[Welcome Smallest Majority readers! And thanks, Kevin, for Quote of the Day status. I'm honored.]
I know I have readers who I am about to make very uncomfortable. Please, as you call me friend, bear with me. Read all the way to the end. Talk to me in comments, in email, on the phone, across the dinner table. But please, read the whole thing.
I’ve linked before to Eric S. Raymond’s outstanding essay on how and why exercising the right to keep and bear arms (particularly firearms) helps maintain a free society: “Ethics From the Barrel of a Gun“.
ESR recently started blogging again, after a two year hiatus, and has just posted another crucial essay: “A Brief History of Firearms Policy Fraud“.
The Heller vs. D.C. ruling affirming that the Second Amendment protects an individual right to bear arms was a major civil-rights victory building on 15 years of constitutional scholarship….
But there was another trend at work; the beginning of public recognition, after the year 2000, that anti-firearms activism has been founded on systematic errors and widespread fraud in the academic literature on gun policy….
Now that the Heller ruling has come down and administered another salutary shock to a lot of people who thought they could dismiss the Second Amendment and its defenders, I think it’s time that civil rights advocates follow up by exposing the history of junk science and dishonesty in anti-firearms studies.
ESR then lists several of the most well-known studies allegedly supporting strong gun control, briefly explains what’s wrong with them, and cites detailed refutations. These are the studies from which almost all of the current gun-control rhetoric flowed, and it’s all grossly mistaken at best, often downright fraudulent:
I described this pattern as “fraud” … because the magnitude of these errors would be too great and their direction too consistent for honest error, even if we did not in several prominent cases have direct evidence that the fraud must have been intended. A further and very disturbing pattern is that conventional academic peer review has largely failed to point out errors that were later readily apparent to uncredentialed amateurs.
Yes, of course, read the whole damning thing.
Occasionally, in discussions about the right to keep and bear arms, I’ll challenge my debate partner on some point of law or fact. The usual response has two parts:
First, a kind of verbal shrug that says, in effect, only a gun nut wannabe killer would know or care about that, coupled with the accusation that I spend too much time studying the issue. This charge is usually leveled by folks who did a bit of reading twenty years ago, made up their minds, and never looked back. This is the only issue I’ve ever run across where knowing too much, having the actual facts on my side, is perceived as a liability in argument. (Oh, and this I love: after a year or so of study, I left the false safety of the gun control fold just before September of 2001. I looked in to the facts, thought long and hard, and changed my mind. And yet, because I will no longer politely suffer gun control arguments to go unchallenged, I’m the biased, close-minded, one.)
Second, I’m reminded that in this fight, both sides have distorted, misconstrued, covered up, and flat out lied. And again, this charge is often leveled by those who did their research and made up their minds twenty years ago.
Twenty years, people. There’s been a lot of water over the damn dam since then. That old dog won’t hunt, and isn’t learning any new tricks. The horse you’re trying to beat has long since died and gone to dust, and you look like an idiot beating the dirt where once it stood.
Since the eighties, there’s been a huge pile of research on the framing, history, and legal impact of the Second Amendment, and on the sociology and epidemiology of gun control, all culminating in the recent Heller decision. The Court unanimously, unanimously, people, found that the Second Amendment protects the right of individuals to keep and bear arms, including firearms, outside of any military or organized militia affiliation. The only disagreement is over how much regulation we must tolerate before it begins to “infringe” that right.
It turns out that Second Amendment advocates have gotten their story straight and their act together, while the gun control zealots have fumbled, fudged, and outright lied.
I’ll point to Heller for examples: Among the many briefs submitted on both sides of the question, one brief on Heller’s side became known as the “Errors Brief”, which did nothing but point out a few of the most important errors of fact in D.C.’s Plaintiff’s brief and associated amicus briefs.
After the decision was released, Justice Steven’s dissent (arguing that D.C.’s outright ban on functional firearms in the home did not constitute “infringement”) was found to have several factual errors, errors so severe that many observers think the opinion should be rescinded, rewritten, and re-released, even if correcting the errors does not change the opinion (although important parts of the dissent in fact rest on those errors). As it stands, it’s a profound embarrassment to the Court. [Note: the given link merely lists the errors; other commentators called for revision.]
The Second Amendment means what it says, in the simplest, most straightforward way: the Founders wanted The People, individual citizens, to be armed, particularly with firearms, independently of any military service, and they didn’t want the government to interfere with that in any way. Whatever damage an armed individual might do, the damage that an unchecked government might do is far, far worse (see the entire twentieth century for numerous horrific examples). The Founders did not limit the idea of “balance of power” to the traditional three branches of government, but meant it to work between individual citizens and their government as well.
Most of the Constitution defines the structure of the government, and enumerates its powers. Articles three through ten of the Bill of Rights further limit those powers. Amendments one and two, however, do something truly extraordinary: they declare that The People, acting out their lives solely in accordance with the dictates of their consciences, even in matters of life and death, are as crucial to the structure and stability of this nation of free states as any legislator, executive, or judge. The Second Amendment is not a mistake, not an oversight, not a misinterpretation, not a historical curiosity: it, along with the First Amendment, is the core of the whole enterprise. When you argue for gun control, you are declaring that free men are not fit to rule themselves, that the “balance of power” does not apply to the most crucial branch of government, The People; that We must be utterly subject to the other three branches. (Oh, except we’re allowed to whine. That’s OK, as long as we don’t actually, you know, do anything that might hurt somebody. Or somebody’s feelings.) And that, my friends, is the biggest, foulest, most toxic load of crap to have ever been dumped on our fruited plains, and it is poisoning our nation from the ground up.
From here on out, anyone who reads this blog, and wishes to discuss gun control with me, needs to show that they have read both Ethics and Fraud, and understood them. Let me say frankly, in all good will and friendship, if you haven’t, and if you aren’t willing to sit and listen to me make these points, and if you cannot refute them — not, mind, just wave your hand and tell me I shouldn’t worry my gunsmoke-rotted, troglodyte brain over such obvious offenses to the Way Things Oughta Be, but actually refute them — you are too ignorant and close-minded to be worth arguing with.
You are wrong. History says your are wrong. Sociology says you are wrong. Epidemiology says you are wrong. The U.S. Supreme Court says you are wrong.
It is no longer enough for you to say, Guns are bad, Dave. Good people, nice people, do not have or want guns. All well educated, right thinking, decent folk know this, and even if they sometimes err or exaggerate, well, gun folk do too, so that proves the nice decent people are right because they should be right, so there!
No. Sorry. That won’t cut it anymore.
I have a right, arguably a responsibility, to be armed. So do you. I am no longer required to prove this. I am no longer required to show that I need to have this gun, or meet that standard, or took this training, or got that license, or any such thing. (Not that I’m going to stop trying.)
If you wish to argue otherwise, the burden is entirely on you to show that The People’s unfettered access to arms causes unacceptable harm, and that your proposed remedy will a) significantly limit that harm while b) not significantly infringing the right. I’m sorry you don’t like guns, sorry that you’re afraid of them, sorry you once saw someone get shot, sorry that your friend got depressed and ate his pistol, sorry that someone’s child got into Daddy’s dresser drawer and played with the toy he found there, sorry sorry sorry, but you know what? Too damn bad.
We’ve tried your way. It doesn’t work. You’ve done your level best to make this a peaceable nation without guns, and all you’ve done is to create a flock of cowering defenseless sheep, while letting the wolves run free on parole, and all you can say is, we didn’t do it your way hard enough.
No. We’ve done it plenty. See Washington D.C., Chicago, California, New Jersey, even England. See gun-free schools, gun-free malls, gun-free churches. They’re not “gun-free zones”–they’re free-fire zones, where, just like the slogan says, only the outlaws have guns, and nobody can shoot back. Don’t agree? Fine. Prove me wrong. The burden is on you.
Your way does not work. You want to convince me I’m wrong, prove it. Find some facts, solid, current facts, not lies from the dusty, tattered, transparently fraudulent propaganda ESR exposes. No more you-thinks, and you’ve-heards, and you-wants. None, please, of your god-damned feelings. No, not even if you’re sure. Just cold, refreshing, free-flowing facts, please, and not from ESR’s poisoned wells.
Yeah, sure. Gun advocates make mistakes and stretch the facts a bit at times. We too have our wants and wishes, our blind spots and shortcomings.
But your whole position is nothing but a pack of cowardly lies.
From here on out, the burden is all on you.
In the meantime, please read ESR. Please overcome your irrational fear. Please find a range, and learn to shoot. Please try to buy a gun, if your jurisdiction allows, and find out how hard you’ve made it to exercise a fundamental human right, how hard you’ve made it to defend yourself against goblins who have never given two lumpy farts for your laws, your principles, or your feelings.
Please, please, please, learn that it’s OK to be free.
Here are links to other blogs linking to this post. Thanks, folks. (I should have done this long ago; I’ll do better next time. I’m also trying to figure out why trackbacks don’t seem to be appearing automatically.)
Crayton at 13 Crows
Hecate at Hecate’s Crossroad
