Professor James Wilson has an article in the Los Angeles Times that helps to make sense of responses to the horror that was perpetrated at Virginia Tech: “Gun control isn’t the answer: Why one reaction to Virginia Tech shouldn’t be tightening firearm laws.”
A fine article. I think he underestimates the importance of private firearm ownership in preventing crime, though. One of the places you’re *least* likely to be attacked by a criminal with a firearm is an American shooting range. If government officals in America, or any other country, were serious about reducing crime, they’d arm and train the average citizen. But for political purposes, rendering the citizen helpless is more in the politician’s interest.
I’ve posted some further thoughts on this on my blog.
What an excellent bunch of arguments!
1. “For historical and cultural reasons, Americans are a more violent people than the English”
Ooops! Doesn’t it look like rasism/radical nationalism? What sort of prejudice may Mr. Wilson have towards other peoples of the world?
2. “It is virtually impossible to use new background check or waiting-period laws to prevent dangerous people from getting guns. Those that they cannot buy, they will steal or borrow.”
Yes, it is also virtually impossible to prevent murders and other crimes to happen even when we have a well-trained police service. Probably Mr. Wilson would propose to get rid of any police since it doesn’t help anyway?
3. “Somewhere between 100,000 and more than 2 million cases of self-defense occur every year.”
A precise estimation, isn’t it? No one can say for sure if people in the country used their guns 100,000 times or 20 times more often. I can imagine a man with a big rifle protecting his house (which is allowed in almost any country of the world). But I can hardly imagine a clerk in a dark street who could manage to properly use a gun against a robber.
4. Armed teachers and good citizens preventing massacres.
Shouldn’t there be an armed professional security service working in public places for this purpose? How much people should there be, equipped with guns and trained to use them properly, to have those salvation cases everywhere, when needed, and not by a lucky chance?
Dr. Palmer, you believe in the absolute necessity of freedom. I don’t think it’s just because you assess freedom being more efficient than, say, dictatorship. It’s because you believe freedom to be an inalienable right of people. I think that living without light arms floating around is also an inalienable right of people. People shouldn’t have around them instruments created exclusively to kill other people. It’s just a principle, the humankind should eventually accept.
R2, in order to debate this issue, you need to at least (1) curb your hoplophobia while disucssing, and (2) pay attention to the arguments being made.
Re your points:
1. It’s obvious that cultures differ. Cultures include attitudes towards solving problems, towards what is and isn’t proper behavior, and towards violence. This is a basic fact, and it’s not racism, ethnocentrism, nor nationalism to note it, and its importance.
2. Wilson’s point is that gun bans are not the cure-alls supposed. Wilson points out something I’ve seen documented elsewhere — essentially banning private firearms in U.K. has been followed by *increased* rates of crime with firearms, not lower artes. If the idea is to make citizens safer, gun bans don’t seem to be working. (That you ignore this is why I suspect you are more motivated by hoplophobia, mere hatred of weapons per se, rather than a serious interest in reducing crime.)
3. There are numerous studies on the issue of private firearms reducing crime. The figures he cites come from academic studies. The numbers are imprecise, for a number of reasons: no gov’t agency asssembles and tracks what data are reported by citizens, and most such events do not involve the firing of a weapon — which means most events probably are not reported, and also that the definition of what constitutes an event can vary from study to study. But to pretend all of this means there are no such events, or that they are unimportant, is wrong, and perhaps intellectually dishonest.
4. The Swiss have the right idea: why not train and arm all law-abiding citizens, or at least all who desire this? This is far preferable to rendering all law-abiding citizens helpless, and then increasing the number of government security agents to “protect” everyone, which in practice ends up becoming control of everyone.
It seems you find it unthinkable that individuals can or should be able to defend themselves. Under U.S. law, repeatedly affirmed by courts at all levels, including SCOTUS, the police have no legal obligation at all to protect any individual. I suspect the law is similar in UK and elsewhere. Conversely, the right to defend oneself against attack is one of the most fundamental of individual rights — w/o it, your other rights mean very little.
It’s very strange to me that anyone would find the idea of defending her/himself unthinkable. As Jeffrey Snyder pointed out some years ago, it’s equivalent to saying one’s own worth is minimal.
If you really wish to debate these issues seriously, read Snyder’s article at
http://www.rkba.org/comment/cowards.html
Hey “R2D2” the gunman was South Korean. Does that mean we should go and attack the South Korean culture? What happen with 9/11? Does that mean we should attack the Arab/Islamic culture? What happen if it’s with some other culture? Should we attack that other culture?
I thought you people lectured Americans that we should support the Bill of Rights, but it’s okay to discard the 2ed Amendment?