Views » July 10, 2008

Gun-toters in La-La Land

By Laura S. Washington

The conservative answer to America’s crime plague is to put more guns on the streets. If that’s not counterintuitive, I don’t know what is.

The U.S. Supreme Court’s June 26 rejection of Washington, D.C.’s gun ban is an antediluvian retreat into la-la land. Its decision to strike down the 32-year-old law has put America’s cities in jeopardy, and that should be anathema to progressives everywhere. Still, the Democratic presidential nominee, Sen. Barack Obama (Ill.), is playing a telling game of hot potato.

The court rejected D.C.’s strict gun law by a 5-4 vote. In the majority opinion, Justice Antonin (Big Tony) Scalia wrote that the U.S. Second Amendment does not permit “the absolute prohibition of handguns held and used for self-defense in the home.” In other words, to keep America safe, we have to extend the right to bear arms from the military to pops having a beer on the couch in the living room.

Gun advocates are gleeful at the prospect of putting us in the crosshairs. The gun lovers want a firearm under every bed, in every drawer, in every holster in the nation.

“This is a very frightening decision for America,” Chicago Mayor Richard M. Daley said after the court’s decision. He’s dead-on.

America is the most heavily armed nation in the world. U.S. citizens own 270 million of the world’s 875 million known firearms — 90 guns for every 100 citizens, according to a 2007 survey by the Geneva-based Graduate Institute of International Studies.

In 2005, more than 10,000 homicides — almost 68 percent of all murders — were firearm-related, according to the Federal Bureau of Investigations.

That’s not enough slaughter for the People of the Gun. The National Rifle Association (NRA) has poured hundreds of millions of dollars into ensuring that our national Weapon of Mass Destruction is as accessible as a pack of gum.

The 217-year-old Second Amendment declares that “a well-regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed.” I am no Constitutional scholar, but that spare passage does not read like an explicit embrace of individual gun ownership to me.

Many others agree. So listen for the “ching, ching,” sweet sound of cash as both sides of the debate scramble to file a flurry of legal challenges that will tie up the courts for years.

Scalia added that “nothing in our opinion should be taken to cast doubt on long-standing prohibitions on the possession of firearms by felons and the mentally ill, or laws forbidding the carrying of firearms in sensitive places, such as schools and government buildings.”

What a relief. Just don’t stop at your local Mickey D’s for a Big Mac or run to the post office or the Safeway down the street. Then you’re on your own.

The People of the Gun don’t have to live in the cities that are desperate to stay safe. The mothers of Chicago’s Englewood, Miami’s Overtown and D.C.’s Anacostia are losing their boys and girls by the dozens to guns that are peddled at countless gun shows and gun shops outside city limits.

No matter. It’s just black folks. Nearly half of people murdered in the United States in 2005 were African Americans. While blacks make up about 13 percent of the nation’s population, they make up 49 percent of all murder victims, according to a recent U.S. Justice Department report. Guns are the weapon of choice.

Back to Obama’ s hot potato. While I don’t expect much from the NRA, we should expect more from the Big O. I expect more than his pathetic pandering in the name of protecting his presidential prospects.

Obama boasts about his stint as a community organizer on Chicago’s mean streets. So he might recognize the blood of black and Latino children running in those streets. He’s not too busy pandering to know that every single day, dozens of shootings fell urbanites across America.

Yet he essentially agreed with the Supreme Court.

“I have always believed that the Second Amendment protects the right of individuals to bear arms,” he said soon after the ruling, “but I also identify with the need for crime-ravaged communities to save their children from the violence that plagues our streets through common-sense, effective safety measures. The Supreme Court has now endorsed that view.”

It’s a classic election year dodge.

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• Reader Comments

  “If that’s not counterintuitive, I don’t know what is.”

  You’re right — you don’t.

  Posted by whattheheck on Jul 10, 2008 at 1:07 PM

  It’s time to grow up, Ms. Washington. There are bad people out there, who will kill and rape and rob until someone stops them. Ideally it’s a policeman, a jury and a judge who sends them to prison for a very long time or has them executed. But since too many “progressives” have largely emasculated that process, then often it must be one of their intended victims who puts a stop to them. For that to happen usually requires the intended victim to have a gun.

  May it never happen to you. But if you are so lucky as to live a long and productive life in peace, remember this: you were only able to do so because there were others willing to do violence in order to protect you.

  Posted by rfguys on Jul 10, 2008 at 1:17 PM

  Bleeding Hart Liberals.
  That cant read simple English.
  It is a GOD given right to be able to defend yourself.
  You are the ones that will destroy this country.
  Every State that does not have heavy regulating on gun’s have less crime. These are proven stats.
  Take TEXAS per example if you where to do a Bank Robbery that would probably be the worst place to do so.
  Everybody is Packing even Granny!
  She may not shout strait but she could get Lucky.
  GOD Bless America!

  Posted by Horace Smith on Jul 10, 2008 at 2:47 PM

  “The People of the Gun don’t have to live in the cities that are desperate to stay safe. The mothers of Chicago’s Englewood, Miami’s Overtown and D.C.’s Anacostia are losing their boys and girls by the dozens to guns that are peddled at countless gun shows and gun shops outside city limits.”

  Wake up, Laura — If guns get into supposedly “gunless cities” like Chicago and D.C., it is only those who are disobeying these laws who are causing those deaths — they have them and will have them regardless of any ban.

  Take a look at the effect of the banning of drugs. They are illegal in our cities, states and nation, so they come in from other countries at a huge profit to the illegal suppliers. Banning is a naive idea leading to a false sense of security.

  The people you distrust are the ones who could save some of these kids.

  I live in Illinois and carried a gun to work when the neighborhood where I worked began to witness hold-ups and shootings. Then the penalty for carrying without a permit went from a $50 misdemeanor to a felony. I moved my office home where I can have one of several handy if needed.

  Posted by whattheheck on Jul 10, 2008 at 4:31 PM

  You write:  “The conservative answer to America’s crime plague is to put more guns on the streets. If that’s not counterintuitive, I don’t know what is.”—Putting more law-abiding gun-toting citizens on the street is no more counterintuitive than adding more gun-toting cops.  The advantage of relying on private citizens is that they can be passive and respond only when threatened—thereby avoiding the need for racial profiling and the infringement of people’s privacy.

  You write:  “Its decision to strike down the 32-year-old law has put America’s cities in jeopardy”—Nonsense, save for NYC, Chicago, and DC America’s cities have long been in compliance with the Supreme Court ruling.

  You sarcasticly write:  “...to keep America safe, we have to extend the right to bear arms from the military to pops having a beer on the couch in the living room.” —Except for those three cities (possibly), nothing has been extended, because we’ve _always_ had that right.  Outside of those three cities, all the Supreme Court did was forbid the government from taking that right away from us.

  You write:  “The National Rifle Association (NRA) has poured hundreds of millions of dollars into ensuring that our national Weapon of Mass Destruction is as accessible as a pack of gum.” —The NRA isn’t pushing for guns to be any more accessible to private citizens than they already are to cops.  When a mugger demands your wallet, threatening your life should you refuse, your gun had better be extremely accessible if you are to have any hope of killing him before he kills you.

  You write:  “The mothers of Chicago’s Englewood, Miami’s Overtown and D.C.’s Anacostia are losing their boys and girls by the dozens to guns that are peddled at countless gun shows and gun shops outside city limits.” —These are the children of people who vote against law-and-order candidates; the children of people who view the police with suspicion and hostility; the children of people who resent it when the police kill drug dealers car thieves in their neighborhoods; the children of people who try to hijack every discussion about crime control and turn it into a brainstorming session about ways the government can give them more of other people’s money.  The people in these communities are sleeping in a bed of their own making.

  You write:  “No matter. It’s just black folks. Nearly half of people murdered in the United States in 2005 were African Americans. While blacks make up about 13 percent of the nation’s population, they make up 49 percent of all murder victims, according to a recent U.S. Justice Department report.” —It is not the color of their skin that makes the majority of these lives unworthy of our sympathy.  The vast majority of these victims could have vastly decreased the danger to their lives simply by ending their criminal activities and associations.  I certainly bear no moral obligation to give up my ability to resist robbers, merely in the hope of benefitting people who refuse to do what the God and the law already obligate them to do.  My right not to be robbed (freedom from unwarranted searches and seizures) is more fundmental a civil right than even the right to vote.

  If you don’t want black children to murder one another in today’s “Lord of the Flies” scenario, then encourage black people to form proper families (with father married to mother) before having children, and raise those children properly rather than passively waiting for them to “come up.”  Far from justifying gun control, the existence of hundreds of thousands of young violent savages on our streets makes the means of armed self-defense all the more essential.

  Posted by fsilber on Jul 10, 2008 at 5:59 PM

• extended discussion >>>Continued...

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