the enemy. Whether done through propaganda or with dispassion, the message is: “This guy is trying to kill you. If you don’t kill him first, he will.”
By making the first statement, the concept being conveyed is that the person attacking you is no better than a wild animal—and a carnivore, at that.
This, by the way, is one of the reasons I don’t refer to violent criminals as anything other than “goblins”. To me, anyone who will resort to invading a person’s home, for whatever reason, is no longer a human being, but a predator—actually, a raptor (the literal meaning of which is “taker") of life and/or property.
As such, I’m trying to strengthen that perception among my Readers. Unfortunately, as Western civilization has progressed, one of the less-desirable aspects thereof has been to instil in people’s minds that violent criminals are just misunderstood, or that their actions are somehow excusable.
They aren’t, and this fiction is one of recent vintage. All through millenia of history, men have treated violent criminals with violence, either in situ or through civil punishment. Plato, for instance, talks of execution as a “deterrent”, not to deter others, but “so that the criminal may not strike again.”
It is only in the past fifty years that killing bad people has become a Bad Thing, with sophistic arguments like one being “judge, jury and executioner”—when the criminal, just by virtue of his own actions, has already condemned himself to lie outside the pale of civilized society.
I’m trying to reverse that stupid trend of “criminals are humans, too”, because they aren’t, and because ultimately, that mindset benefits only the goblin, while being deletorious to society as a whole.
Finally, the army will teach its recruits to kill by instilling cameraderie—that by killing the aggressor, you’re protecting others close to you.
Fortunately, this should need little work on the part of a citizen at the wrong end of a burglary or robbery. Protection of one’s loved ones is one of the primal instincts, and suppression of that instinct ("leave it to the police") is one of the basest constructs ever imposed on mankind by our supposed “civilization”.
Richard Pryor once remarked that after making the movie Stir Crazy on location at Arizona State Prison, he was really, really glad that prisons exist. He illustrated that by quoting an actual interview with a convicted murderer:
-- “Why did you kill all the people in that family?”
-- “Cuz they was at home.”
Think about the uncaring sociopathy in that statement. Now think of that same scumbag playing his ghastly little games of death with your kids. No, you don’t know that the goblin you confront in your bedroom hallway has that on his mind: but he’s already made the first step towards it by invading your house.
Statistics indicate, by the way, that the more burglaries a man commits, the more likely it is that he will eventually turn violent towards someone resisting that crime—in his mind, because he’s got away with it so many times before, it’s not your property, it’s his, and you’re at fault for trying to prevent him from taking what’s “rightfully” his.
Remember that protecting yourself and, more especially, your loved ones and property is not only a right, it’s your duty.
And for all those pussy laws which babble about “undue violence”, “proportional violence”, “life-and-death situations” and the like, I have only this to say:
Bullshit.
Now quit reading my fevered rantings, and get your ass out to the range. You need to practice, because as I write this, some scumbag may be planning to rob your house or murder your family, tonight.
This issue has been weighing on my mind for a while, and it’s time I got it out there.
We gun owners are a naturally suspicious lot, especially when it comes to our Second Amendment rights. At various periods, such as during the Dark Times (aka. the Clinton Administration), such suspicion turned, with some justification to paranoia—because aided and abetted by GFW organizations and their lickspittles in the mainstream media, the Government really was out to get us.
Legislation followed regulation followed legislation followed regulation, with, it appeared, only one goal in mind: civilian disarmament. (And please, no lies about “only handguns” or “only assault weapons”—we all know that’s a lie, and I won’t be insulted by having that crap handed to me, and expecting me to believe it.)
While GFWs moaned about the NRA “having a desk in the Bush Oval Office”, the fact of the matter is that Handgun Control, Inc. was far closer to Bill Clinton than the NRA has ever come to George W. Bush.
Times have changed since then, and the world changed with it.
After 9/11, the biggest group of gun purchasers was not formed by conservatives (we were already armed), but people who had formerly disdained gun ownership in the fond belief that the State could always protect us.
Well, we all know how that turned out.
And more data was to follow: looters declined to rob disaster-struck houses or businesses because of armed householders and business owners (eg. the Rodney King riots, where one of the most telling images was that of Korean storekeepers standing guard over their premises armed with the very same “assault rifles” which had earlier been so vilified).
Still more was to follow: despite wails that laws permitting concealed-carry would cause “Dodge City shootouts” and “vigilante behavior”, states which passed such laws saw crime rates plummet. Finally, the failure of the AWB renewal last year did not cause street gangs to become “better-armed than the police” or similar nonsense: crime committed with actual (ie. full-auto assault rifles) stayed at about the same level as it had always been—as close to zero as makes no difference.
The sea-change in mainstream public attitudes towards guns has come about achingly slowly (too slowly, for my liking), but change it has. There are only a few holdouts (in, of course, the mainstream media, academia and among liberal/neo-socialist politicians), and even they have lost all power to persuade, despite a frenzy of alarmism.
Gun control has, pretty much, become the real third rail of American politics. How else could one explain the haste with which even gun-hating twerps like John Kerry suddenly donned camo and pretended to be serious shooters, during recent election campaigns? And even during the Dark Times, voters were incensed enough to hand control of Congress back to Republicans, which promptly passed anti-gun control measures like the Firearm Owners Protection Act in 1986.
In terms of domestic policy, guns are no longer an issue, except in hopeless cases like Chicago, New York and Los Angeles, which persist in holding onto the failed mantras of the past. Just as importantly, international efforts to control “small arms” continue to fail, simply because we, as the most heavily-armed nation on Earth, refuse to go along with it, and we will continue to do so—especially when faced with the evidence of places like Britain and Australia, where gun control is severe but crime continues to climb.
In short, we gun owners don’t have to be that paranoid anymore. Yes, a lot remains to be done: a whole raft of horrible gun control legislation and regulation has to be turned back; supporters of gun control still have to be met with rebuttal and ridicule every time they spout their lies; and I myself will not rest until nearly every household in this country is armed.
Which brings me to the next point, and it’s a big one.
We gun owners need to stop acting like a bunch of paranoid morons.
Here are a couple of newsflashes:
The real problem is that if people who don’t already own a gun are confronted by some guy who says that “This here MagnaWingDinger is guaranteed to go right through a blue helmet at 300 yards”, the net result is that the prospective owner will believe that gun owners are just like they’re painted by the frothing liberals: a bunch of paranoid pitchforkers.
You know where I saw evidence of this? At the NoR/RWVA shoot a couple of weeks ago. I was standing in the front of the crowd, and as speaker after speaker talked about taking out UN soldiers or “Gummint agents” (by inference), I saw several looks of unease among the audience members.
And I wasn’t imagining things, either. In the days following the shoot, I received emails on this precise subject, and all the senders showed the same unease.
Look: the discipline of becoming a skilled rifleman or pistolero is a worthy goal in and of itself. We don’t have to play at being soldiers/partisans/mountain men to make it more palatable or more enjoyable.
As for the outfits… oh hell. We have Cowboy Action Shooting, where people call themselves “Hickory Slim” or “Pistol Pete” and don cowboy outfits, even though they’re lawyers or investment bankers. So I don’t care about the people who wear coordinated camo outfits when they go shooting, either. That’s harmless fun, even if it sends a frisson of fear through GFWs and their ilk (and causes giggles from Daughter, who calls them “redneck Barbie outfits").
All this play-acting—whether AQT, IPSC, IDPA or all the other alphabet soups—has a worthy goal: that of turning us back into a nation of riflemen.
But I’d like all this to stop when it comes to muttering darkly about “blue helmets”, “JBTs” and (gawd help us) “black helicopters”.
And yes, I’ll plead mea culpa to being guilty of the occasional irresponsible remark myself. But no more. A joke among friends is not the same as public utterances in front of crowds of people.
Whenever I hear some old boy dressed in camo make some loony paranoid comment in public about “U.N. soldiers”, I can’t help but remember the classic line from The Sting: “Try not to live up to all my expectations of you.”
All that said: I expect Government agents not to act like jack-booted thugs, either—and I won’t be shy to call them that, if their behavior warrants it. And every time some NGO at the United Nations tries to sneak in some anti-gun nonsense which might end up infringing on our Constitutional right to be armed, I’ll be at the head of the line to hand them their asses (figuratively speaking).
But it’s time we gun owners grew up. When there’s reason to be paranoid, we should be. What I’m saying is that we don’t have to be paranoid anymore—just eternally watchful, and suspicious.
There’s a world of difference.
I get quite a few letters like this one, so I might as well post my position on the matter. From Reader Lee M:
I am an active advocate of the Bill of Rights and of returning our government to its Constitutional roots. As such, I’d like to offer the following rebuttal to the limits you would impose upon 2nd Amendment absolutists:
1] A “right”, akin to breathing, requires neither affirmation nor acceptance in order to exist. It exists, and is most evident, even while being violated. That which can be negated or restricted by government action is a privilege, not a right.
2] The Framers of the Constitution were acutely aware of the dangers inherent in the acknowledgment of individual liberties vs. the consequences of facing-down a world super-power, when they drafted the Declaration of Independence, the Constitution, and the Bill of Rights.
3] Were it not for privately-owned “ships of the line”, equipped with the latest in artillery technology (also privately-owned), manned by sovereign individuals willing to risk “our lives, our fortunes and our sacred honor”, it is doubtful the American Revolution would have had any chance of success, whatsoever. No great leap of faith is required to suggest that an F16 fighter bomber is anything more than a “ship of the line” (note Tench Coxe’s “every terrible implement of the soldier"); or that the Framers were incapable of extrapolating from their weapons to today’s modern weaponry.
4] As far as Weapons of Mass Destruction (WMD) are concerned, our forefathers understood the ramifications of pirates demanding tribute by threatening to ground a plague ship in a populated harbor, or of armies seeing that their Indian enemies received blankets used by victims of disease (cholera or anthrax or plague). So again it’s no great leap to grasp that they understood the danger inherent in enumerating a right “to keep and bear” the tools of their own destruction. Also, one might want to check out Vin Suprinowicz’ explanation of in whose hands would WMDs be safer - the government’s or the sovereign individual’s.
5] True, rights are not suicide pacts. But the Founders were just a couple of battles, or one self-serving informer, away from the gallows. And it is unseemly to suggest that today’s abstract concepts of danger can focus the mind better than would our forefathers knowing that a superpower is inexorably working to see that you, personally, face the gallows. So give the founders a little more credit.
Either the Constitution is “the supreme law of the land” (as written) or we live at the whim of executive decree, legislative over-reach and/or judicial fiat.
Since the definition of “infringed” is the same today as it was in the 18th century when the Bill of Rights was ratified, exactly what part of “shall not be infringed” gives you pause?
I write this not to criticize, but to understand.
I’ve made this argument so many times, I think I’ll do it just this once more, and then add it to The Gun Thing essays, because it’s time it was nailed to a tree and forgotten. Let’s do it point by point (and forgive me if the arguments overlap occasionally, because that’s just the nature of the beast).
1] A “right”, akin to breathing, requires neither affirmation nor acceptance in order to exist. It exists, and is most evident, even while being violated. That which can be negated or restricted by government action is a privilege, not a right.
Not true, and this is one of the statements which absolutists want taken for granted, but which cannot be allowed to stand unchallenged.
Individual rights are always subject to infringement when the exercise thereof, taken to the extreme, may cause harm to the society at large. Not only that; even a cursory study of history and of human nature will show that an unfetted right will inevitably be abused by the individual, to the general detriment of the community. We are individuals, but we are also members of a society, and of a nation. When the collective welfare is threatened by an individual’s extreme, criminal or irresponsible exercise of a right, the People have every reason to circumscribe that right.
Example: Your First Amendment right to unfettered free speech does not extend to passing military secrets to an enemy state. That’s called “treason”, and the Founders were quite specific about that particular asterisk on the First Amendment. To argue otherwise is unreasonable.
Another example: Felons are denied their right to vote, and are likewise denied the right to be armed. This is because society has judged them unworthy by their actions to have those rights. (Incidentally, I happen to believe that non-violent felons should be allowed to keep firearms in their residence, because they have just as much right to self-defense as anyone else. I just don’t think they should be allowed to take them out in public. And, as a final comment, if a convicted non-violent felon abuses that trust and commits a crime with his “self-defense” weapon, the penalty should carry a mandatory death sentence, regardless of whether a life was taken or not.)
2] The Framers of the Constitution were acutely aware of the dangers inherent in the acknowledgment of individual liberties vs. the consequences of facing down a world super-power, when they drafted the Declaration of Independence, the Constitution, and the Bill of Rights.
Well, yes. Which is why they formed the Continental Army, despite their misgivings about “standing armies”. (They limited the army’s power, of course, by making it both contingent upon an enlistment period and subject to civilian control, and have done so ever since.)
Note, however, that the Constitution came after the Revolution, although its principles were surely part of the action. But let’s also remember that the Constitution’s adoption came after a long period of wrangling and compromise, and its adoption was only made possible by the Bill of Rights, which was the underlining and specification of the general principle.
Note too that the Founding Fathers’ misgivings about the army did not extend to sea power. (See below.)
3] Were it not for privately-owned “ships of the line”, equipped with the latest in artillery technology (also privately-owned), manned by sovereign individuals willing to risk “our lives, our fortunes and our sacred honor”, it is doubtful the American Revolution would have had any chance of success, whatsoever. No great leap of faith is required to suggest that an F16 fighter bomber is anything more than a “ship of the line” (note Tench Coxe’s “every terrible implement of the soldier"); or that the Framers were incapable of extrapolating from their weapons to today’s modern weaponry.
There are two responses to this, because it’s really two issues.
As far as the “privately-owned ships of the line” are concerned, it should be noted that as a Crown Colony, America had no navy of its own—colonial navies are a relatively-recent phenomenon—and had perforce to rely on privateers as their makeshift navy. Once the American federal government had been established, of course, such vessels were either stripped of their letters of marque, or else folded into the nascent United States Navy. Since that time, the United States has never relied on any kind of private mercenary force to project its power, except in non-combatant forms such as logistics (ie. the merchant marine or air transport), or where the Armed Forces were unable to support or execute a specific function, or where the government wished to support an operation sub rosa (the Flying Tigers, Air America, and so on).
The bigger issue is this one: Are citizens of the United States allowed to form private armies?
The answer, of course, is a resounding “no”, and has been such since the foundation of the Continental Congress. The right to “peaceable assembly” does not extend to the formation of a private force—the militia, by definition, is ultimately subject to government control. This gives rise to the next point.
A fully-equipped F-16 is very much like a privateer’s vessel, and I’m glad you made this point. Like the privateer, the F-16’s owner has to rely on an infrastructure to keep the weapon going—technicians, maintenance, operations, and the like.
Next question: Assuming that ownership of a fully-equipped F-16 were possible, and the owner had created the support infrastructure, to whom would those employees own allegiance? If the answer is “to the nation”, then the issue is moot: the government could then order the employees not to support the F-16 whenever it chose, and its use would become irrelevant. If the answer is “to the owner”, well, that then constitutes a “private army”, and no government in the world would tolerate its existence. The F-16, properly speaking, is therefore not an individual arm, but a weapon of the state.
Which is why the Tenche Coxe quote is so misleading (and never forget that Coxe was not a Founding Father, but a political economist who worked in Alexander Hamilton’s Treasury. Coxe was, of course, an anti-Federalist, and like many, was always fearful of federal power, which is a little ironic since Hamilton was the arch-Federalist of the day).
Nevertheless, I think it’s important to balance Coxe’s words with the reality of the situation. When he speaks of “every terrible implement of the soldier”, I am most certainly not going to suggest that he meant only musket, bayonets and flintlock pistols. Of course this translates into the modern day, where individuals should be “allowed” to own any infantryman’s weapon they choose—but with a couple of caveats, because here we go into a gray area.
Caveat 1: Explosive devices or their launchers (hand grenades, Claymore mines, RPGs etc.) are problematic, in that their misuse (either by accident or mischief) have some seriously deletorious effects on a community. The next question, of course, is: what constitutes “proper” use of such devices?
Caveat 2: By the same token, an extension of the above should be made for what I call “squad” weapons: crew-served machine guns, artillery, and so on. By no stretch of the imagination can these be called “individual” arms: they are the weapons of an army, and I’ve already talked about private armies.
In peacetime, the use of the above is of questionable value to anyone—and their potentially-disastrous effects on society at large constitutes a fair reason for their ownership to be treated with the utmost circumspection. In wartime, all bets are off, and their use becomes a moot issue.
More to the point, however, is that the end effect of a landmine or artillery shell is indiscriminate—everything caught in the explosion is destroyed or damaged—and I don’t see why those consequences should not be taken into consideration when it comes time to look at ownership.
Let me add, at this point, that my reservations do not extend to individual weapons which are high-powered or automatic. I think that anyone who chooses should be able to own a BAR, MP5 or Bren gun, for example, but I have little problem with the State applying just a little control as to who owns them. I’m talking of, for example, a criminal background check or mental stability check, simply because, as with the WMDs above, the potential harm to society of unfettered ownership of such weapons warrants at least a little circumspection.
4] As far as Weapons of Mass Destruction (WMD) are concerned, our forefathers understood the ramifications of pirates demanding tribute by threatening to ground a plague ship in a populated harbor, or of armies seeing that their Indian enemies received blankets used by victims of disease (cholera or anthrax or plague). So again it’s no great leap to grasp that they understood the danger inherent in enumerating a right “to keep and bear” the tools of their own destruction.
Let me be perfectly frank about this one. I make a huge distinction between the right of an individual to self-defense, to defense of their family and community, and defense of their nation; and to ownership of weapons of truly mass destruction.
So forget any thought that the idividual’s “right to bear arms” should include the right to own nuclear weapons, biological weapons or anything similar.
Here then, in terms of weapons ownership, is the spectrum.
Serious WMDs such as nukes or bioweapons: Forget about it. (I don’t really care what Vin Suprynowicz says, because he’s an absolutist.) This is not negotiable. In fact, support of this position makes me fell dismissive of anything said thereafter.
Artillery pieces, aircraft carriers, F-16s, RPGs, landmines: Forget about it. I can see why someone might support this position, but I’m not going to support it myself.
Full-auto belt-fed machine guns like the MG3 or Ma Deuce: Gray area. An individual may own one, but should undergo at least a background check and registration. I have little problem with individuals owning this kind of weapon and would own one myself, subject to the above restrictions (which I regard as burdensome but not unreasonable).
Full-auto submachine gun/assault rifle or large-caliber/small cannon pieces: No problem, subject to background check. No registration.
Any other individual arm, such as semi-auto rifles and pistols, revolvers, bolt-action “sniper” rifles, cowboy guns, hunting rifles, shotguns, flintlocks, whatever: Should be able to buy at Kmart, with no restriction whatsoever. Don’t even think of appying any nonsensical restrictions like magazine capacity or cosmetics to this category.
The problem with absolute rights is that if those rights are taken to extremes, society will eventually perish. This is no less true for any endeavor, because human nature being what it is, no society can continue to exist by relying purely on the goodwill of individuals.
That would be nice, but unfortunately it’s not realistic.
Just as we place restrictions on government, we need to place restrictions on individuals. The question is, at what point does a restriction become a denial of that right? I hope that, in terms of the Second Amendment anyway, I’ve answered that question satisfactorily.
There are all sorts of rules about guns and gun handling, most especially Col. Jeff Cooper’s excellent manual (see below).
But that’s not what I’m talking about here. What I want to lay out are Kim’s Principles of Gun Ownership, which are more eccentric and iconoclastic, but no less relevant than any others. They are not concerned with safe gun handling, gun storage or gun care, which are duh! issues to me. My principles of gun ownership are far more basic, and set a foundation for every gun owner.
They are as follows (in no order of importance):
1. A .22 rifle is a household commodity, like salt or sugar, and every household should contain at least one .22 rifle, with at least 500 rounds of ammunition for it. A .22 rifle can do almost any job asked of it, and does it with the minimum of noise, fuss and expense.
2. Every gun owner should have on hand at least a hundred rounds of ammunition, in each caliber they possess (with the exception of .22 LR, as noted above). More is preferable, but one hundred rounds is the absolute minimum reserve.
3. The starting-point for any good home defense system is a shotgun: caliber, make and type are secondary considerations.
4. The minimum levels of accuracy for any shooter should be as follows (using 5-shot strings for each, untimed):
Practice time should be sufficient to enable such accuracy to be achieved consistently.
- defensive handgun: 5” group center-mass at seven yards, offhand (unsupported);
- rimfire rifle: 3” group at 25 yards, offhand;
- centerfire rifle (unscoped): 4” group at 50 yards;
- centerfire rifle (scoped) 3” group at 100 yards.
5. Every gun owner has a duty to pass on their skills and knowledge to subsequent generations.
Cooper’s Rules:
Condition 0: The weapon is loaded, charged, cocked, and no manual safety mechanism is engaged. The weapon is ready to fire, and will do so if the trigger mechanism is actuated.
Condition 1: The weapon is loaded, charged, and cocked, with a manual safety mechanism engaged. To fire, the safety must be disengaged and the trigger mechanism actuated. This is often referred to as “Cocked and Locked”
Condition 2: The weapon is loaded, charged, but not cocked. A safety may or may not be engaged. To fire, the weapon must be cocked (either manually or through a double action mechanism), the safety disengaged, and the trigger mechanism actuated.
Condition 3: The weapon is loaded, but not charged or cocked. To fire, the weapon must be charged (in most handguns and rifles by chambering a round), cocked (this may occur automatically with charging), the safety disengaged, and the trigger mechanism must be actuated.
Condition 4: The weapon is not loaded, and not charged. To fire, the weapon must be loaded, charged, cocked, the safety must be disengaged, and the trigger mechanism must be actuated.
It is important to note the following points:
1. Not all firearms require all of the steps above to fire.
2. Many firearms do not have manual safeties, or do not allow manual safeties to be engaged before loading, charging, or cocking.
3. Most conventional firearms cock automatically when they are charged; thus once charged, most firearms are ready to fire unless they are manually decocked, or a safety is specifically engaged (or both).
4. Some weapons may not require charging once loaded (eg. double-action revolvers)
5. Some weapons are cocked and charged as part of the loading process (most break open shotguns and some rifles) and thus do not need to be charged or cocked to fire.
For example, most double action revolvers have no safety, and of course do not need to be charged separately from loading; therefore they are always in condition 2 after loading, and condition 0 when cocked.
Most double-action only, and striker-fired pistols are always in condition 2 after charging.
In fact the argument can be made for both weapon types that they are always in condition 0 because a single long trigger pull will fire them without any other action being performed by the user.
This is why it is important to:
A. Always treat all firearms as if they are loaded, and ready to fire.
B. Always learn and understand the manual of arms of a weapon before attempting to handle or operate it.
And following from this come the Four Rules of Gun Handling:
RULE I: ALL GUNS ARE ALWAYS LOADED.
RULE II: NEVER LET THE MUZZLE COVER ANYTHING YOU ARE NOT WILLING TO DESTROY.
RULE III: KEEP YOUR FINGER OFF THE TRIGGER UNTIL YOUR SIGHTS ARE ON THE TARGET.
RULE IV: BE SURE OF YOUR TARGET, AND BE AWARE OF WHAT’S BEHIND IT.
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