Some Dubious Explanations for America’s Mass Shooting “Epidemic”

Since the turn of the century, the United States has endured over thirty mass shootings. The inevitable question is “Why?” The suggested answers are typically so dubious that they are often no better than blaming the moon, yellow bile, or demons.

1. Mass shootings are the result of the secularization of America. God has been banished from public schools and the public square, and the Godless monsters that are produced do not know right from wrong and place no value on human life. (The Huckabee/O’Reilly “Traditional Christian Folks” Explanation)

While this explanation makes for some nice red meat for Christian fundamentalists and other “traditionalists,” it happens to be ridiculous. Unless one fails to let facts get in the way of a good argument, it is dubious. Alternet’s Amanda Marcotte has written a piece that ranks the eight best nations to be an atheist based upon factors such as having a high percentage of nonbelievers. These nations – ranked from highest to lowest on Marcotte’s scale – are: the Czech Republic, Sweden, Denmark, Austria, France, Norway, Australia, and Japan. If the explanation set forth by moral blowhards such as Mike Huckabee and Bill O’Reilly is plausible, then one would expect these nations of “secular-progressive” heathens to be places where mass shootings and other violent Godless atrocities occur on a regular basis.

Alas, the facts show that this is dubious. The Czech Republic, Sweden, Denmark, Austria, and Australia have had no mass shootings in the twenty-first century. Japan has had two, France has had three, and Norway has had one – the notorious Anders Behring Breivik who murdered 77 and injured 242 others in 2011. Of these five mass murderers, at least two were anything but secular. Breivik was an extremely religious Christian. French mass murderer Mohammed Merah was a devout Muslim who killed seven and injured eight in March of 2012.

These eight “heathen” nations have among the lowest homicide rates in the world – ranging from .3 per 100,000 to 1.7 per 100,000. These rates compare very favorably with the homicide rate of 4.2 per 100,000 of the United States. If secularism has not caused a rash of mass killings or homicides in general in these eight nations, then there is no reason to believe that the comparatively moderate level of secularism in the United States was a causal factor for mass killings and homicides.

2. Mass shootings are the result of the corrupt media with its violent video games, music videos, movies, and television shows. (The NRA “Let’s Find Another Scapegoat” Explanation)

High levels of exposure to violent movies, television shows, music videos, and video games clearly have an effect on people – particularly children. Studies have shown that such exposure creates both detrimental short-term and long-term effects. Dr. L. Rowe Huesmann of the University of Michigan claims that an analysis of studies demonstrates that exposure to violent media causes children to become more aggressive in both the short and long-term and that this effect is significant enough to be considered a public health threat. In the long-term, exposure to media violence can cause desensitization to violence, cause individuals to create cognitive “scripts” that encourage them to act violently like in the violent media they watch, and to seek out others who are similarly aggressive.

Violent video games – some of the most popular of which among young American gamers are ultraviolent and realistic “first person shooter games” – have also been shown to increase aggressiveness after exposure. Craig A. Anderson of the University of Iowa and his associates have conducted a meta-analytic review of the effects of video games on empathy and pro-social behavior in Eastern and Western countries. Among their most intriguing claims is that video game violence has different effects upon gamers in Western and Eastern cultures. They claim that “cultures characterized by collectivistic values, high moral discipline, a high level of egalitarian commitment, low uncertainty avoidance, and which emphasize values that are heavily Confucian showed lower levels of aggression than their counterparts.” Gamers in Eastern cultures such as Japan also favor different kinds of video games than their American counterparts. While Americans favor action and sports games, Japanese gamers prefer role-playing games that “often involve text reading, patience, and cooperative fights against computer-controlled characters.” The ways in which individuals in the West and individuals in the East interpret the world also greatly differs. Those in the East, for example, are more likely to pay attention to “situational contexts” in video games and other media. Based upon their meta-analysis, Anderson and his colleagues found that experimental evidence clearly shows that violent video game play is a causal factor in future aggressive behavior.

Truth be told, the idea that exposure to violent media is a causal factor in aggressive behavior is neither novel nor surprising. The important question is what this should mean for public policy. At this point, it is far too tempting to begin down the slippery slope of censorship. Parents have the right and responsibility to regulate what media their children consume. There is more than enough information available for parents to determine what media might not be appropriate for their children. Rather than creating a new scapegoat for violence in American society, parents simply need to more closely monitor what their children do. Nobody forces parents to allow their children to play violent video games. Furthermore, parents have the greatest influence on how their children develop during the formative years. If children are drawn to violent video games, perhaps that says more about the failure of parents to properly socialize their children than it does about the behavior of “corrupt” media corporations that are simply offering products that are apt to sell. While this may sound like an overly simplistic solution, it is nevertheless true. Freedom of expression can produce dangers, but censorship is far more dangerous.  

It must also be noted that aggressiveness in and of itself is not a bad thing. Aggressiveness can be channelled into violence, but likewise it can be channelled into positive activities like sport or work. 

The differences between the effects of video game violence on the Western individualist psyche and the Eastern collectivist psyche must also be placed into a broader context. The “Confucian” worldview does not make individuals in Eastern cultures immune to desensitization or violent cruelty. Lower levels of aggression did not prevent Tojo’s Japan from perpetuating atrocities upon China and Korea. This also did not prevent the cruelty of the Khmer Rouge in Cambodia or the Maoists in China. If anything, while an Eastern collectivist mindset can perhaps decrease short-term small scale aggression, it is obvious that it can lead to long-term large scale aggression directed by political leaders.

3. Mass shootings are the result of a failure of the mental health system and mental health laws. If rampage killers could be identified before they kill, then tragedies could be averted. Lax civil commitment laws prevent society from being able to intervene and help troubled individuals before it is too late. (The “Everyone Is Crazy and Should Be Placed in an Asylum except Me” Argument)

Whenever a tragedy like that in Newtown occurs, many grab their torches and pitchforks and look for a way to blame the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU). Shortly before the Newtown shootings, the ACLU successfully opposed a proposed “assisted outpatient treatment” law (AOT) in Connecticut. Such a law allows for the “mentally ill” to be institutionalized and medicated without having harmed themselves or others or having expressed an intent to do so. Connecticut is one of only six states not to have an AOT law on the books.

The now common notion of institutionalizing those who are considered a “threat to themselves or others” is pernicious. Psychiatrists are not akin to the “pre-cogs” of Minority Report and cannot predict what individuals will or will not become violent. Psychiatry is such an imprecise science that one should probably call it a “science” instead of a science. The American Psychiatric Association (APA) “creates” mental illnesses by simply establishing criteria for them in its Diagnostic and Statistical Manuals. In most cases the APA has no empirical evidence concerning what is or is not a “mental illness” and has no idea about what the physiological causes of such “diseases” are. One need only be reminded that homosexuals were once considered “mentally ill” and women were stigmatized by psychiatry as being “hysterical.” In many ways, psychiatry is to medicine what astrology is to astronomy.  

One need not be a radical Scientologist (or wet one's pants about Xenu) to understand the dangers of excessive power being given to the psychiatric expert class in taking away the liberty of those labeled “mentally ill.” The Soviets regularly abused psychiatry to label dissidents as “mentally ill” and to forcibly institutionalize them. Once inside mental institutions, dissidents were often subjected to torture of various kinds.

If one believes something like that could never happen here, consider the following. In August of 2012, former Marine Brandon J. Raub was kidnapped by police and committed temporarily to a mental hospital after he posted “anti-government” messages on FaceBook. Raub was held against his will in the “snakepit” for a week before a judge finally ordered him to be released. If this is a sign of things to come, be afraid. Be very afraid.

The APA has already made dissent against authority a “mental illness” for children by diagnosing such dissent as “oppositional defiant disorder” (ODD), which can be roughly defined as “a pattern of disobedient, hostile, and defiant behavior toward authority figures.” According to Johns Hopkins: “Oppositional defiant disorder (ODD) is a behavior disorder, usually diagnosed in childhood, that is characterized by uncooperative, defiant, negativistic, irritable, and annoying behaviors toward parents, peers, teachers, and other authority figures.” That is right. If you are an “annoying” child, you may be “mentally ill.” The APA offers the following criteria for this “mental illness.”

A pattern of negativistic, hostile, and defiant behavior lasting at least 6 months, during which four (or more) of the following are present: 

(1) often loses temper
(2) often argues with adults
(3) often actively defies or refuses to comply with adults' requests or rules
(4) often deliberately annoys people
(5) often blames others for his or her mistakes or misbehavior
(6) is often touchy or easily annoyed by others
(7) is often angry and resentful
(8) is often spiteful or vindictive
Note: Consider a criterion met only if the behavior occurs more frequently than is typically observed in individuals of comparable age and developmental level. 

If the danger of this is not already apparent, consider the following scenario. Jane is ten years old. Her parents are virulent anti-Semites. When her parents tell her to stay away from her Jewish playmates, she refuses. When her parents tell her to read Mein Kampf, she refuses. When her parents try to teach her about Nazi ideology and Aryan race theory, Jane often loses her temper and argues with them. She often annoys her family and their Neo-Nazi friends and becomes easily annoyed when they begin to blame Jews for all of the evils in the world. She often becomes angry and resentful when her parents tell her that the Holocaust is a hoax and that it did not really occur. Jane often becomes spiteful and vindictive when her parents do not allow her to play with her Jewish friends or do not allow her to see a movie with Jewish directors or actors, read a book by a Jewish author, or do anything that is not overtly anti-Semitic. Guess what. Jane is “mentally ill.” Jane has ODD. Psychiatrists may very well prescribe medications to treat Jane’s ODD. They may prescribe methylphenidate (Ritalin). Methylphenidate produces the following side effects.

·                     fast, pounding, or uneven heartbeats;

·                     feeling like you might pass out;

·                     fever, sore throat, and headache with a severe blistering, peeling, and red skin rash;

·                     aggression, restlessness, hallucinations, unusual behavior, or motor tics (muscle twitches);

·                     easy bruising, purple spots on your skin; or

·                     dangerously high blood pressure (severe headache, blurred vision, buzzing in your ears, anxiety, confusion, chest pain, shortness of breath, uneven heartbeats, seizure).

Less serious Ritalin side effects may include:

·                     stomach pain, nausea, vomiting, loss of appetite;

·                     vision problems, dizziness, mild headache;

·                     sweating, mild skin rash;

·                     numbness, tingling, or cold feeling in your hands or feet;

·                     nervous feeling, sleep problems (insomnia); or

·                     weight loss.

The psychiatrists may prescribe dextroamphetamine (Dexedrine). Dextroamphetamine produces the following side effects.

Get emergency medical help if you have any of these signs of an allergic reaction: hives; difficulty breathing; swelling of your face, lips, tongue, or throat.

Stop using this medication and call your doctor at once if you have a serious side effect such as:

·                     fast or pounding heartbeats;

·                     feeling light-headed, fainting;

·                     dangerously high blood pressure (severe headache, blurred vision, buzzing in your ears, anxiety, confusion, chest pain, shortness of breath, uneven heartbeats, seizure); or

·                     tremor, restlessness, hallucinations, unusual behavior, or motor tics (muscle twitches).

Less serious side effects may include:

·                     headache or dizziness;

·                     sleep problems (insomnia);

·                     dry mouth or an unpleasant taste in your mouth;

·                     diarrhea, constipation;

·                     loss of appetite, weight loss

The psychiatrists may also prescribe risperidone (Risperdal) to decrease Jane’s “disruptive behaviors.” Risperidone produces the following side effects.

Get emergency medical help if you have any of these signs of an allergic reaction while taking risperidone (the active ingredient contained in Risperdal) hives; difficulty breathing; swelling of your face, lips, tongue, or throat.

Stop taking risperidone and call your doctor at once if you have a serious side effect such as:

·                     fever, stiff muscles, confusion, sweating, fast or uneven heartbeats;

·                     restless muscle movements in your eyes, tongue, jaw, or neck;

·                     drooling, tremor (uncontrolled shaking);

·                     seizure (convulsions);

·                     fever, chills, body aches, flu symptoms;

·                     nosebleeds;

·                     white patches or sores inside your mouth or on your lips;

·                     trouble swallowing;

·                     feeling like you might pass out

Less serious side effects of risperidone may include:

·                     weight gain;

·                     feeling hot or cold;

·                     headache, dizziness;

·                     drowsiness, tired feeling;

·                     dry mouth, increased appetite;

·                     feeling restless or anxious;

·                     sleep problems (insomnia);

·                     nausea, vomiting, stomach pain, constipation;

·                     cough, sore throat, runny or stuffy nose; or

·                     mild skin rash.

Jane’s parents need not be anti-Semites. Alter the above scenario to make them racists, sexists, homophobes, etc. Nothing changes. In any of these cases, Jane is “mentally ill” and a candidate to be poisoned with psychiatric medications. 

Before long, the APA will undoubtedly create a new “mental illness” that is an adult version of ODD – just as it earlier created “antisocial personality disorder” as an adult analog of “conduct disorder.” Such a new “mental illness” would lead to those who resemble Thomas Jefferson, Gandhi, Martin Luther King, Jr., or Lucy Burns being diagnosed as “mentally ill.” 

In short, too many seek to scapegoat groups such as atheists, media corporations, or the “mentally ill” for mass murders instead of laying the blame on the mass murderers themselves.

An Absolutist Defense of the Second Amendment

“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.”

The Right to Bear Arms

Whenever innocents are massacred in a high profile incident like in Newtown, Connecticut, American natural rights come under scrutiny. It’s a natural and laudable human tendency to seek to protect innocent human beings from violence. However, blowhards immediately begin to pit one inalienable natural right against another as if human rights are somehow a zero sum game. Extremists on the left immediately begin to call for an end to private ownership of guns while extremists on the right immediately begin to call for the censorship of movies, television, and video games. More “moderate” voices begin to call for more invasion of privacy through more intrusive government background checks for gun ownership, government databases of gun owners, or for laws that can more easily lead to psychiatric civil commitment of those who have committed no crimes. When those who seek to preserve one natural right at the expense of another begin to battle in the public forum, the inevitable loser in the end is the people. Depending on which side sways the opinions of elected officials, some inalienable right is going to inevitably be alienated.

The nature of the Second Amendment as an individual rather than a collective right has previously been addressed, so the remainder of this essay will proceed with the assumption that the right to bear arms is an individual right.

The arguments used by the majority of Second Amendment advocates to defend the right to bear arms are often weak arguments that will inevitably lose in the court of public opinion. These arguments may be able to justify a small sliver of the right to bear arms, but they open up the door to a variety of regulations that will slowly erode the right until it is nonexistent.

1. Americans possess the right to bear arms for sporting purposes (e.g. hunting, target shooting)

While Americans do enjoy hunting, not as many Americans participate in the sport as many may believe. According to a study conducted by the United States Fish and Wildlife Service, 13.7 million Americans over the age of sixteen – 6% of the population – went hunting in 2011.  According to a 2010 survey conducted by the National Shooting Sports Foundation and Harris, 18.4 million Americans participated in handgun target shooting and 13.9 million Americans participated in rifle target shooting. Even if each of these sporting categories were mutually exclusive, that would only include 46 million Americans out of a total population of 314 million – 14.6% of the population. Given that many hunters hone their skills through target shooting, the total number of sport shooters is likely a good deal lower than that.

If Americans possess the right to bear arms only for sporting purposes, then many limitations can justifiably be imposed. First, the government could make the ownership of guns contingent on actually engaging in these activities. Second, the government could require that sporting guns be stored not in the homes of owners but in external government regulated facilities where they could only be “signed out” when a sportsman is about to engage in the sporting activity. Third, the government could limit the guns that may be owned to a small category of sporting guns.

2. Americans possess the right to bear arms to defend themselves and others against crime

According to the FBI, there were 1,134,527 violent crimes committed in the United States in 2011, including 12,664 homicides. It is obvious that local, state, and federal governments do not possess the ability to defend all citizens against violent crimes. While the local, state, and federal officers may be good at drawing chalk lines around homicide victims and may even be adequate when it comes to apprehending violent offenders, they cannot prevent all violent crime.

However, even with a right to defend against violent criminals, many limitations on gun rights may be justified such as strict background checks, government databases of gun owners, and limitations of the kinds of guns that individuals may possess. Low caliber guns could be deemed adequate for self defense. Furthermore, the number of guns that any individual is permitted to own could be limited.    

Furthermore, the government can further infringe upon the right to bear arms for defense against crime in creative ways. “Obamacare” has set the precedent that the government can force Americans to purchase what the government dictates. The government could use this to require that individuals purchase home security systems for their homes. The government could also waste money that it does not have at the local, state, and federal level to hire a new vast army of police officers. This would please public union officials as it would lead to more money being wasted on huge salaries and pensions for police officers. It would also please the federal government in allowing it to further militarize federal officers. Surely, if armed government officers were omnipresent, there would be little need for individuals to own guns to defend themselves. With the exception of rare events like the Fort Hood shooting, violent crimes rarely occur in areas where many armed government officers are present. Furthermore, in the Post-9/11 United States, the Fourth Amendment has been declawed. This along with increases in technology may eventually lead to a Minority Report nation where crimes can be stopped long before they are committed. With government mandated security systems in every home and a police state in place, surely the number of violent crimes would be diminished. When that happened, the Second Amendment could be declared a “dead letter” – an archaic remnant of a primitive and technologically deficient era.

3. Americans possess the right to bear arms in order to defend themselves and the nation from foreign invasion

When the United States was founded, Americans found themselves in a precarious position. The republic was militarily weak and in constant danger of being invaded by England or France. However, this is no longer the case. The United States military is by far the mightiest in the world. The United States currently spends 41% of all military spending in the world. A situation like that in the movie Red Dawn or its inferior remake – in which some foreign power successfully invades the United States – is just not a realistic fear.  

If the purpose of the Second Amendment is to provide individual and collective defense from foreign invaders, then it has indeed become irrelevant and unnecessary.

4. Americans possess the right to bear arms in order to defend themselves and the nation against government tyranny

The Declaration of Independence was an embodiment of the Lockean expression of the idea that human beings possess the natural right to dissolve a tyrannical government.

We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness. — That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed, — That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness.

The American Colonists only declared their independence when the long list of tyrannies detailed in the Declaration of Independence had led to oppression. Without the natural right to dissolve tyrannical governments, human beings would be slaves to despots and “might makes right” would be the order of the day in terms of political theory.

Had the American Colonists not exercised their right to bear arms, the American Revolution would have been impossible. While other British colonies later gained their independence without a revolution, there is no guarantee that this would have occurred had it not been for the success of the American Revolution. The British Empire committed countless atrocities upon the subjects living in its colonies including the Qissa Khwani Bazaar massacre where hundreds of unarmed Indian protestors were gunned down. If the British Empire had not been so ravaged by World War II, it may never have granted independence to the bulk of its colonial possessions. Furthermore, armed resistance to the British Empire was present in many colonies including India and Palestine.

Congressman Ron Paul has argued in support of the Second Amendment along these lines.

The gun control debate generally ignores the historical and philosophical underpinnings of the Second amendment. The Second amendment is not about hunting deer or keeping a pistol in your nightstand. It is not about protecting oneself against common criminals. It is about preventing tyranny. The Founders knew that unarmed citizens would never be able to overthrow a tyrannical government as they did. They envisioned government as a servant, not a master, of the American people. The muskets they used against the British Army were the assault rifles of that time. It is practical, rather than alarmist, to understand that unarmed citizens cannot be secure in their freedoms.

Critics of the idea that the right to bear arms is a natural right to defend against the tyrannies of one’s own government will make many objections.

a. The United States has a democratically elected government and enough safeguards in place to prevent the possibility of becoming a tyrannical government.

Unfortunately, democratically elected governments can and do become despotic. The paradigm case of this is Germany. Following the German Revolution of 1918 – which came after the devastation of World War I – the German people overthrew the Kaiser and established the Weimar Republic. Democracy could not overcome the economic calamities caused by the Great Depression and the forced reparations to the Allies from World War I. By 1932, the Nazi Party shared control of the German Parliament with the Communist Party. On January 30, 1933, democratically elected President Paul von Hindenburg named Adolf Hitler as Germany’s Chancellor. On February 27, 1933, the German Parliament Building – the Reichstag – went up in flames. This act of terrorism – which was blamed on Bulgarian communists Georgi Dimitrov, Vasil Tanev and Blagoi Popov – was most likely a “false flag” attack perpetrated by the Nazis. Hitler convinced President von Hindenburg and the German Parliament to suspend civil rights, and they did. Within months, Hitler had gained control of Germany. A recitation of the facts of what followed is unnecessary.

There is no reason to believe that the United States is immune to the totalitarian disease that overtook Germany in the 1930s. The United States government has not always been saintly – slavery, the “ethnic cleansing” of the American Indians, the internment of Japanese Americans during World War II, the Tuskegee Experiments, the Kent State shootings, Ruby Ridge, Waco, etc. Furthermore, a coup d’état in the United States is not impossible. In 1933, a group of right wing conspirators planned to overthrow the government of President Franklin D. Roosevelt in what has become known as the Business Plot. While it never came to fruition, there are groups with enough money, power, and influence to attempt a more successful coup. The increasing power of special interests makes it possible that a coup can be “bought” rather than fought. The modern “imperial executive” – the enlarged powers of the president and the executive branch – also makes it possible that a future president could become a Caesar under the right circumstances – e.g. another Great Depression, another World War, or another 9/11 level terror attack. Many of the legal mechanisms already in place – the Patriot Act, the “indefinite detention” provision of the 2012 NDAA, etc. – already create many of the tools necessary for any president to become a fuhrer.

b.  If the Second Amendment is about the ability to resist government tyranny, then no restrictions can be placed on any arms – including machine guns, rocket-propelled grenade launchers, mortars, cannons, explosive time bombs, anti-tank guns, Molotov cocktails, and nuclear weapons.

This argument, presented eloquently by MSNBC’s Rachel Maddow, is the strongest argument against the Second Amendment. She claims that the interpretation of the Second Amendment as a safeguard against government tyranny would entail that the American people beat the United States government in an arm’s race to ensure that they have a military advantage over the military.

The first question that must be addressed is what exactly constitutes “arms” in “the right to bear arms?” Constitutional lawyer Stephen P. Halbrook has discussed this in the following manner.

The U.S. Constitution does not adequately define “arms”. When it was adopted, “arms” included muzzle-loaded muskets and pistols, swords, knives, bows with arrows, and spears. However, a common- law definition would be “light infantry weapons which can be carried and used, together with ammunition, by a single militiaman, functionally equivalent to those commonly used by infantrymen in land warfare.” That certainly includes modern rifles and handguns, full-auto machine guns and shotguns, grenade and grenade launchers, flares, smoke, tear gas, incendiary rounds, and anti-tank weapons, but not heavy artillery, rockets, or bombs, or lethal chemical, biological or nuclear weapons. Somewhere in between we need to draw the line. The standard has to be that “arms” includes weapons which would enable citizens to effectively resist government tyranny, but the precise line will be drawn politically rather than constitutionally. The rule should be that “arms” includes all light infantry weapons that do not cause mass destruction. If we follow the rule that personal rights should be interpreted broadly and governmental powers narrowly, which was the intention of the Framers, instead of the reverse, then “arms” must be interpreted broadly.

The argument that the Second Amendment entails only the right to bear the weapons particular to 1789 is a nonstarter – and is frankly, not even a bench player. This argument must be dispensed with or it also renders the First Amendment pointless. If freedom of the press and freedom of speech were also restrained by 1789 standards, then one would only have freedom of speech via the printing press, written letter, or spoken word, and the government would be able to completely censor communication via telephone, radio, television, the internet, etc. By the same token, what constitutes “cruel and unusual punishment” in the Eighth Amendment would also be so restrained, and rather barbarous punishments would still be permitted.

However, the question still remains as to what constitute “arms” in the modern world. The common law definition to which Halbrook refers seems linguistically appropriate. Thus, “arms” include “modern rifles and handguns, full-auto machine guns and shotguns, grenade and grenade launchers, flares, smoke, tear gas, incendiary rounds, and anti-tank weapons, but not heavy artillery, rockets, or bombs, or lethal chemical, biological or nuclear weapons.” This will still bother even many gun rights advocates. The thought of street gangs like the Bloods or Crips, “militia” groups, or drug cartels possessing such firepower is worrisome to say the least.

If we turn to Halbrook’s pragmatic and political concept of “weapons which would enable citizens to effectively resist government tyranny,” what information does that provide? Two armed citizen groups in recent history have resisted the tyranny of nuclear armed superpowers – the Viet Cong in Vietnam and the Mujahideen in Afghanistan. The Viet Cong were well armed, possessing weapons including rifles, submachine guns, machine guns, rockets, rocket-propelled grenades, anti-aircraft missiles, and grenades. The Viet Cong did possess some Soviet provided tanks and artillery, but these were rarely used as part of the guerilla campaign that characterized the Viet Cong strategy. The Mujahideen were also very well armed in their struggle against the Soviets. The main weapons employed by Afghans and their allies against the Soviets were AK-47s, PK light machine guns, and RPG-7 anti-tank grenade launchers. The Mujahideen later acquired heavy mortars and Stinger SAMs – portable weapons used to attack helicopters. Many of these weapons – which were later employed against the United States in Afghanistan and against innocents in terrorist attacks – were provided by the United States. However, that is a can of worms for another day.

Back to the question of what the Founders intended by “the right to bear arms” and what it means today for “arms” with greater firepower such as Stinger missiles and grenade launchers. Private merchant ships at sea were armed even in times of war through the nineteenth century. During the early years of the Republic, the federal government would issue Letters of Marque and Reprisal to authorize private vessels to attack and capture enemy vessels. This power is listed among the enumerated powers of Congress in Article I, Section 8 of the Constitution. Armed ships, it can be argued, were the state of the art of firepower of the Revolutionary era and much of the nineteenth century. Privately owned cannons were rare – but not unheard of – throughout the nineteenth century, particularly in private forts in the frontier. No serious attempt to ban cannons or the like was made until the National Firearms Act of 1934 (NFA) which was later amended in 1968. However, the question of whether the NFA – which effectively bans weapons such as machine guns, short-barreled rifles, short-barreled shotguns, silencers, and “destructive devices” such as grenades, explosives, missiles, poison gas weapons, etc. – is actually Constitutional cannot be assumed without begging the question.

Perhaps the question concerning Stinger missiles and grenade launchers can be sidestepped. As previously mentioned, the United States is in no danger of foreign occupation. Perhaps, then, the Viet Cong and the Mujahideen are not the appropriate standards of comparison. The “Arab Spring” of 2010 led to the overthrow of governments in Tunisia and Egypt without the use of heavy weaponry. Likewise, the Iranian people ousted the fascistic Shah Mohammad Reza Pahlavi in 1979 without the use of heavy weaponry. The “heaviest” weapons that the Iranian revolutionaries used were homemade Molotov cocktails while the Shah employed tanks and helicopters against them in narrow barricaded streets. The Iranian Revolution succeeded because increasing numbers of the Shah’s soldiers refused to continue firing into crowds of their countrymen. Many armed policemen actually changed into civilian clothing during these incidents in order to avoid shooting at their fellow Iranians. Unless one is willing to claim that members of the American military are morally inferior to Iranian soldiers in 1979, then there is no reason to believe that American military personnel will massacre their fellow Americans if a justifiable uprising occurs in resistance to tyranny. The Iranian Revolution began – contrary to Neoconservative propaganda that would have it as being a radical Islamic movement – as a combined religious and secular movement in opposition to the Shah’s heavy handed tactics of violating freedom of expression and freedom of religion and using military tribunals, torture, and assassination against his own people. Therefore, it is unlikely that the American military would kill its own people if the president ordered it to fire upon Americans as a matter of oppression rather than as a matter of putting down an insurrection. If Progressives such as Rachel Maddow believe that American military personnel are sociopathic in ways that Iranian soldiers were not in 1979, then that is her problem.     

The issue now becomes not a matter of overthrowing a technologically advanced nuclear superpower in a war, but of defending oneself against a tyrannical government until military personnel and their commanders refuse to continue oppressing the people. For this purpose, grenade and grenade launchers, flares, smoke, tear gas, incendiary rounds, and anti-tank weapons appear to be unnecessary. Rifles, shotguns, and semiautomatic weapons appear to be necessary for such limited and temporary self-defense against tyrannical government. Machine guns remain a borderline case. However, armor-piercing bullets, which were banned federally in 1986, will likely be necessary to temporarily resist armed government tyranny.

Contrary to what Maddow and others believe, the natural right to resist tyranny implicit in the Second Amendment does not include the right to preemptively. The precedent of how tyranny is to be resisted was set in the American Revolution. The American Colonists did not act until their natural rights had already been egregiously violated by the British Crown through the Stamp Act of 1765 and other tyrannical acts. The violent act that set off the Revolution was the invasion of Concord, Massachusetts by British General Thomas Gage on April 18, 1775, in an attempt to disarm the citizens. The Battle of Lexington and Concord ensued. The American Colonists sent word to the King that they were loyal to him but that the British Parliament had no authority over them because the Colonists were not democratically represented in Parliament. The King’s response was to declare the Colonies to be in a state of rebellion and to suppress them with violent force. Therefore, self-defense against tyrannical government is just that – defense and not violent unprovoked offense.    

Gun Regulation

In Heller v. Districtof Columbia (2008), the Supreme Court held that the right to bear arms as addressed in the Second Amendment is an individual right. In McDonald v. Chicago (2010), the Court held that the individual protection of the right to bear arms of the Second Amendment is incorporated through the Fourteenth Amendment and applies to the states. In Heller, the Court also stated that some forms of gun regulation are Constitutional.  

Like most rights, the Second Amendment right is not unlimited. It is not a right to keep and carry any weapon whatsoever in any manner whatsoever and for whatever purpose:  For example, concealed weapons prohibitions have been upheld under the Amendment or state analogues. The Court’s opinion should not be taken to cast doubt on longstanding 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, or laws imposing conditions and qualifications on the commercial sale of arms. Miller’s holding that the sorts of weapons protected are those “in common use at the time” finds support in the historical tradition of prohibiting the carrying of dangerous and unusual weapons.

Nevertheless, as the Supreme Court is no more infallible than the Pope, the question remains whether such gun regulations are in fact constitutional. The Second Amendment unambiguously states that “the right of the people to keep and bear Arms … shall not be infringed.” Interestingly, there was not a single gun control law in the United States until 1837 when Georgia banned the sale of knives and all pistols except for horsemen’s pistols. In 1845, this law was declared to be unconstitutional by the Georgia’s Supreme Court, which cited the Second Amendment of the United States Constitution in overturning the law. The first federal gun control law was a 1927 law prohibiting the mailing of small firearms. The first substantive federal gun control law was the aforementioned NFA. The fact that there were no substantive gun control laws for the first century and a half of the history of the Constitution is very telling. At some point it was decided that “shall not be infringed” had no meaning. If the Founders had intended for the right to bear arms not to include concealing weapons, purchasing arms without government intrusion, or carrying arms into certain locations, then one would think they would have clearly stated that. If the right was not as robust as originally thought, one would think that it would have taken less than 150 years to determine that.

Rights are inalienable and endowed by nature to human beings in virtue of them being rational and autonomous creatures. The government does not grant these rights. There is no justification for the argument that former felons or those considered “mentally ill” by the uncertain and largely empirically unfounded social science of psychiatry lose their natural right to bear arms in self-defense against tyranny. There is also no right of the government to violate the privacy of human beings through background checks or gun owner databases. While private entities have the right to forbid firearms – or anything else – on their property, the government possesses no such right. Thus, much of what constitutes “gun control” legislation is unconstitutional.

Empirical Evidence

While the natural right to bear arms that is given voice in the Second Amendment is not an empirically based right, it is instructive to examine some empirical data concerning guns. While hard data is not available, the best estimates of homicide rates in the United States indicate that homicide rates dropped from about 28 per 100,000 at the beginning of the Republic to about 9 per 100,000 when the NFA was enacted in 1934. Somehow without gun control legislation, homicides had been dropping drastically in the nation. Homicides continued to drop dramatically from the early 1930s through 1957. In 1957, the homicide rate in the United States was 4 per 100,000. However, this drop can be attributed to ending Prohibition – and the effect that it had on “gangsters” – more felicitously than it can be attributed to the “success” of the NFA.

Homicide rates began to rise again after the 1950s, cresting at 9.8 in 1981 and again in 1993 before dropping again down to 4.8 in 2011. Many attribute the decline in homicides since 1993 as the direct result of the Brady Bill (1994) – which required a five day waiting period and a background check in order to purchase a firearm. However, the rates of all crimes – violent and nonviolent – in the United States declined at a similar rate during that period. Given that crimes that did not involve a firearm declined at the same rate during that period indicates that a factor other than the Brady Bill was instrumental. There are many possibilities including stricter sentences, increased imprisonment of offenders, the increased availability of abortions since Roe v. Wade, smarter policing strategies, the “graying” of America, etc. Nevertheless, the effect of the Brady Bill is not “the only game in town” in terms of explanatory theories.

What factors most correlate with homicides? There is a negligible correlation between the percentage of gun owners in a given state and that state’s homicide rate (r = .09356971148464956). There is, however, a strong correlation between poverty rates in a given state and that state’s homicide rate (r = .6666662805118512) . While “crimes of passion” will always occur, many homicides that are clearly caused by economic factors can be prevented by an improvement in the national economy. Crime rates in the United States showed an increase in 2011 with increase in assaults (up 22%), burglary, theft, and motor vehicle theft (up 11%), and household burglary (up 14%). This may be an indication of the effect of the Great Recession upon crime rates in the United States. Time will tell.

    

Instant Karma

In the past, blowback took years to develop. This meant that the president who took the actions did not have to face the consequences. For example, President Eisenhower used the CIA to covertly overthrow popular Iranian elected leader Mohammed Mossadegh in 1953, yet Jimmy Carter was in office when blowback occurred in the form of the taking of American hostages following the overthrow of the Shah in Iran’s Islamic Revolution. Things have sped up today. President Obama began his unconstitutional “kinetic military action” in Libya on March 19, 2011. On September 11, 2012, four Americans lost their lives in the attacks on the U.S. mission in Benghazi.

Knowing how quickly blowback can now occur, one wonders why President Obama would even consider recognizing the rebels in the Syrian Civil War. It becomes even more puzzling when one realizes that the Syrian rebel alliance has pledged allegiance to al Qaeda. If President Obama unconstitutionally takes military action against the Asaad regime in Syria, catastrophes like Benghazi are inevitable.  

The Unrealized Popularity of Libertarian Ideas

Libertarian presidential candidate Governor Gary Johnson managed to get just under 1% of votes cast in the 2012 election. Although this is a small percentage, this marked a huge increase in votes for the Libertarian Party over what it managed in 2008. On the surface this would indicate that libertarian ideas are fringe ideas with no hope of gaining currency with the American public. However, these numbers do not tell the true tale. While the public may not realize it, the truth is that libertarian ideas are quite popular with the American people.

Noninterventionism

The Democratic and Republican Parties are both war parties. At issue between them is not whether the United States should be militaristic. The only issue is the particulars that that militarism should take. Should it manifest itself in limited “kinetic military actions” or in full scale regime changing invasions? Yet, it turns out that the traditional American position of nonintervention – the foreign policy strategy that the early American presidents exercised in order to allow the United States to avoid doom in the jaws of a European conflict – that has been resurrected by Ron Paul is favored by the American people.

A May 2012 poll taken by Associate Press-Gfk found that only 27% of Americans supported U.S. military efforts in Afghanistan while 66% opposed the efforts. Even more tellingly, over half of respondents stated that they believed that American military presence in Afghanistan was doing more harm than good.

While perhaps war fatigue could explain this growing dissatisfaction with military efforts in Afghanistan, other polls reveal that Americans are growing wary when it comes to new U.S. military interventions. A March 2012 Gallup poll indicated that only 25% of Americans believe that the United States has a responsibility to intervene in Syria while 64% believe that the United States has no such responsibility. The popularity of the Progressive/Neoconservative idea that the United States must be the “policeman of the world” is diminishing with the American people.  Even after reports of alleged atrocities in Syria were issued, American support for military intervention in Syria still remained at only 33%. In March of 2011, a similar poll found that only 27% of Americans favored the United States intervening in the fighting in Libya while 63% opposed it. Following the tragic murders of Americans in Benghazi that resulted as blowback for President Obama’s “military kinetic action” in Libya, Americans are likely to finally realize the perils of American military intervention. 

Despite the popularity of peace, neither major American party has embraced it. The fact that there are votes to be gained by taking a less belligerent foreign policy stance yet neither party has embraced such a position is an indication that the special interests of the Military-Industrial Complex may be valued more highly by American politicians than the preferences of the American people.

The War on Drugs

Libertarian stalwart Ron Paul has said: “This war on drugs has been a detriment to personal liberty and it's been a real abuse of liberty. Our prisons are full with people who have used drugs who should be treated as patients – and they're non-violent. Someday we're gonna awake and find out that the prohibition we are following right now with drugs is no more successful, maybe a lot less successful, than the prohibition of alcohol was in the '20s.”

President Obama has done nothing to scale back America’s counterproductive and expensive “War on Drugs” despite the fact that he has admitted to using illegal drugs in his youth. The Republicans appear to have no interest in admitting defeat in this “war” either. Yet, Americans are not optimistic about it. According to a November 2012 Rasmussen poll, only 7% of Americans believe that the government is winning the “War on Drugs” while 82% believe that it is losing.  The votes to decriminalize the recreational use of marijuana in Colorado and Washington show that the stage is set for the end of the unjust and militarized persecution of recreational drug users. These sentiments are not unique to Colorado and Washington. A May 2012 Rasmussen poll indicated that 56% of Americans favor the legalization of marijuana.

If Americans support the legalization of marijuana in increasing numbers, why has neither major political party taken a position against federal enforcement of laws against marijuana? The likely answer is that campaign contributions from pharmaceutical companies, cigarette companies, and alcohol companies are what are influencing mainstream American politicians. These industries do not want competition from legal marijuana, and the lives destroyed by the “War on Drugs” are seen by these corporations as acceptable “collateral damage” in service of their profits.

The National Debt

Democrats and Republicans pay lip service to the national debt, but few politicians outside of Ron Paul and those who embrace his ideals take it seriously. Ron Paul has called the national debt “the single biggest threat to every American man, woman, and child.”  However, it appears that the American people do take the dangerous national debt very seriously. A Gallup poll conducted in March of 2012 indicated that 73% of Americans were “very” concerned about the amount of U.S. debt held by foreign nations. Even more tellingly, a May 2011 Reason-Rupe poll found that 69% of Americans consider reducing the national debt “very important” and 74% of Americans favored “a spending cap that would prohibit the government from spending more money than it takes in during a fiscal year.”

Cutting Military Spending

Ron Paul favors cutting military spending. He scoffs at alleged plans for cutting military spending that would merely slow the rate at which military spending grows. He points out that “even if we were to slash our military budget in half, America easily would remain the world’s dominant military power.” Yet, hawks in both parties cringe at the very notion of any military cuts. This ridiculous attitude is best expressed by the neoconservative former Ambassador to the United Nations John Bolton, Despite the fact that the United States military budget is ten times larger than China’s, Bolton claims that  the Pentagon has been reduced to “clipping coupons” while the Chinese military is “celebrating Mardi Gras.”

The truth is that Americans are actually closer in attitude to the libertarian Ron Paul than the neoconservative John Bolton on this issue. In a unique study conducted in May of 2012, the Center for Public integrity, the Program for Public Consultation (PPC) and the Stimson Center found that Americans favor cutting military spending by 18% – with Democrats favoring a 22% cut and Republicans favoring a 12% cut. This study showed participants the size of the budget for the military compared with government spending on other areas and then provided arguments for and against military spending cuts. When presented with actual data and reasoned arguments instead of histrionic talking points, Americans favored the libertarian position on military spending over the positions of leaders in both major political parties.