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Title: Further providing for schedules of controlled substances; and providing for secure storage of xylazine.

Description: Further providing for schedules of controlled substances; and providing for secure storage of xylazine. ...

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Last Action Date: May 15, 2024

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Essay in 'The Week' cuts to heart of U.S. gun rights debate :: 06/26/2015

An essay appearing in today’s edition of The Week, authored by Jeb Golinkin, so clearly explains the backbone of the Second Amendment movement in this country that anyone but a closed-minded gun prohibitionist should understand why millions of citizens so zealously defend their right to keep and bear arms.

It’s not that Golinkin comes across as a hardcore right to keep and bear arms absolutist (he doesn't); he alludes in the third paragraph to another article, written earlier this week by David Frum, that no hardcore gun rights activist is going to like at all. But Golinkin’s piece does sum up why millions of Americans passionately resist and revile any erosion of their fundamental civil right.

“The gun rights movement is about individual freedom and American individualism,” Golinkin writes. “These are people who believe in their right and obligation to control their own fate by carrying a firearm to protect themselves and those around them, even if that might disadvantage those who choose not to.

And then he adds this: “Gun rights opponents seem to take the position that this is selfish. But there has always been a tension between what is good for the individual and what is good for the collective.”

In a private conversation earlier this week, an Evergreen State Second Amendment activist observed that liberal anti-gunners seem to gravitate toward cities, while more conservative – and independent-minded – firearms owners are quite content to live away from the ant farm. They can take care of themselves, thank you very much, and do not count on the government to shepherd them, nor on the village to raise their children.

America was founded by self-reliant individualists. The collectivists are intent on changing it into something that the pioneers, the frontiersmen probably never intended it to be. In order for the collectivists to win, they must remove the one tool that allows the rugged individualist to actually be an individualist, and that is his or her firearm, and the fundamental right to have it.

“Whatever else you may think,” Golinkin observes, “the success of the American system of government is a powerful reminder that individual freedom is something that should be taken seriously.”

The timing of Golinkin’s article is remarkable. The other day, President Barack Obama – today delivering a eulogy for slain Rev. Clementa Pinckney, one of the nine victims in the Emanuel AME church attack – erroneously asserted that such attacks do not happen in other “advanced” nations. This morning’s headlines are running red with news of an attack at a resort in Tunisia where 27 people have been gunned down, and another attack at a U.S.-owned factory in France, where the head of a murder victim was hanged from a fence.

News like that, even though it happened on foreign soil, is a reminder that here in the United States, people have the constitutionally-delineated civil right to have the tools to defend themselves, not just from mass shooters, but from street thugs, home-invasion crews and lunatics who ought to be institutionalized. The murder of New Jersey resident Carol Bowne earlier this month while she was waiting for approval of her gun purchase permit from a deliberately sluggish local government underscores the opposition to further restrictions on gun rights.

Frum’s essay, which appeared in The Atlantic Tuesday, perhaps unintentionally shows why gun control doesn’t work, despite his contention that mass shootings are preventable. He details current federal prohibitions on gun possession, all of which are avoided by determined criminals, but then he suggests that gun dealers be held accountable, same as bartenders who keep serving drunks.

He also suggests mandatory liability insurance, intensive training for legally-armed citizens, and seems to sneer at armed citizens with this challenge: “You enjoy Walter Mitty fantasies of bringing down a dangerous criminal and saving the girl with a well-aimed shot? Fine. Take a test under conditions that simulate the chaos of a mass-shooting scene. Prove that you can hit the target—without also putting five shots out of six into the nearby silhouette of a baby stroller or man in a wheelchair. Produce evidence of good conduct and mental stability.

“And,” he adds, “be prepared to forfeit your deadly weapon if you are ever caught publicly intoxicated or engaged in other actions that display disregard for public safety, such as moving violations in an automobile.”

Frum also contends, “After a slaughter like that in Charlestown (sic), gun advocates argue that it occurred because Americans still don’t carry enough guns. If only ‘a good guy with a gun’ had been in the vicinity, the killer could have been stopped! The implicit premise of this claim is that gun owners who carry weapons in public will use them responsibly, effectively, and accurately—that the 'good guy with a gun' will actually bring down the bad guy, and not half a dozen innocent victims who happen to be within a twenty-foot radius.”

Perhaps Frum confuses armed citizens with the New York cops whose bullets wounded nine bystanders back in 2012 near the Empire State Building in their effort to bring down a man who had just murdered another man. Three people were directly hit and the others were struck by bullet fragments.

No responsible gun owner wants firearms in the wrong hands. No gun owner should be held responsible for a crime he or she didn’t commit. Start talking about laws that punish criminals without penalizing law-abiding citizens, treat gun ownership as a civil right rather than a government-regulated privilege and the debate about guns will turn into a discussion.

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