It Is Dangerous to Be Right When the Government Is Wrong (24 page)

Fortunately, the Violent Crime Control Act expired in 2004, and not surprisingly, the United States did not dissolve into chaos. Rather, there was no uptick in crime rates, and the FBI reported a 3.6 percent drop in violent crimes the following year. This was the first drop in five years, and the states that maintained the assault weapon ban experienced the smallest drop in murder rates. Of course, the government claims we were safer with the ban, and the drop in crime rates did not make the national news; but the numbers do not lie.

By creating gun bans and stripping you of your natural right to protect your personal property, the government is not keeping you any safer; rather, the government is giving criminals more firepower for their crimes. This can only be exemplified through a close analysis of the numbers, numbers which the government continually chooses to ignore.

Numbers Don't Lie; People Do

The argument is simple:
More guns mean less crime
. Year after year, the statistics prove the number of gun crimes committed lessens as prohibitions on guns are weakened. Yet, if you were to listen to the mainstream media and government bureaucrats, they would like you to believe the opposite. Whether it is for political gain or their own personal beliefs, our government officials continuously preach the myth that guns create, instead of prevent, harm.

Currently, there are approximately 300 million privately owned firearms in the United States. This includes nearly 100 million handguns. On average, the number of firearms rises by more than 4 million annually. There are about 70 to 80 million gun owners in the United States, which is about 40 to 45 percent of all American households. In 2009, about 125 million Americans lived in households with guns. As of 2007, there were 5 million Americans carrying concealed handguns, and thirty-nine states maintained right-to-carry laws, with another nine states maintaining “may-issue” laws. Only two states, Illinois and Wisconsin, completely ban all people who do not work for the government from carrying handguns.
¹³

The reality is that almost every year, guns kill about 30,000 Americans, and about 1,000 of these deaths are accidental. While these numbers appear staggering, fewer than 2 percent of handguns and 1 percent of all guns in this country will ever be used to commit a violent crime.
¹⁴
Thus, the use of blanket prohibitions against owning guns is like burning a haystack to get to a needle. The individuals using guns to kill crime victims are most likely already prone to crime and are not going to refrain from these actions simply because their gun's registration has not come in the mail or they failed to pass a background check. Have you ever seen a TV show in which a convicted felon claims he did not commit more crimes because he was afraid he'd be arrested for an unregistered gun? Have you ever even heard such nonsense? Probably not. No one watching would believe it.

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However, the statistics do show criminals refrain from crimes when they know the victim may be armed. Take, for example, the disparity of “hot burglaries” in Canada and Great Britain compared to the United States. A “hot burglary” is one where a resident is at home when the criminal strikes. In Canada and Great Britain, both with stringent anti-gun laws, nearly half of burglaries are “hot”; the burglars are not concerned with the victims being armed. Comparatively, the rate is only 13 percent in the United States, where we have relatively less restrictive gun laws. Moreover, convicted American felons reveal that they are much more worried about armed victims when committing a crime than they are about running into the police. In fact, interviews with convicted felons, in ten state correctional systems, reveal that 56 percent would not attack a known armed citizen.
¹⁵
When one burglar entered a Colorado home, the owner promptly aimed a gun at him and waited for police to arrive. Police Sergeant Roderick O'Connor recalled that the intruder pleaded, “Those guys pointed guns at me. They should be arrested.” Apparently, the government would agree with him.

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Another example of this is Switzerland, where gun ownership rates are high and burglary rates are low. James A. Donald describes Switzerland as a nation where in peacetime, there are no generals or a central command; rather, every individual is his own policeman. As Donald explains,

Almost every house in Switzerland contains one or more automatic weapons, the kind of guns that the American federal government calls “assault rifles with cop killer bullets.” Switzerland has strict gun controls to keep guns out of the hands of children, lunatics and criminals, but every law abiding adult can buy any kind of weapon. Almost every adult male owns at least one gun, and most have more than one, because of social pressures and the expectation that a respectable middle class male citizen should be well armed and skillful in the use of arms. It is also no coincidence that respect for property rights in Switzerland is amongst the highest in the world, possibly the highest in the world.
¹⁶

This description clearly demonstrates the importance of the right to keep and bear arms in relation to our property rights.

In America, you are instilled from a young age with the belief, “guns kill,” but you are never informed of your natural right to own and use a gun to save your own life or defend your property. You never learn how vital guns or weapons were in securing the independence of this nation and many other nations. You are never taught that guns can help prevent crimes by deterring criminal activity, nor are you taught how gun laws can actually increase crime.

For example, take the 2010 case of Michael Lish, an Oklahoma homeowner. Upon returning home with his wife around 10:00 p.m., Lish noticed the back door ajar and a window open. Lish then entered the house and searched it to make sure everything was okay. Unsuspectingly, a nineteen-year-old intruder, Billy Jean Tiffey III, jumped out at Lish while brandishing a sword. Lish, who had a concealed-weapon permit, pulled out his gun and shot Tiffey in the abdomen. Tiffey dropped to his knees and reached behind his back, upon which Lish fired a second and third shot, killing him. Investigators found Tiffey was carrying not only a sword, but also a .38-caliber pistol, the homeowner's 9 mm pistol, a knife, and a stun gun. Fortunately for Lish, he did not face prosecution because Oklahoma maintains the “Make My Day” law, where a person can use force— including deadly force—to defend his home.
¹⁷
In my home state of New Jersey, had Michael Lish endured this ordeal, he'd have faced twenty years in prison.

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What Could Have Been: Two Fewer Days of Remembrance?

As the previous statistics prove, these bans do not help protect you. In fact, you are worse off with gun prohibitions because you are unable to protect yourself, and criminals know this. This can only be exemplified by two tragic incidents at the beginning of the twenty-first century. The events leading up to the collapse and destruction of the World Trade Center do not need to be repeated. However, it is important to consider what would have happened if the passengers or pilots of those planes were armed. I believe it is unlikely the terrorists would have been as “successful” in causing destruction and taking American lives.

You may argue the idea of armed pilots or airline passengers is frightening, but to do so, you are ignoring history. Until 1963, American commercial passenger pilots were required to carry guns on any flight carrying U.S. mail in order to protect the mail—not the passengers, but the mail—in case the flight landed away from an airport. Moreover, until 1987, pilots could legally carry guns on their flights. In fact, the pilots' union for American Airlines and the Airline Pilots Security Alliance claim that until 1987, up to 10 percent of all pilots regularly carried guns. Okay, so pilots carried guns on the planes, but how many injuries or diverted flights resulted from this practice? None. That's right; there are no recorded instances of any significant gun-related problem arising from a legally armed pilot.
¹⁸

Additionally, since 2003, pilots have been legally able to carry guns on their flights. Yet, in order to do so, the pilots must receive extensive training and psychological evaluations. In the time between 2003 and the writing of this book, there has been only one reported incident where a pilot accidentally discharged his gun. However, it is ironic, because the gun was discharged when the pilot was attempting to follow federal regulations calling for pilots to put a trigger lock on a loaded gun as the plane is landing. The incident caused no flight problems, and the plane landed safely. This is just another example of federal regulations causing more harm than good.
¹⁹
What is the value of a handgun when it is incapacitated by a trigger lock? Absolutely no value. It's kind of silly not to trust a pilot with a gun but to trust him or her with a passenger plane, essentially a guided missile.

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On April 16th 2007, a monumental, yet avoidable, shooting took place on the campus of Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University (Virginia Tech) in Blacksburg, Virginia. The attacker, Seung-Hui Cho, killed thirty-two persons and wounded many others before taking his own life. The events took place over a period of two hours, and once called, the police took nearly six minutes to enter a barricaded building. Keep in mind, this was six minutes
after
the shooting stopped. The first shooting had occurred two hours earlier. While the events are tragic, one must wonder what would have happened if individuals were permitted to carry concealed guns on Virginia Tech's campus and not compelled to keep their weapons in their cars.

Perhaps even more heartbreaking, is that in January 2006, prior to the shootings, legislator Todd Gilbert introduced a bill, HD 1572, to the Virginia House of Delegates. HD 1572 was intended to forbid public universities in Virginia from preventing students from lawfully carrying a concealed handgun on campus. The bill was defeated, and the defeat was praised, but we can only wonder whether we would be marking April 16th as a day of remembrance if just one student or professor on the Virginia Tech campus had been armed. While it cannot be guaranteed any individual involved in the incident would have been armed, the effect of armed faculty and students is demonstrated by other school shootings.

Take, for example, the school shooting at Appalachian School of Law in Grundy, Virginia. On January 16th 2002, Peter Odighizuwa, placed on suspension and failing out of school, sought to take revenge. He entered the campus and waved a gun while yelling, “Come get me.” In a matter of seconds, he killed the school's dean, a professor, and a classmate. As panic ensued, and the gunshots were heard around campus, students Mikael Gross and Tracy Bridges ran to their cars in order to retrieve their guns. Both Gross and Bridges, unaware of the other, approached Odighizuwa from different directions. Ultimately, they cornered Odighizuwa, and he dropped his weapon and surrendered to police. Fortunately for the students of Appalachian School of Law, their peers were armed and able to prevent more killings.
²⁰

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A similar case occurred at the University of Texas at Austin on August 1st 1966. Charles Whitman, a student at UT, ascended the tower on campus to use as a sniper's perch. Once there, he engaged in a shooting spree, killing fourteen people. Shortly after he initiated the attack, both police and armed civilians—including an English professor armed with a deer rifle—started to return fire. Officer Ramiro Martinez later reflected that it was owing to these armed civilians that the body count wasn't even higher; without them, Whitman would have been able to take aim freely at whomever he wished. We should be honoring—not incapacitating—these heroic civilians for exercising their natural rights in order to prevent further bloodshed.

The lack of media coverage on the advantages of guns on campus feeds into the ignorance of Americans with regard to firearms in government-owned schools. Just fifteen years ago, many states allowed concealed-handgun permit holders to carry guns on school property, and there were no major incidents. Yet, with the passage of the Federal Safe School Zone Act, these states no longer allow schools to permit concealed handguns. Fortunately, some states (New Hampshire, Oregon, and Utah), in defiance of the federal law, have taken the lead in restoring our natural right to bear arms and now allow permit holders to carry guns at school.

The Supreme Court Restores Gun Rights

While you must remain eternally vigilant to protect your natural right to keep and bear arms, the Supreme Court recently began to do the work for you. Almost seventy years after the Supreme Court permitted the feds to restrict Second Amendment rights in the
Miller
case, it decided what is now lauded as a “landmark” decision. The Supreme Court in
District of Columbia v. Heller
(2008) held the Second Amendment protects an
individual's
right to bear arms in the home. In so doing, Justice Scalia in his majority opinion referred to the right to bear arms as a “fundamental right.” By enshrining the right as fundamental, the Court acknowledged the right is natural, and thus cannot be stripped by any government, federal, state, or local, without due process. However, the Court failed to go far enough in this case. The majority did not address the language “shall not be infringed.” In fact, the Court listed a number of infringements it deemed acceptable. By doing so, the Court ignored the plain language of the Second Amendment and the Founders' original intent. The Founders did not write “should not be infringed,” which would give government leeway in creating restrictions; no, they wrote “shall not,” which means the government
must not
infringe on your right to bear arms.