Self-Defense Against the State

by Dr. Gerard Emershaw

On May 11, 2014, Charles “Chuck” Dinwiddie, an 18-year member of the Killeen Police Department in Texas and 15-year SWAT Team veteran, died from injuries received in the line of duty. In the early morning hours of May 9, 2014, members of the Killeen Police Department Tactical Response Unit and the Bell County Organized Crime Unit attempted to serve a narcotics search warrant. When the members of this team were breaching a window into the house, a 49-year-old male occupant of the house opened fire, striking four officers. Two officers received only minor injuries, Officer Otis Denson was struck in the femur and required surgery. Officer Dinwiddie received a critical wound to his face and later died.

The man who shot and killed Officer Dinwiddie was Marvin Louis Guy. Guy had been arrested in 2011 for assaulting a family member. He pleaded guilty and served 40 days in jail in 2012. Guy had no police record for drug offenses. The Killeen Police Department were executing a no-knock warrant based on the information of an informant who claimed to have seen bags of cocaine transported to Guy’s house. The Killeen Police found no cocaine or any other narcotics in the Guy residence. They recovered a glass pipe, a grinder, and a safe. While perhaps this is evidence of drug use, it is hardly a sign that Guy was a dangerous drug kingpin. Prosecutors are seeking the death penalty against Guy.

Officer Chuck Dinwiddie bravely served and protected his community, and he died in the course of doing his duty. But consider this from the point of view of the middle-aged African-American Marvin Louis Guy. At 5:30 am, he is awakened by loud sounds. He witnesses what appears to be a home invasion. His significant other is in the house, and he wishes to defend her and himself against these intruders. There are no drugs or any other contraband in the house. Perhaps Guy has used cocaine in the past, but why would a petty drug user with one small criminal offense years earlier expect a SWAT Team to bust into his house to execute a simple search warrant? It is not like the Killeen Police knocked on his door and presented their badges and a search warrant. Simply stated, how could Guy possibly know these were police officers and not home intruders? If he had assumed that anyone breaking into his house with guns before dawn were police officers and they turned out to be criminals and not officers of the law, would it have been exemplary of Guy to forfeit his life and not defend himself? Could one not argue that the Killeen Police were reckless and unnecessarily put Officer Dinwiddie in a position where he might be harmed? Could it not also be argued that the Killeen Police Department is just as responsible for Officer Dinwiddie’s death as Marvin Louis Guy was?

Human beings have natural unalienable rights to life, liberty, and property. These natural rights entail that human beings have the right to self-defense, and this includes the right to bear arms. Marvin Louis Guy had the right to defend his life, the life of his significant other, his liberty, and his home. Given that the apparent home invaders were well-armed with guns, Guy had a prima facie right to employ deadly force in self-defense.

Officer Chuck Dinwiddie and his companions were officers of the law executing their official duties. Of course, one cannot be permitted by law to engage in gun fights with officers of the law just because these officers are armed and could potentially pose a significant danger to a suspected criminal. However, the Killeen Police were not acting as officers of the law. In not identifying themselves, they were essentially going rogue. In the case of a building controlled by known members of a violent drug cartel, perhaps a no-knock warrant is appropriate. Perhaps. But in the case of someone like Marvin Louis Guy, a no-knock warrant is totally inappropriate. No-knock warrants in almost all—and perhaps in all—instances are nothing but totalitarian heavy-handed tactics more appropriate to the Gestapo than American police.

Marvin Louis Guy does not deserve to die for killing Officer Chuck Dinwiddie. In fact, he should not even be charged with a crime. He killed in self-defense, exercising his natural right. Even if he had been using cocaine, human beings also possess the natural right to liberty which includes the right to ingest any substance that does not directly harm anyone else—e.g. any substance other than highly radioactive material, explosive devices, contagions, etc. The true murderer here is the unjust and unconstitutional War on Drugs that causes police to act like soldiers storming American homes like they are GIs storming German bunkers on Normandy Beach. It is the War on Drugs and drug prohibition in general which should face the death penalty. Not a man exercising his right to self-defense.   

(For a much more detailed discussion of natural right to self-defense as well as the immorality of the War on Drugs, read my new book The Real Culture War: Individualism vs. Collectivism & How Bill O’Reilly Got It All Wrong. Available now on Amazon in both print and Kindle.)

The Brady Bill Was Unnecessary

by Dr. Gerard Emershaw

Ronald Reagan’s former Press Secretary James Brady has died. Brady was, of course, most famous for taking up the cause of handgun control after he was shot by John Hinckley, Jr. during the attempted assassination of President Ronald Reagan on March 30, 1981. The attack, in which President Reagan and police officer Thomas Delahanty were also shot, left Brady partially paralyzed. The efforts of James Brady and his wife Sarah ultimately led to Congress passing the Brady Handgun Prevention Act in 1994. The law prevented convicted felons, fugitives from justice, unlawful drug users or addicts, those judged mentally defective or committed to a mental institution, illegal aliens, those with dishonorable discharges from the United States military, those who have renounced United States citizenship, those under restraining order, and those convicted of domestic violence misdemeanors from possessing a firearm.

The attempted assassination of President Reagan led to the right blaming the First Amendment and the left blaming the Second Amendment. John Hinckley, Jr. was obsessed with actress Jodie Foster and the movie Taxi Driver. Taxi Driver, a 1976 Martin Scorsese movie, starred Robert De Niro as a depressed New York City cab driver who plans to assassinate a presidential candidate but winds up saving a teenaged prostitute played by Jodie Foster. Hinckley sought to assassinate the President so that he could impress Foster. Events such as this always invariably lead to discussions that movies need to be censored and guns need to be banned. However, the truth of the matter is that neither proposition is true. The attempted assassination of President Reagan should never have occurred. James Brady should never have been so grievously wounded. Furthermore, had the Brady Act been in place in 1980, it would not have prevented the attack.

John Hinckley, Jr. was not a convicted felon, a fugitive, a drug addict, an illegal alien, or a dishonorably discharged former service member. He had not renounced his American citizenship, been under a restraining order, or ever been convicted of domestic abuse. While Hinckley had been treated for depression and was taking medication, he had never been institutionalized. The Röhm RG-14 revolver which Hinckley used had been purchased at a pawn shop, but he could have legally bought it then or now.

What would have prevented the attempted assassination of President Reagan was common sense. On October 9, 1980, Hinckley was arrested in Nashville, Tennessee on weapons charges when he attempted to sneak three guns in his suitcase at Nashville International Airport in order to board a flight to New York City with them. Hinckley was released after paying a fine of $62.50.

Law enforcement and intelligence agencies have never shown much respect for the Fourth Amendment. The NSA actions that have been revealed by Edward Snowden over the last year are more than enough proof of that. Things were not much different in the early 1980s. The NSA had not long before established Minaret, an illegal watchlist of American telegraphs and telephone calls made between 1967 and 1973. Nixon had used this information to help formulate his “enemies list” only a few years prior to the attempt on President Reagan’s life. Similarly, the FBI had engaged in COINTELPRO (Counterintelligence Program) from at least 1956 to 1971. The methods of COINTELPRO went beyond the legal procedures ordinarily employed by the FBI in fighting crime and transformed into the brutal and extralegal methods common among criminal regimes. COINTELPRO infiltrated organizations in order to disrupt and discredit them. It spread disinformation about groups through bogus publications attributed to activist groups, anonymous letters, anonymous phone calls, and set up counterfeit activist organizations run by government agents in order to spread further disinformation. Even more egregiously, COINTELPRO made activists appear to be criminals through illegal surveillance, fabricated evidence, perjured testimony, and the discriminatory and capricious use of the law against its targets. Most alarming was a pattern of break-ins, vandalism, and assaults carried out by the police and FBI in order to terrify and disrupt activist groups. The strange thing is that while federal law enforcement and intelligence agencies had no qualms about violating the Constitution to attack the American people, they were not so inclined to use their powers under the Constitution to defend the people.

Having arrested John Hinckley, Jr. attempting to sneak concealed weapons through an airport onto a flight bound for New York City, local law enforcement informed the FBI, which showed little interest and told Nashville police to handle it locally. The fact that Hinckley was arrested with illegal concealed weapons that he was attempting to take across state lines provided ample probable cause to search his home and dig deeper. Had law enforcement obtained a search warrant for Hinckley’s home, they would have likely learned of his obsession with Jodie Foster. They may have also learned that the purpose of his visit to Nashville was that he was stalking President Jimmy Carter, whom he was planning to assassinate. President Carter had been in Nashville that day, but he left town before Hinckley could get a shot at him.

So often, the government fails in its job of protecting the life, liberty, and property of its citizens. And when it fails, it often reacts by instituting laws and policies which violate the natural rights of individuals. When the FBI failed to protect President Reagan, the Congress violated the Second Amendment natural right to bear arms of citizens by passing the Brady Bill. When multiple federal agencies failed to thwart the 9/11 attacks, Congress passed the Constitution-shredding PATRIOT Act. Future government failures are likely to lead to more laws which violate the Constitution without making the country any safer. Unfortunately, there is little indication that the government or the people have learned any lessons from such unnecessary tragedies.

Psychiatry and Social Control

by Gerard Emershaw

The FDA is currently weighing whether to ban “electrical stimulation devices” used by mental health professionals to modify aggressive or self-injurious behavior in patients suffering from severe emotional problems or developmental disorders such as autism. Critics of these devices have compared them with shock collars used on dogs. The devices are applied to the arms or legs and deliver a two-second shock that has been compared to a “hard pinch.” These devices are rarely used, but they have been widely employed at the Judge Rotenberg Educational Center in Canton, Massachusetts—a residential facility which treats children and adults with severe developmental disabilities. Former Rotenberg students have likened this “aversion therapy” to “torture, in the plainest sense of the word.” One former student said it feels “like a thousand bees stinging you in the same place for a few seconds.” Rotenberg students have claimed that these devices have burned them and caused them to feel anxiety, fear, and depression and that the devices were employed to give shocks “for things like noncompliance with staff direction, talking too much and being disruptive in class.”

The most troubling thing here is the very idea that punishment someone constitutes therapeutic treatment. Punishment is meant to do harm, so how can such practitioners honor the Hippocratic Oath? Forms of aversion therapy have been employed in the past in the dubious effort to treat homosexuals. Such treatment will forever be associated with the Kubrick film A Clockwork Orange based upon the Anthony Burgess novel. The iconic image of Malcolm McDowell’s Alex being forced to look at violent images while being sickened by drugs and forced to listen to his beloved Beethoven will forever be burned into the public consciousness.

Psychiatry seems to be alarmingly becoming more a tool of social control than a therapeutic discipline. Psychiatry was widely abused in the Soviet Union and used as a means of stifling dissent. Political dissent was defined arbitrarily as a form of mental illness and treated as such. As the United States becomes increasingly authoritarian, it is alarming to see how the psychiatric profession is becoming more like that of Soviet psychiatry.

An astounding 19% of American boys between the ages of 14–17 have been diagnosed with Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD), and about 10% are taking medications such as Ritalin for it. Ten percent of high school girls have been likewise diagnosed. Between 2007–2012 sales of stimulants such as Ritalin to treat ADHD have more than doubled from $4 billion to $9 billion. At some point, the public education system transformed overly energetic and fidgety students into mentally ill patients. If students are not “normal”—e.g. they will not sit quietly and do exactly as they are told—then they are sick and need to be medicated. There is no telling what effect generations of Ritalin zombies will have as they enter adulthood in greater numbers. Judging by the increasingly poor academic performance of American public school students, this treatment of ADHD as if it is an epidemic has not been particularly helpful.

A symbol of American psychiatry’s move away from medicine and toward political control can be seen in the disorder Oppositional Defiant Disorder (ODD). ODD is a personality disorder defined by a persistent and disruptive pattern of  negativity, hostility, disobedience, and hostility by children toward adult authority figures. What is even more troubling is that there is some movement within the psychiatric establishment to characterize ODD as an adult affliction as well as a childhood personality disorder. If Adult ODD manages to gain acceptance as a legitimate disorder, it will only be a matter of time before it is used in Soviet-fashion to label dissidents, protesters, and government critics as mentally ill. One wonders what forms of psychiatric medications or “aversion therapy” might be used upon such individuals.

The Department of Homeland Security seems intent on categorizing difficult school students not just as mentally ill, but as terrorists. On April 15, 2014, Lisa O. Monaco, Assistant to the President for Homeland Security and Counterterrorism, delivered a speech entitled “Countering Violent Extremism and the Power of Community” at the Harvard Kennedy School Forum. Ms. Monaco spoke of American youth as if they were a gang of ticking time bombs or Al Qaeda sleeper agents. She claimed that 80% of cases involving “homegrown violent extremists” involved “warning signs” that had been observed by members of the community. These “warning signs” were allegedly subtle:

What kinds of behaviors are we talking about? For the most part, they’re not related directly to plotting attacks. They’re more subtle. For instance, parents might see sudden personality changes in their children at home—becoming confrontational. Religious leaders might notice unexpected clashes over ideological differences. Teachers might hear a student expressing an interest in traveling to a conflict zone overseas. Or friends might notice a new interest in watching or sharing violent material.

Despite the best unconstitutional efforts of the NSA, FBI, and CIA:

The government is rarely in a position to observe these early signals, so we need to do more to help communities understand the warning signs, and then work together to intervene before an incident can occur, while always respecting our core commitment to protecting privacy and civil liberties. During the past several years, that’s what we’ve attempted to do.

So, the government not only may wishes to declare difficult adolescents mentally ill, but now it wishes to suggest that moody teens may be future bin Ladens.

Ultimately, the more Americans that the federal government can stigmatize as being “mentally ill,” the more Americans whose rights it can take away. The government will attempt to violate rights such as the Second Amendment right to bear arms from such individuals. It will not be a shock if one day the growing numbers of American students diagnosed with ADHD will be placed on lists which prohibits them from legally owning firearms. When any part of the medical profession is coming so perilously close to becoming a cadre of social engineers instead of a community of healers, it is time for conscientious practitioners to champion reforms to get the field back on track. Such reform in the psychiatric profession is long overdue.

New Constitution?

by Gerard Emershaw

“You say you'll change the constitution
Well, you know
We all want to change your head”

Lennon/McCartney

“I'll tip my hat to the new constitution
Take a bow for the new revolution
Smile and grin at the change all around”

Townshend

Retired Supreme Court Justice John Paul Stevens wants to amend the Constitution. Among the tweaks to “the law of the land” that the elderly jurist wishes to make are major changes to the First and Second amendments. In his latest book Six Amendments: How and Why We Should Change the Constitution, Justice Stevens argues for the following amendments to the Constitution. He wants the First Amendment to remove protection against “reasonable” campaign spending limits at both the federal and state levels. He wants the Second Amendment to be rewritten to state that only members of the state militia have the right to bear arms. He wants an amendment to prohibit political gerrymandering to create “safe” Congressional seats. He wants to eliminate the anti-commandeering rule by which the federal government may not force the states to carry out federal government activities. He wants to eliminate sovereign immunity for violations of constitutional rights. He wants to amend the Eighth Amendment to state that the death penalty is “cruel and unusual punishment.”

In general, Justice Stevens’ suggestions would lead to fewer rather than greater rights. Americans would have their natural rights greatly diminished by his suggested changes to the First and Second Amendments. Campaign finance contribution limits are unnecessary and violate the natural right to free speech. The natural right to bear arms is a necessary safeguard against tyranny which cannot be infringed without inviting inevitable totalitarianism. States would come dangerously close to becoming slaves of the federal government if the anti-commandeering rule were eliminated. Eliminating sovereign immunity is a good idea, but it ought to be unnecessary since that concept is not enumerated within the Constitution. Limiting the use of political gerrymandering would be a good idea, but certainly not at the cost of the other rights that Justice Stevens wishes to eliminate. Furthermore, a Constitution-sized government is one in which political parties would have less reason to gerrymander, and the gerrymandering they did do would have less of a practical effect. Stevens is also likely correct about wishing for Eighth Amendment clarification. The government should not have more rights than the people. If a citizen can only kill in the defense of self or others from imminent harm, then the same is true of the government. Therefore, capital punishment should be eliminated.

Many individuals all over the political spectrum have suggested that the United States ought to have a new Constitutional Convention. The question is whether this would be an improvement. Would this be likely to lead to more rights being protected or fewer? Activists of all stripes would bitterly contest one another in the crafting of a new constitution. Would civil libertarians be able to win the day or would statists? Any compromise concerning natural rights is unacceptable. If civil libertarians wish Americans to be completely free while statists wish Americans to be complete slaves of the state, how would a compromise in which Americans wind up being merely half enslaved by the state be a positive outcome? The major political machines of both party have become hopelessly statist. On the Democratic Party side, the Blue Dogs and fiscal conservatives—of which the unfairly economically maligned Presidents Carter and Clinton were good exemplars—are gone. Neo-progressives rule the party roost. These Wilsonians are the architects of the Nanny state, fascistic wars of aggression, the Social Security Ponzi scheme, and Obamacare. These are the individuals who champion FDR’s collectivist “Second Bill of Rights.” On the Republican side, true conservatives have long been dominated by progressive RINOs and Trotskyite warmongering neoconservatives who care not about deficits or sane fiscal policy as long as the military-industrial complex, oil companies, and U.S.-friendly Middle East governments benefit. Is there any doubt that if these two nasty political machines began compromising, the only true losers would be the American people?

Even if the Constitution were changed to fit the will of the people, it is not clear that natural rights would not be lost. A poll taken in 2000 found that only about half of the American public would vote for the United States Constitution. A 2013 poll found that 34% of Americans believe that the First Amendment goes too far in guaranteeing freedom. According to Gallup, nearly half of all Americans believe that gun control laws should be more strict than they are now.

A new Constitution would inevitably wind up being a legal version of New Coke. What is the point of that when the United States Constitution is Classic Coke? The problem with the Constitution is that it is being obeyed less and less by the government. Time and again, when there is a problem, it is not due to a deficiency in the document but a deficiency in the government’s willingness to be bound by the document. What is the point of either a New Constitution or the current Constitution if the government refuses to obey it?

The true answer is for the American people to hold their elected leaders accountable. The voters must hold their elected representatives’ feet to the fire. Primary them and vote them out if they do not obey the Constitution. Deny support to candidates and political parties which are not true to the letter and spirit of the Constitution. The problem is with our elected officials and with us for putting up with them. There is no significant problem with the Constitution.

NY SAFE Act Makes Second Amendment Less Safe

by Gerard Emershaw

Last week more than 1,000 people protested the SAFE Act outside New York’s capital in Albany. The New York gun control law was passed over a year ago, but an upcoming deadline by which New Yorkers must register their assault weapons has created renewed fury on the part of the Empire State’s gun owners.

The SAFE Act—The New York Secure Ammunition and Firearms Enforcement Act of 2013—contains a number of important provisions:

• It bans “high capacity magazines” of over ten rounds
• It requires that ammunition dealers perform background checks
• It creates a mandatory registry of New Yorkers who own assault weapons
• It requires that mental health professionals who believe a mental health patient made a credible threat of harming others report the threat to a mental health director, who would then have to report serious threats to the state Department of Criminal Justice Service
• It makes it a crime not to report a stolen gun within 24 hours
• It requires a background check for all gun sales except to immediate family
• It mandates that guns be “safely stored” from any household member who has been convicted of a felony or domestic violence crime, has been involuntarily committed, or is currently under an order of protection
• It bans all internet gun sales in the state
• It requires New York gun owners to renew their permits every five years
• It allows law enforcement officials to preemptively seize one's firearms without a warrant or court order when there is probable cause the individual is mentally unstable or intends to use the weapons to commit a crime

I have previously made an absolutist defense of the Second Amendment, and these considerations still hold true. The fact that the Supreme Court has ever allowed the federal, state, or local governments to infringe the Second Amendment rights of Americans either means that they cannot read or that they have the hubris to think that they know better about what the Founding Fathers meant than the Founding Fathers did. It does not get much clearer than “the right of the people to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed.”

Banning “high capacity magazines” is clearly just an attempt to create an eventual slippery that will eventually lead to more bans on guns. What is so magic about ten rounds? Would it be so difficult for a mass shooter like Adam Lanza to carry three 10 round clips instead of one 30 clip? Is changing gun cartridges that difficult? Does the New York state legislature and Governor believe that the lives of the first ten would be victims do not matter? It seems that it should be all or nothing in this matter, and for the SAFE Act advocates, it is all or nothing. They want to ban all guns, but they are doing it in a gradualist fashion. Originally the SAFE Act made the limit 7 rounds, but that was struck down in court. Eventually, if gun control advocates get their way, the limit will be a zero round magazine.

Laws like the SAFE Act create solutions in search of a problem. Mass shootings in the United States are not on the rise. The total has held steady for the last 20 years. The 24/7 cable news culture and internet makes coverage of tragic crimes like Sandy Hook omnipresent, and this creates the illusion that such crimes are increasing. Enhanced background checks will likely not prevent such crimes. An examination of 93 mass shootings from 2009 through September 2013, conducted by Mayors Against Illegal Guns, found no indication that any of the perpetrators were prohibited by federal law from possessing firearms.

The New York requirement that assault rifles be registered is clearly nothing but a way for the government to invade the privacy of its citizens and be able to single out gun owners in the state for potential future persecution. There is no reason why the government needs to know who owns an assault rifle. In 2010, there were only 358 murders carried out in the United States using a rifle of any kind. Twice as many were carried out by hands, fists, or feet. Assault weapons are simply not used in very many crimes. Therefore, it must be that the gun grabbers in New York are after something else.

One possibility is that they know that many will not register their assault weapons with the state, and thus, the New York government can magically turn law abiding New York gun owners into criminals through the use of this unconstitutional law. A similar law in Connecticut was ignored by scores of gun owners in that state, and there is little reason to believe that the same will not be true in New York. This will give the New York government ample reason to begin a witch hunt of gun registry evaders. It will allow it to use the SAFE Act’s unconstitutional gun grabbing provision to grab unregistered assault weapons without a warrant.

Background checks and government gun registries of any kind egregiously violate the Second Amendment. Self-defense—particularly against a tyrannical government—is a natural right of human beings. Laws such as the SAFE Act make Americans less safe by eroding the protection of that natural right. Such gun control measures are part of a death by one thousand cuts strategy by which guns will gradually be outlawed. Such a strategy must be opposed from the very beginning.

Piers Morgan’s Final Shot

by Gerard Emershaw

Like General Cornwallis thumbing his nose at the newly formed United States on his way back to Mother England after surrendering, fired CNN host Piers Morgan has taken one final shot at the American people on his way out the door of CNN studios. In his final episode, which aired on Friday March, 28, 2014, Morgan said:

But that’s where guns belong—on a military battlefield, in the hands of highly trained men and women fighting for democracy and freedom. Not in the hands of civilians. The scourge of gun violence is a disease that now infects every aspect of American life. Each day, on average, 35 people in this country are murdered with guns, another 50 kill themselves with guns, and 200 more are shot but survive. That’s 100,000 people a year hit by gunfire in America.

Now, I assumed that after 70 people were shot in a movie theater, and then, just a few months later, 20 first-graders were murdered with an assault rifle in an elementary school, the absurd gun laws in this country would change. But nothing has happened. The gun lobby in America, led by the NRA, has bullied this nation’s politicians into cowardly, supine silence. Even when 20 young children are blown away in their classrooms.

This is a shameful situation that has made me very angry. So angry, in fact, that some people have criticized me for being too loud, opinionated, even rude when I have debated the issue of guns. But I make no apologies for that.

As Sir Winston Churchill said: “If you have an important point to make, don’t try to be subtle or clever. Use a pile driver. Hit the point once. Then come back and hit it again. Then hit it a third time – a tremendous whack.”

My point is simple: more guns doesn’t mean less crime as the NRA repeatedly says. It means more gun violence, death and profits for the gun manufacturers. And to those who claim my gun control campaigning has been “anti-American”, the reverse is true. I am so pro-American that I want more of you to stay alive.

But I’ve made my point. I’ve given it a tremendous whack. Now it’s down to you. It’s your country; these are your gun laws. And the senseless slaughter will only end when enough Americans stand together and cry: Enough!

Piers Morgan hates the natural right to liberty in general and the right to bear arms in particular. He has the right to think these things and the right to state his beliefs. He also has the right to be wrongheaded, which he most certainly is in this situation. The most important thing to focus on is Morgan’s claim that guns belong “in the hands of highly trained men and women fighting for democracy and freedom” and “[n]ot in the hands of civilians.” One could not possibly be more wrong about anything than he is wrong about this. Given that Mr. Morgan is a British subject, let us consider some examples from British history which demonstrate why the citizenry must have the right to be armed in order to prevent government tyranny. Mr. Morgan likely believes that his fellow countrymen are the most civilized human beings on the planet. Such chauvinism is natural. If so, then if civilized Brits in government can be dangerous despots, then this is certainly true of any government—including the United States government.

On April 23, 1930, British soldiers fired machine guns into a crowd of peaceful protesters at Qissa Khwani Bazaar in Peshawar, India. This resulted in the deaths of as many as 400 unarmed civilians.

On December 12, 1948, British troops in Malaya near Batang Kali killed 24 unarmed villagers.

In June 1953, 20 unarmed people were killed by British soldiers in Chuka, Kenya.

On March 3, 1959, 11 Kenyan detainees at the Hola British concentration camp were clubbed to death by British soldiers.

On January 30, 1972, in the Bogside area of Derry, Northern Ireleand, British soldiers shot 26 unarmed Irish civil rights protesters and bystanders, killing 14.

If the civilized British government is so willing to fire upon unarmed civilians, then it is clear that British subjects need to be armed in order to deter such potential murderous tyranny. If this is true of the British government, then it is also true of the American government—or any government. Human beings are human beings wherever you go. No humans wielding massive government power are immune to the lure of violent despotism.

Now that Mr. Morgan has some free time, perhaps he should spend the hour between 9:00 pm and 10:00 pm EST reading up on the blood history of his nation’s government. Maybe then he will begin to realize the necessity of the right to bear arms.