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"A Nation of Cowards" was published in the Fall, '93 issue of The
Public Interest, a quarterly journal of opinion published by National
Affairs, Inc.  

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(C) 1993 by _The Public Interest_.
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                        A nation of cowards

                         Jeffrey R. Snyder


   OUR SOCIETY has reached a pinnacle of self-expression and
respect for individuality rare or unmatched in history.  Our
entire popular culture -- from fashion magazines to the cinema
-- positively screams the matchless worth of the individual, and
glories in eccentricity, nonconformity, independent judgment,
and self-determination.  This enthusiasm is reflected in the
prevalent notion that helping someone entails increasing that
person's "self-esteem"; that if a person properly values
himself, he will naturally be a happy, productive, and, in some
inexplicable fashion, responsible member of society.

   And yet, while people are encouraged to revel in their
individuality and incalculable self-worth, the media and the law
enforcement establishment continually advise us that, when
confronted with the threat of lethal violence, we should not
resist, but simply give the attacker what he wants.  If the
crime under consideration is rape, there is some notable
waffling on this point, and the discussion quickly moves to how
the woman can change her behavior to minimize the risk of rape,
and the various ridiculous, non-lethal weapons she may
acceptably carry, such as whistles, keys, mace or, that weapon
which really sends shivers down a rapist's spine, the portable
cellular phone.

   Now how can this be?  How can a person who values himself so
highly calmly accept the indignity of a criminal assault?  How
can one who believes that the essence of his dignity lies in his
self-determination passively accept the forcible deprivation of
that self-determination?  How can he, quietly, with great
dignity and poise, simply hand over the goods?

   The assumption, of course, is that there is no inconsistency. 
The advice not to resist a criminal assault and simply hand over
the goods is founded on the notion that one's life is of
incalculable value, and that no amount of property is worth it. 
Put aside, for a moment, the outrageousness of the suggestion
that a criminal who proffers lethal violence should be treated
as if he has instituted a new social contract: "I will not hurt
or kill you if you give me what I want." For years, feminists
have labored to educate people that rape is not about sex, but
about domination, degradation, and control.  Evidently, someone
needs to inform the law enforcement establishment and the media
that kidnapping, robbery, carjacking, and assault are not about
property.

   Crime is not only a complete disavowal of the social contract,
but also a commandeering of the victim's person and liberty.  If
the individual's dignity lies in the fact that he is a moral
agent engaging in actions of his own will, in free exchange with
others, then crime always violates the victim's dignity.  It is,
in fact, an act of enslavement.  Your wallet, your purse, or
your car may not be worth your life, but your dignity is; and if
it is not worth fighting for, it can hardly be said to exist.



                   The gift of life

   Although difficult for modern man to fathom, it was once
widely believed that life was a gift from God, that to not
defend that life when offered violence was to hold God's gift in
contempt, to be a coward and to breach one's duty to one's
community.  A sermon given in Philadelphia in 1747 unequivocally
equated the failure to defend oneself with suicide:



   He that suffers his life to be taken from him by one that hath
   no authority for that purpose, when he might preserve it by
   defense, incurs the Guilt of self murder since God hath enjoined
   him to seek the continuance of his life, and Nature itself
   teaches every creature to defend itself.
   
   "Cowardice" and "self-respect" have largely disappeared from
public discourse.  In their place we are offered "self-esteem"
as the bellwether of success and a proxy for dignity. 
"Self-respect" implies that one recognizes standards, and judges
oneself worthy by the degree to which one lives up to them. 
"Self-esteem" simply means that one feels good about oneself. 
"Dignity" used to refer to the self-mastery and fortitude with
which a person conducted himself in the face of life's
vicissitudes and the boorish behavior of others.  Now, judging
by campus speech codes, dignity requires that we never encounter
a discouraging word and that others be coerced into acting
respectfully, evidently on the assumption that we are powerless
to prevent our degradation if exposed to the demeaning behavior
of others.  These are signposts proclaiming the insubstantiality
of our character, the hollowness of our souls.


   It is impossible to address the problem of rampant crime
without talking about the moral responsibility of the intended
victim.  Crime is rampant because the law-abiding, each of us,
condone it, excuse it, permit it, submit to it.  We permit and
encourage it because we do not fight back, immediately, then and
there, where it happens.  Crime is not rampant because we do not
have enough prisons, because judges and prosecutors are too
soft, because the police are hamstrung with absurd
technicalities.  The defect is there, in our character.  We are
a nation of cowards and shirkers.


                        Do you feel lucky?

   In 1991, when then-Attorney General Richard Thornburgh
released the FBI's annual crime statistics, he noted that it is
now more likely that a person will be the victim of a violent
crime than that he will be in an auto accident.  Despite this,
most people readily believe that the existence of the police
relieves them of the responsibility to take full measures to
protect themselves.  The police, however, are not personal
bodyguards.  Rather, they act as a general deterrent to crime,
both by their presence and by apprehending criminals after the
fact.  As numerous courts have held, they have no legal
obligation to protect anyone in particular.  You cannot sue them
for failing to prevent you from being the victim of a crime.

   Insofar as the police deter by their presence, they are very,
very good.  Criminals take great pains not to commit a crime in
front of them.  Unfortunately, the corollary is that you can
pretty much bet your life (and you are) that they won't be there
at the moment you actually need them.

   Should you ever be the victim of an assault, a robbery, or a
rape, you will find it very difficult to call the police while
the act is in progress, even if you are carrying a portable
cellular phone.  Nevertheless, you might be interested to know
how long it takes them to show up.  Department of Justice
statistics for 1991 show that, for all crimes of violence, only
28 percent of calls are responded to within five minutes.  The
idea that protection is a service people can call to have
delivered and expect to receive in a timely fashion is often
mocked by gun owners, who love to recite the challenge, "Call for
a cop, call for an ambulance, and call for a pizza.  See who
shows up first."

   Many people deal with the problem of crime by convincing
themselves that they live, work, and travel only in special
"crime-free" zones.  Invariably, they react with shock and hurt
surprise when they discover that criminals do not play by the
rules and do not respect these imaginary boundaries.  If,
however, you understand that crime can occur anywhere at
anytime, and if you understand that you can be maimed or
mortally wounded in mere seconds, you may wish to consider
whether you are willing to place the responsibility for
safeguarding your life in the hands of others.


                     Power and responsibility

   Is your life worth protecting?  If so, whose responsibility is
it to protect it?  If you believe that it is the police's, not
only are you wrong -- since the courts universally rule that
they have no legal obligation to do so -- but you face some
difficult moral quandaries.  How can you rightfully ask another
human being to risk his life to protect yours, when you will
assume no responsibility yourself?  Because that is his job and
we pay him to do it?  Because your life is of incalculable
value, but his is only worth the $30,000 salary we pay him?  If
you believe it reprehensible to possess the means and will to
use lethal force to repel a criminal assault, how can you call
upon another to do so for you?

   Do you believe that you are forbidden to protect yourself
because the police are better qualified to protect you, because
they know what they are doing but you're a rank amateur?  Put
aside that this is equivalent to believing that only concert
pianists may play the piano and only professional athletes may
play sports.  What exactly are these special qualities possessed
only by the police and beyond the rest of us mere mortals?

   One who values his life and takes seriously his
responsibilities to his family and community will possess and
cultivate the means of fighting back, and will retaliate when
threatened with death or grievous injury to himself or a loved
one.  He will never be content to rely solely on others for his
safety, or to think he has done all that is possible by being
aware of his surroundings and taking measures of avoidance. 
Let's not mince words: He will be armed, will be trained in the
use of his weapon, and will defend himself when faced with
lethal violence.

   Fortunately, there is a weapon for preserving life and
liberty that can be wielded effectively by almost anyone -- the
handgun.  Small and light enough to be carried habitually,
lethal, but unlike the knife or sword, not demanding great skill
or strength, it truly is the "great equalizer."  Requiring only
hand-eye coordination and a modicum of ability to remain cool
under pressure, it can be used effectively by the old and the
weak against the young and the strong, by the one against the
many.

   The handgun is the only weapon that would give a lone female
jogger a chance of prevailing against a gang of thugs intent on
rape, a teacher a chance of protecting children at recess from a
madman intent on massacring them, a family of tourists waiting
at a mid-town subway station the means to protect themselves
from a gang of teens armed with razors and knives.

   But since we live in a society that by and large outlaws the
carrying of arms, we are brought into the fray of the Great
American Gun War.  Gun control is one of the most prominent
battlegrounds in our current culture wars.  Yet it is unique in
the half-heartedness with which our conservative leaders and
pundits -- our "conservative elite" -- do battle, and have
conceded the moral high ground to liberal gun control
proponents.  It is not a topic often written about, or written
about with any great fervor, by William F. Buckley or Patrick
Buchanan.  As drug czar, William Bennett advised President Bush
to ban "assault weapons."  George Will is on record as
recommending the repeal of the Second Amendment, and Jack Kemp
is on record as favoring a ban on the possession of
semiautomatic "assault weapons."  The battle for gun rights is
one fought predominantly by the common man.  The beliefs of both
our liberal and conservative elites are in fact abetting the
criminal rampage through our society.


                     Selling crime prevention

   By any rational measure, nearly all gun control proposals are
hokum.  The Brady Bill, for example, would not have prevented
John Hinckley from obtaining a gun to shoot President Reagan;
Hinckley purchased his weapon five months before the attack, and
his medical records could not have served as a basis to deny his
purchase of a gun, since medical records are not public
documents filed with the police.  Similarly, California's
waiting period and background check did not stop Patrick Purdy
from purchasing the "assault rifle" and handguns he used to
massacre children during recess in a Stockton schoolyard; the
felony conviction that would have provided the basis for stopping
the sales did not exist, because Mr. Purdy's previous weapons
violations were plea-bargained down from felonies to
misdemeanors.

   In the mid-sixties there was a public service advertising
campaign targeted at car owners about the prevention of car
theft.  The purpose of the ad was to urge car owners not to
leave their keys in their cars.  The message was, "Don't help a
good boy go bad."  The implication was that, by leaving his keys
in his car, the normal, law-abiding car owner was contributing
to the delinquency of minors who, if they just weren't tempted
beyond their limits, would be "good."  Now, in those days people
still had a fair sense of just who was responsible for whose
behavior.  The ad succeeded in enraging a goodly portion of the
populace, and was soon dropped.

   Nearly all of the gun control measures offered by Handgun
Control, Inc. (HCI) and its ilk embody the same philosophy. They
are founded on the belief that America's law-abiding gun owners
are the source of the problem.  With their unholy desire for
firearms, they are creating a society awash in a sea of guns,
thereby helping good boys go bad, and helping bad boys be
badder.  This laying of moral blame for violent crime at the
feet of the law-abiding, and the implicit absolution of violent
criminals for their misdeeds, naturally infuriates honest gun
owners.

   The files of HCI and other gun control organizations are
filled with proposals to limit the availability of semiautomatic
and other firearms to law-abiding citizens, and barren of
proposals for apprehending and punishing violent criminals.  It
is ludicrous to expect that the proposals of HCI, or any gun
control laws, will significantly curb crime.  According to
Department of Justice and Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and
Firearms (ATF) statistics, fully 90 percent of violent crimes
are committed without a handgun, and 93 percent of the guns
obtained by violent criminals are not obtained through the
lawful purchase and sale transactions that are the object of
most gun control legislation.  Furthermore, the number of
violent criminals is minute in comparison to the number of
firearms in America -- estimated by the ATF at about 200
million, approximately one-third of which are handguns.  With so
abundant a supply, there will always be enough guns available
for those who wish to use them for nefarious ends, no matter how
complete the legal prohibitions against them, or how draconian
the punishment for their acquisition or use.  No, the gun
control proposals of HCI and other organizations are not
seriously intended as crime control.  Something else is at work
here.


                     The tyranny of the elite

   Gun control is a moral crusade against a benighted, barbaric
citizenry.  This is demonstrated not only by the ineffectualness
of gun control in preventing crime, and by the fact that it
focuses on restricting the behavior of the law-abiding rather
than apprehending and punishing the guilty, but also by the
execration that gun control proponents heap on gun owners and
their evil instrumentality, the NRA.  Gun owners are routinely
portrayed as uneducated, paranoid rednecks fascinated by and
prone to violence, i.e., exactly the type of person who opposes
the liberal agenda and whose moral and social "re-education" is
the object of liberal social policies.  Typical of such bigotry
is New York Gov. Mario Cuomo's famous characterization of
gun-owners as "hunters who drink beer, don't vote, and lie to
their wives about where they were all weekend."  Similar
vituperation is rained upon the NRA, characterized by Sen.
Edward Kennedy as the "pusher's best friend," lampooned in
political cartoons as standing for the right of children to
carry firearms to school and, in general, portrayed as standing
for an individual's God-given right to blow people away at will.

   The stereotype is, of course, false.  As criminologist and
constitutional lawyer Don B. Kates, Jr. and former HCI
contributor Dr. Patricia Harris have pointed out, "[s]tudies
consistently show that, on the average, gun owners are better
educated and have more prestigious jobs than non-owners.... 
Later studies show that gun owners are less likely than
non-owners to approve of police brutality, violence against
dissenters, etc."

   Conservatives must understand that the antipathy many liberals
have for gun owners arises in good measure from their statist
utopianism.  This habit of mind has nowhere been better explored
than in The Republic.  There, Plato argues that the perfectly
just society is one in which an unarmed people exhibit virtue by
minding their own business in the performance of their assigned
functions, while the government of philosopher-kings, above the
law and protected by armed guardians unquestioning in their
loyalty to the state, engineers, implements, and fine-tunes the
creation of that society, aided and abetted by myths that both
hide and justify their totalitarian manipulation.


                         The unarmed life

   When columnist Carl Rowan preaches gun control and uses a gun
to defend his home, when Maryland Gov. William Donald Schaefer
seeks legislation year after year to ban semiautomatic "assault
weapons" whose only purpose, we are told, is to kill people,
while he is at the same time escorted by state police armed with
large-capacity 9mm semiautomatic pistols, it is not simple
hypocrisy.  It is the workings of that habit of mind possessed
by all superior beings who have taken upon themselves the
terrible burden of civilizing the masses and who understand,
like our Congress, that laws are for other people.

   The liberal elite know that they are philosopher-kings.  They
know that the people simply cannot be trusted; that they are
incapable of just and fair self-government; that left to their
own devices, their society will be racist, sexist, homophobic,
and inequitable -- and the liberal elite know how to fix
things.  They are going to help us live the good and just life,
even if they have to lie to us and force us to do it.  And they
detest those who stand in their way.

   The private ownership of firearms is a rebuke to this utopian
zeal.  To own firearms is to affirm that freedom and liberty are
not gifts from the state.  It is to reserve final judgment about
whether the state is encroaching on freedom and liberty, to
stand ready to defend that freedom with more than mere words,
and to stand outside the state's totalitarian reach.


                      The Florida experience

   The elitist distrust of the people underlying the gun control
movement is illustrated beautifully in HCI's campaign against a
new concealed-carry law in Florida.  Prior to 1987, the Florida
law permitting the issuance of concealed-carry permits was
administered at the county level.  The law was vague, and, as a
result, was subject to conflicting interpretation and political
manipulation.  Permits were issued principally to security
personnel and the privileged few with political connections. 
Permits were valid only within the county of issuance.

   In 1987, however, Florida enacted a uniform concealed-carry
law which mandates that county authorities issue a permit to
anyone who satisfies certain objective criteria.  The law
requires that a permit be issued to any applicant who is a
resident, at least twenty-one years of age, has no criminal
record, no record of alcohol or drug abuse, no history of mental
illness, and provides evidence of having satisfactorily
completed a firearms safety course offered by the NRA or other
competent instructor.  The applicant must provide a set of
fingerprints, after which the authorities make a background
check.  The permit must be issued or denied within ninety days,
is valid throughout the state, and must be renewed every three
years, which provides authorities a regular means of
reevaluating whether the permit holder till qualifies.

   Passage of this legislation was vehemently opposed by HCI and
the media.  The law, they said, would lead to citizens shooting
each other over everyday disputes involving fender benders,
impolite behavior, and other slights to their dignity.  Terms
like "Florida, the Gunshine State" and "Dodge City East" were
coined to suggest that the state, and those seeking passage of
the law, were encouraging individuals to act as judge, jury, and
executioner in a "Death Wish" society.

   No HCI campaign more clearly demonstrates the elitist beliefs
underlying the campaign to eradicate gun ownership.  Given the
qualifications required of permit holders, HCI and the media can
only believe that common, law-abiding citizens are seething
cauldrons of homicidal rage, ready to kill to avenge any slight
to their dignity, eager to seek out and summarily execute the
lawless.  Only lack of immediate access to a gun restrains them
and prevents the blood from flowing in the streets.  They are so
mentally and morally deficient that they would mistake a permit
to carry a weapon in self-defense as a state-sanctioned license
to kill at will.

   Did the dire predictions come true?  Despite the fact that
Miami and Dade County have severe problems with the drug trade,
the homicide rate fell in Florida following enactment of this
law, as it did in Oregon following enactment of similar
legislation there.  There are, in addition, several documented
cases of new permit holders successfully using their weapons to
defend themselves.  Information from the Florida Department of
State shows that, from the beginning of the program in 1987
through June 1993, 160,823 permits have been issued, and only
530, or about 0.33 percent of the applicants, have been denied a
permit for failure to satisfy the criteria, indicating that the
law is benefitting those whom it was intended to benefit -- the
law-abiding.  Only 16 permits, less than 1/100th of 1 percent,
have been revoked due to the post-issuance commission of a crime
involving a firearm.

   The Florida legislation has been used as a model for
legislation adopted by Oregon, Idaho, Montana, and Mississippi. 
There are, in addition, seven other states (Maine, North and
South Dakota, Utah, Washington, West Virginia, and, with the
exception of cities with a population in excess of 1 million,
Pennsylvania) which provide that concealed-carry permits must be
issued to law-abiding citizens who satisfy various objective
criteria.  Finally, no permit is required at all in Vermont. 
Altogether, then, there are thirteen states in which law-abiding
citizens who wish to carry arms to defend themselves may do so. 
While no one appears to have compiled the statistics from all of
these jurisdictions, there is certainly an ample data base for
those seeking the truth about the trustworthiness of law-abiding
citizens who carry firearms.

   Other evidence also suggests that armed citizens are very
responsible in using guns to defend themselves.  Florida State
University criminologist Gary Kleck, using surveys and other
data, has determined that armed citizens defend their lives or
property with firearms against criminals approximately 1 million
times a year.  In 98 percent of these instances, the citizen
merely brandishes the weapon or fires a warning shot.  Only in 2
percent of the cases do citizens actually shoot their
assailants.  In defending themselves with their firearms, armed
citizens kill 2,000 to 3,000 criminals each year, three times
the number killed by the police.  A nationwide study by Kates,
the constitutional lawyer and criminologist, found that only 2
percent of civilian shootings involved an innocent person
mistakenly identified as a criminal.  The "error rate" for the
police, however, was 11 percent, over five times as high.

   It is simply not possible to square the numbers above and the
experience of Florida with the notions that honest, law-abiding
gun owners are borderline psychopaths itching for an excuse to
shoot someone, vigilantes eager to seek out and summarily
execute the lawless, or incompetent fools incapable of
determining when it is proper to use lethal force in defense of
their lives.  Nor upon reflection should these results seem
surprising.  Rape, robbery, and attempted murder are not
typically actions rife with ambiguity or subtlety, requiring
special powers of observation and great book-learning to
discern.  When a man pulls a knife on a woman and says, "You're
coming with me," her judgment that a crime is being committed is
not likely to be in error.  There is little chance that she is
going to shoot the wrong person.  It is the police, because they
are rarely at the scene of the crime when it occurs, who are
more likely to find themselves in circumstances where guilt and
innocence are not so clear-cut, and in which the probability for
mistakes is higher.


                         Arms and liberty

   Classical republican philosophy has long recognized the
critical relationship between personal liberty and the
possession of arms by a people ready and willing to use them. 
Political theorists as dissimilar as Niccolo Machiavelli, Sir
Thomas More, James Harrington, Algernon Sidney, John Locke, and
Jean-Jacques Rousseau all shared the view that the possession of
arms is vital for resisting tyranny, and that to be disarmed by
one's government is tantamount to being enslaved by it.  The
possession of arms by the people is the ultimate warrant that
government governs only with the consent of the governed.  As
Kates has shown, the Second Amendment is as much a product of
this political philosophy as it is of the American experience in
the Revolutionary War.  Yet our conservative elite has abandoned
this aspect of republican theory.  Although our conservative
pundits recognize and embrace gun owners as allies in other
arenas, their battle for gun rights is desultory.  The problem
here is not a statist utopianism, although goodness knows that
liberals are not alone in the confidence they have in the
state's ability to solve society's problems.  Rather, the
problem seems to lie in certain cultural traits shared by our
conservative and liberal elites.

   One such trait is an abounding faith in the power of the word.
The failure of our conservative elite to defend the Second
Amendment stems in great measure from an overestimation of the
power of the rights set forth in the First Amendment, and a
general undervaluation of action.  Implicit in calls for the
repeal of the Second Amendment is the assumption that our First
Amendment rights are sufficient to preserve our liberty.  The
belief is that liberty can be preserved as long as men freely
speak their minds; that there is no tyranny or abuse that can
survive being exposed in the press; and that the truth need only
be disclosed for the culprits to be shamed.  The people will
act, and the truth shall set us, and keep us, free.

   History is not kind to this belief, tending rather to support
the view of Hobbes, Machiavelli, and other republican theorists
that only people willing and able to defend themselves can
preserve their liberties.  While it may be tempting and
comforting to believe that the existence of mass electronic
communication has forever altered the balance of power between
the state and its subjects, the belief has certainly not been
tested by time, and what little history there is in the age of
mass communication is not especially encouraging.  The camera,
radio, and press are mere tools and, like guns, can be used for
good or ill.  Hitler, after all, was a masterful orator, used
radio to very good effect, and is well known to have pioneered
and exploited the propaganda opportunities afforded by film. And
then, of course, there were the Brownshirts, who knew very well
how to quell dissent among intellectuals.


                          Polite society

   In addition to being enamored of the power of words, our
conservative elite shares with liberals the notion that an armed
society is just not civilized or progressive, that massive gun
ownership is a blot on our civilization.  This association of
personal disarmament with civilized behavior is one of the great
unexamined beliefs of our time.

   Should you read English literature from the sixteenth through
nineteenth centuries, you will discover numerous references to
the fact that a gentleman, especially when out at night or
traveling, armed himself with a sword or a pistol against the
chance of encountering a highwayman or other such predator. This
does not appear to have shocked the ladies accompanying him. 
True, for the most part there were no police in those days, but
we have already addressed the notion that the presence of the
police absolves people of the responsibility to look after their
safety, and in any event the existence of the police cannot be
said to have reduced crime to negligible levels.

   It is by no means obvious why it is "civilized" to permit
oneself to fall easy prey to criminal violence, and to permit
criminals to continue unobstructed in their evil ways.  While it
may be that a society in which crime is so rare that no one ever
needs to carry a weapon is "civilized," a society that
stigmatizes the carrying of weapons by the law-abiding --
because it distrusts its citizens more than it fears rapists,
robbers, and murderers -- certainly cannot claim this
distinction.  Perhaps the notion that defending oneself with
lethal force is not "civilized" arises from the view that
violence is always wrong, or the view that each human being is
of such intrinsic worth that it is wrong to kill anyone under any
circumstances. The necessary implication of these propositions,
however, is that life is not worth defending.  Far from being
"civilized," the beliefs that counterviolence and killing are
always wrong are an invitation to the spread of barbarism.  Such
beliefs announce loudly and clearly that those who do not
respect the lives and property of others will rule over those
who do.

   In truth, one who believes it wrong to arm himself against
criminal violence shows contempt of God's gift of life (or, in
modern parlance, does not properly value himself), does not live
up to his responsibilities to his family and community, and
proclaims himself mentally and morally deficient, because he
does not trust himself to behave responsibly.  In truth, a state
that deprives its law-abiding citizens of the means to
effectively defend themselves is not civilized but barbarous,
becoming an accomplice of murderers, rapists, and thugs and
revealing its totalitarian nature by its tacit admission that
the disorganized, random havoc created by criminals is far less
a threat than are men and women who believe themselves free and
independent, and act accordingly.

   While gun control proponents and other advocates of a kinder,
gentler society incessantly decry our "armed society," in truth
we do not live in an armed society.  We live in a society in
which violent criminals and agents of the state habitually carry
weapons, and in which many law-abiding citizens own firearms but
do not go about armed.  Department of Justice statistics
indicate that 87 percent of all violent crimes occur outside the
home.  Essentially, although tens of millions own firearms, we
are an unarmed society.


                        Take back the night

   Clearly the police and the courts are not providing a
significant brake on criminal activity.  While liberals call for
more poverty, education, and drug treatment programs,
conservatives take a more direct tack.  George Will advocates a
massive increase in the number of police and a shift toward
"community-based policing."  Meanwhile, the NRA and many
conservative leaders call for laws that would require violent
criminals serve at least 85 percent of their sentences and would
place repeat offenders permanently behind bars.

   Our society suffers greatly from the beliefs that only
official action is legitimate and that the state is the source
of our earthly salvation.  Both liberal and conservative
prescriptions for violent crime suffer from the "not in my job
description" school of thought regarding the responsibilities of
the law-abiding citizen, and from an overestimation of the
ability of the state to provide society's moral moorings.  As
long as law-abiding citizens assume no personal responsibility
for combatting crime, liberal and conservative programs will
fail to contain it.

   Judging by the numerous articles about concealed-carry in gun
magazines, the growing number of products advertised for such
purpose, and the increase in the number of concealed-carry
applications in states with mandatory-issuance laws, more and
more people, including growing numbers of women, are carrying
firearms for self-defense.  Since there are still many states in
which the issuance of permits is discretionary and in which law
enforcement officials routinely deny applications, many people
have been put to the hard choice between protecting their lives
or respecting the law.  Some of these people have learned the
hard way, by being the victim of a crime, or by seeing a friend
or loved one raped, robbed, or murdered, that violent crime can
happen to anyone, anywhere at anytime, and that crime is not
about sex or property but life, liberty, and dignity.

   The laws proscribing concealed-carry of firearms by honest,
law-abiding citizens breed nothing but disrespect for the law. 
As the Founding Fathers knew well, a government that does not
trust its honest, law-abiding, taxpaying citizens with the means
of self-defense is not itself worthy of trust.  Laws disarming
honest citizens proclaim that the government is the master, not
the servant, of the people.  A federal law along the lines of
the Florida statute -- overriding all contradictory state and
local laws and acknowledging that the carrying of firearms by
law-abiding citizens is a privilege and immunity of citizenship
-- is needed to correct the outrageous conduct of state and
local officials operating under discretionary licensing systems.

   What we certainly do not need is more gun control.  Those who
call for the repeal of the Second Amendment so that we can
really begin controlling firearms betray a serious
misunderstanding of the Bill of Rights.  The Bill of Rights does
not grant rights to the people, such that its repeal would
legitimately confer upon government the powers otherwise
proscribed.  The Bill of Rights is the list of the fundamental,
inalienable rights, endowed in man by his Creator, that define
what it means to be a free and independent people, the rights
which must exist to ensure that government governs only with the
consent of the people.

   At one time this was even understood by the Supreme Court. 
In United States v. Cruikshank (1876), the first case in which
the Court had an opportunity to interpret the Second Amendment,
it stated that the right confirmed by the Second Amendment "is
not a right granted by the constitution.  Neither is it in any
manner dependent upon that instrument for its existence."  The
repeal of the Second Amendment would no more render the
outlawing of firearms legitimate than the repeal of the due
process clause of the Fifth Amendment would authorize the
government to imprison and kill people at will.  A government
that abrogates any of the Bill of Rights, with or without
majoritarian approval, forever acts illegitimately, becomes
tyrannical, and loses the moral right to govern.

   This is the uncompromising understanding reflected in the
warning that America's gun owners will not go gently into that
good, utopian night: "You can have my gun when you pry it from
my cold, dead hands." While liberals take this statement as
evidence of the retrograde, violent nature of gun owners, we gun
owners hope that liberals hold equally strong sentiments about
their printing presses, word processors, and television
cameras.  The republic depends upon fervent devotion to all our
fundamental rights.

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