Now that the Supreme Court of the United States has decided that the Second Amendment to the Constitution means that individual Americans have a right to bear arms, what can we expect?
Those who have no confidence in ordinary Americans may expect a bloodbath, as the benighted masses start shooting each other, now that they can no longer be denied guns by their betters. People who think we shouldn't be allowed to make our own medical decisions, or decisions about which schools our children attend, certainly are not likely to be happy with the idea that we can make our own decisions about how to defend ourselves.
When you stop and think about it, there is no obvious reason why issues like gun control should be ideological issues in the first place. It is ultimately an empirical question whether allowing ordinary citizens to have firearms will increase or decrease the amount of violence.
Many people who are opposed to gun laws which place severe restrictions on ordinary citizens owning firearms have based themselves on the Second Amendment to the Constitution. But, while the Supreme Court must make the Second Amendment the basis of its rulings on gun control laws, there is no reason why the Second Amendment should be the last word for the voting public.
If the end of gun control leads to a bloodbath of runaway shootings, then the Second Amendment can be repealed, just as other Constitutional Amendments have been repealed. Laws exist for people, not people for laws.
There is no point arguing, as many people do, that it is difficult to amend the Constitution. The fact that it doesn't happen very often doesn't mean that it is difficult. The people may not want it to happen, even if the intelligentsia are itching to change it.
When the people wanted it to happen, the Constitution was amended 4 times in 8 years, from 1913 through 1920.
What all this means is that judges and the voting public have different roles. There is no reason why judges should "consider the basic values that underlie a constitutional provision and their contemporary significance," as Justice Stephen Breyer said in his dissent against the Supreme Court's gun control decision.
But, as the great Supreme Court Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes said, his job was "to see that the game is played according to the rules whether I like them or not."
If the public doesn't like the rules, or the consequences to which the rules lead, then the public can change the rules via the ballot box.
But that is very different from judges changing the rules by verbal sleight of hand, or by talking about "weighing of the constitutional right to bear arms" against other considerations, as Justice Breyer puts it. That's not his job. Not if "we the people" are to govern ourselves, as the Constitution says.
As for the merits or demerits of gun control laws themselves, a vast amount of evidence, both from the United States and from other countries, shows that keeping guns out of the hands of law-abiding citizens does not keep guns out of the hands of criminals. It is not uncommon for a tightening of gun control laws to be followed by an increase— not a decrease— in gun crimes, including murder.
Conversely, there have been places and times where an increase in gun ownership has been followed by a reduction in crimes in general and murder in particular.
Unfortunately, the media intelligentsia tend to favor gun control laws, so a lot of hard facts about the futility, or the counterproductive consequences of such laws, never reach the public through the media.
We hear a lot about countries with stronger gun control laws than the United States that have lower murder rates. But we very seldom hear about countries with stronger gun control laws than the United States that have higher murder rates, such as Russia and Brazil.
The media, like Justice Breyer, might do well to reflect on what is their job and what is the voting public's job. The media's job should be to give us the information to make up our own minds, not slant and filter the news to fit the media's vision.
To find out more about Thomas Sowell and read features by other Creators Syndicate columnists and cartoonists, visit the Creators Syndicate web page at www.creators.com. Thomas Sowell is a senior fellow at the Hoover Institution, Stanford University, Stanford, CA 94305. His Web site is www.tsowell.com.
COPYRIGHT 2010 CREATORS.COM
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13 Comments | Post Comment
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Dr. Sowell - as expected, you cut to the simple heart of the matter and expose the real issue at hand. Can Americans be trusted with the lawful owndership and use of handguns? Thankfully, the Supreme Court said "yes!"
Comment: #1
Posted by: Charles
Tue Jun 29, 2010 6:58 AM
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Which city is more similar, historically, demographically, or culturally, to Seattle WA: Vancouver B.C., Sao Paulo Brazil, or Moscow, Russia? To suggest that the answer is other than Vancouver would be silly. The murder rates of these two cities are very different as are the rules on handguns. The activist court has had its say. I hope that Mr. Sowell's rosy vision is correct. The future statics for the affected cities on handgun related deaths from murder, suicides, and accidental shootings, as well as the general crime stats should be instructive. ---
An interesting measure of the weird distortion around thinking on the part of the GOP and guns came post 911. We were told that we must give up some of our freedoms and privacy to be safe. (USA PATRIOT act, etc.) We were told that it is now OK to detain citizens with out access to the courts or see the evidence. ("You should not fear this, unless you have something to hide." "But the government would not charge somebody as an enemy combatant unless they really had the goods on them. We should just trust them...") But should we look at the gun purchase background check forms to see if known terrorists were buying guns in preparation for an attack? NO! We can't trust the government with information like that! But perhaps we should just retain those records for a while in case we need the information to unravel a terrorist campaign? NO NO The records must be destroyed! This latest ruling came as no surprise.
Comment: #2
Posted by: Mark
Tue Jun 29, 2010 8:24 AM
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Mark, your doomsday proclamation about what this ruling really means is informative. The Supreme Court has merely said that the complete ban of guns in places like Chicago and Washington D.C. are unconstitutional. The opinion even said that the ruling does not touch many of the gun control laws that are currently in place all across the country. I often find it amusing that the liberals, including those on the Supreme Court are upset that the majority in this case used their own reasoning and constitutional theories developed over the last 80 years to legitimize this ruling and now those justices are crying foul. I like watching them twist their words. I guess it is not too far out from their theories because they believe that the Constitution changes its meaning to be what they say it is.
Comment: #3
Posted by: T Bigler
Tue Jun 29, 2010 8:48 AM
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Doomsday proclamation? You have a very odd definition of "doomsday" if you include observing statistical changes in your definition. Do you mean that it might be doomsday for the NRA arguments that an armed society is a safer one? Would it matter? Even if handgun death rates doubled in these two cities, a very unlikely result, I doubt the gun rights supporters would give a thought to any idea of gun control as ever being appropriate. I remember a favorite gun rights bumper sticker of the 80's, after the polish solidarity movement was, it turned out temporarily, crushed by the polish government: POLAND HAS GUN CONTROL. Well guess what? Poland STILL has gun control. Somalia doesn't.
Comment: #4
Posted by: Mark
Tue Jun 29, 2010 9:20 PM
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Sure, but the converse would also be true: that if crime went down in these cities, those in support of more stringent gun control would not pay attention to the statistics. It is true that the NRA wants much more gun freedom than we have today, but that does not represent the majority of society. Most Americans want sensible gun regulations that allow them to protect themselves in very basic ways. A complete ban (the type struck down by the court), I believe, does not satisfy this very basic goal. You also deride the thinking from the NRA that seems, if not sensible, then not unsensible. For a democratic law-abiding society, I do think it is good for people to be able to have guns. Lastly, it is amusing that you used the same type of erroneous comparison for which you criticised the first commenter. That being that Somalia is not a very good representation of what liberalized gun laws would look like in the United States.
Comment: #5
Posted by: T Bigler
Thu Jul 1, 2010 7:45 AM
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Mr. Sowell--you have frequently criticized the use of sanctions against Iran as being ineffective. I am curious what your ideas are for stopping Iran from getting nuclear weapons. I do not believe I have seen that in your column. It is easy to say what won't work (and sanctions aren't that effective) but just what do you think will? Invading Iran? God forbid.
Comment: #6
Posted by: Pat Ohlmann
Thu Jul 1, 2010 12:14 PM
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Mark, sidestepping Constitutional questions, the bumper sticker says it well: "If guns are outlawed, only outlaws will have guns." If you don't understand that, I'm sorry. Do you remember when Florida had a crisis with decreased foreign tourism because foreign tourists were being carjacked? Why? Because Florida has a concealed carry law. Why would a carjacker pick a car at random where the occupant might be able to shoot back when he knows that the tourist won't have a gun. Some of the criminals verified this. Or as Ann Coulter pointed out, 'The problem of serial killers is education. Apparently they are unable to read. They didn't read that they are in gun-free zones like schools, post offices, etc.!'
Comment: #7
Posted by: Sherwood Kaip
Fri Jul 2, 2010 5:32 PM
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My bumper sticker comment was intended to be a tongue in cheek response to the one about Poland. The bumper sticker is not the best medium for in depth analysis. The point being that Poland's return to democracy did not require the citizens to be armed with handguns. It's decent into darkness would not have been stopped by them either. Remember that the soviets murdered 22,000 Polish military officers and intelligentsia in 1940.
Sherwood, apparently the criminals of Canada are better educated that ours. Canadians seem to not have anywhere near the rate of gun violence that we have in this country. Maybe it's just that their bad guys have read up on their gun laws, but perhaps it helps that the country is not awash in handguns. If criminals go for unarmed populations, why aren't they all moving to Canada where the doors are often unlocked and the citizens handgun free? Easy pickens there.
Comment: #8
Posted by: Mark
Mon Jul 5, 2010 12:55 AM
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Re: Mark
"The point being that Poland's return to democracy did not require the citizens to be armed with handguns."
So what? Are you saying that the decided homogeneity of Poland's history and culture is somehow comparable with the U.S.'s history and culture?
"It's decent into darkness would not have been stopped by them either."
Again, so what? Are you really comparing Poland's history as a Eurasian political pawn with the history of the U.S.?
"Canadians seem to not have anywhere near the rate of gun violence that we have in this country."
Rates of gun violence in Canada have always been significantly lower than the U.S. regardless of gun control laws, same with Britain and Japan, so spare us the red herring.
"If criminals go for unarmed populations, why aren't they all moving to Canada where the doors are often unlocked and the citizens handgun free? Easy pickins there."
I'm hoping you realized that home invasions are on a horrifying rise in Canada *before* you wrote that. And gun usage in those invasions is significantly less than it was a decade ago, so what does that tell you? Criminals will only use what's necessary to achieve their goal, so it tells me that in Canada it rarely requires a gun to successfully invade a home, because the level of resistance has been reduced that much by government mandates. Easy pickins, indeed.
Comment: #9
Posted by: Eric Evans
Mon Jul 5, 2010 10:40 AM
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Your column on this subject is incoherent. What were you smoking?
Comment: #10
Posted by: Pauil Peters
Mon Jul 5, 2010 11:25 AM
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Re: Pauil Peters
It seems to me the intent of the column is pretty clear to everyone who has commented except you. Be that the case, what are *you* smoking?
Comment: #11
Posted by: Eric Evans
Mon Jul 5, 2010 11:49 AM
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Dr. Sowell,
If only the "traditional media" thought, wrote and reported as clearly as you do!!! The facts would be painfully obvious (and that is probably why "they" resist/avoid reporting most - if not all of the facts) that the freedom for people to protect themselves and to preserve life, limb and property is directly proportional to their freedom to arm themselves if and when or almost anytime it is desired. The facts are clear; when citizens "may" be armed, criminals avoid them and go to areas in which the gun control laws are, and now hopefully have been, far too restrictive. I guess that "simple facts" tend to offend "simple people", eh? With my sincerest respect for you and your work and best wishes to you, Don Cordier
Comment: #12
Posted by: Don Cordier
Tue Jul 20, 2010 7:30 AM
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I agree with the author that one of the options to make is "Ballot boxes", when there is different views concerning our laws on "guns control" i think we need to pass the final words to the American public,if needed that laws should be amended then so be it,if it is for the good of the people...anyway life of individual is under threat, even after 9/11, isn't it? Well, im also a gun lover,in fact i promote gun accessories,which to buy best guns in the country...If you see my point,im very willing to shift to other trade of business if my business could harm the lives of many people per see,depends upon the right situation and environment...I used mount plus gun accessories, they are dependable,you can try their guns too <a href="http://www.mountsplus.com/AR-15_Accessories/AR-15_Scope_Mounts/GLOCK_SIGHTS.html
Cheer up! good article to comment on...God bless America
Comment: #13
Posted by: gunmanwillie
Thu Aug 26, 2010 11:14 PM
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