The Right to Bear Crosses

This post may seem out of place under my blog title, but bear with me if you can.

I have just finished reading more than fifty essays on gun control, or more accurately, analyses of articles about gun control. I purposely assigned an article from each side of the issue to give my students the opportunity to agree with one if they chose to do so. Not surprisingly, many of my young scholars were supportive of the position taken by Dr. Erin O’Brien, an academic from Australia, who advocates strict firearm laws as a means to reduce violent crime. She touts the complete ban her country initiated after the 1996 Port Arthur shooting which claimed 35 lives. She offers this as a solution for gun shocked Americans in the wake of the Sandy Hook Elementary massacre.

What O’Brien fails to mention either by ignorance or thoughtful omission is that even the Australian government now concedes that the confiscation of citizens’ guns has not significantly reduced violent crime. Homicides, rapes, burglaries and other serious crimes remained steady or increase slightly according to a study done in 2003. O’Brien is correct to say that there has not been another mass murder since 1996, but violence against persons has continued to countless multiples of the 35 victims at Port Arthur. In Great Britain, similar gun laws resulted in dramatic increases in violent crime.

Nine out of ten students who read O’Brien simply took her at her word and praised her evidence-backed reasoning; they did not do the fact checking that would have put the lie to her argument. Unfortunately, I suspect a similar ratio would apply to average Americans who are watching the current debate about gun control in this country. Case in point: the Brady Campaign recently gave California its highest grade for gun laws, yet California has a 73% higher murder rate than the average of states which ranked below it. The same report card honored ten states with the “strongest” gun laws when those ten had murder rates 2.2 times higher than the ten states with the “weakest” laws.

There are too many people who have not yet realized there are factions in our most popular media who will twist the facts purposely to advance their agenda. It is true that America has the highest per capita gun ownership and gun violence in the world. However, it is not reported widely that FBI crime data for 2011 shows a significant decline in violent crime for 18 of the last 20 years.  Murder, the most frequently mentioned gun crime, is down 52% in that same period. This has all taken place while private gun ownership has risen concurrently.

My students lost a few points on their essay if they missed O’Brien’s glaring logical flaw. Americans will lose much more if we don’t do our homework in this Constitutional debate. This is a Second Amendment issue which has consequences beyond whether we keep our private guns or not. Tinkering with the Constitution in the manner of the anti-gun lobby is dangerous.

As one of my more insightful students pointed out, the Second Amendment came on the heels of America’s armed rebellion against British tyranny. The right to bear arms was expressly given so that tyrants would think twice about subjecting armed citizens to tyrannical measures. The anti-gun position on the Second Amendment is that “a well regulated militia” refers to government entities like police and armed forces personnel.  One must consider, however, that if only the government has guns, there will be no citizen defense against a tyrannical government. It is often said that if guns are outlawed only outlaws will have guns. What if the government becomes the “outlaws?”

And finally, I turn to the WHAMM aspect: the same forces who would alter the Constitutional right to bear arms would also like to rewrite the First Amendment freedom of religion. It is already beginning; preaching certain portions of Scripture is now considered a hate crime in some jurisdictions. If that becomes a precedent, the Supreme Court may one day dictate what can be spoken from our pulpits. Listen to the wisdom of Martin Niemoller who lived in Nazi Germany:

First they came for the Communists
And I did not speak out
Because I was not a Communist
Then they came for the Socialists
And I did not speak out
Because I was not a Socialist
Then they came for the trade unionists
And I did not speak out
Because I was not a trade unionist
Then they came for the Jews
And I did not speak out
Because I was not a Jew
Then they came for me
And there was no one left
To speak out for me