Fighting Fire With Fire

  Solve  the  problem  of arson with  more  fire?   Are  you
crazy?  But setting a firebreak is a reasonable solution  to
a  fire  already  out of control.  Fire isn't  the  problem;
criminal intent is the problem.
  Similarly,  if someone suggests the solution to  criminals
misusing  guns is more guns, people similarly question  your
sanity; but again, it isn't the tool, but how it's used.  If
the  recent  murders in Killeen, Texas, had  been  tried  in
1870,  or  in a number of counties in California today,  the
results would have been very different õ because one or more
of the customers would have shot the madman dead.
  A  madman  bent on dying, with lots of unwilling  company,
is  not a problem of too little gun control, but of too much
gun control.  By the Act of April 12, 1871, Texas became the
first American state to deny its citizens the right of self-
defense;  the  carrying of deadly weapons  was  prohibited.[1]
That statute remains in effect today -- only a police officer
may carry a gun for self-defense in Texas.  There's never  a
cop  when  you  need  one;  in Killeen,  Texas,  the  police
arrived, performed admirably, but ten minutes too late.
  Laws   banning   the  carrying  of  deadly   weapons   are
relatively  recent.  California had no laws  regulating  the
carrying of deadly weapons until 1917[2], even open carry  was
legal until 1967 (though seldom done in the larger cities)[3];
in  Minnesota,  open carry was legal until  1975.[4]   Vermont
still  has  no  statute prohibiting the concealed  carry  of
  pistols,  unless  "with the intent or  avowed  purpose  of
injuring a fellow  man."[5]  There are a number  of  Western
states  (Arizona, New Mexico, Alaska, most of Nevada)  where
it is still legal to openly carry a gun.
  In   1764,   Cesare  Beccaria  published  On  Crimes   and
Punishments; his revolutionary ideas included the  abolition
of torture, and reduced use of the death penalty.  His ideas
took both  Europe and North America by storm.[6]  Among  the
many  reforms which On Crimes and Punishments promoted,  and
which were taken up by the Framers[7]:
  
  False is the idea of utility that sacrifices a thousand
  real   advantages   for  one  imaginary   or   trifling
  inconvenience; that would take fire from men because it
  burns, and water because one may drown in it; that  has
  no remedy for evils, except destruction.  The laws that
  forbid  the carrying of arms are laws of such a nature.
  They  disarm  only those who are neither  inclined  nor
  determined  to commit crimes.  Can it be supposed  that
  those  who have the courage to violate the most  sacred
  laws  of humanity, the most important of the code, will
  respect  the  less important and arbitrary ones,  which
  can  be  violated with ease and impunityÖ õ and subject
  innocent  persons to all the vexations that the  guilty
  alone ought to suffer?  Such laws make things worse for
  the assaulted and better for the assailants; they serve
  rather  to encourage than to prevent homicides, for  an
  unarmed  man  may  be attacked with greater  confidence
  than an armed man.[8]
  
  A  person who intends suicide after mass murder, will  not
be  deterred by any law.  (In the absence of guns,  one  man
with $1 worth of gasoline successfully murdered 87 people in
New  York  City  two  years ago.)  A  criminal  who  intends
  murder,  is  unconcerned  about the  minor  punishment  of
carrying  a concealed weapon.  Only the law-abiding  person,
with no criminal history, is deterred by such laws.
  This  is  a radical idea -- that law-abiding people  should
be  able  to  defend  themselves from  murderous  attack  in
public.   It's  not necessary for us to return  to  complete
laissez-faire,  like Vermont; a dramatic  expansion  of  the
number of concealed weapons permits provides an easy way  to
make self-defense legal again, while still verifying that  a
person  carrying a gun isn't mentally ill,  a  criminal,  or
incompetent.  Oregon[9], Pennsylvania[10], and Florida, have all
made dramatic changes to their concealed weapons statutes in
the  last  few  years, and the effect in each  has  been  to
dramatically expand the number of permits.  Oregon's  murder
rate, already falling, fell again during 1990.
  In  a  society  where savages use guns,  knives,  baseball
bats, and gasoline, it is time for radical rethinking of the
right to self-defense.
------
  Clayton  Cramer  is a software engineer  with  a  Petaluma
manufacturer   of  telecommunications  equipment.    He   is
currently writing a history of the Second Amendment.
_______________________________
  1 English v. State, 35 Tex. 473 (1872).
  2  Assembly Office of Research, Smoking Gun: The Case  For
Concealed  Weapon  Permit  Reform,  (Sacramento,  State   of
California: 1986), 5.
  3 Assembly Office of Research, 6.
  4  Application  of Atkinson, Minn., 291  N.W.2d  396,  397
(1980).
  5 Vermont Statutes, ù 4003.
  6  Marcello  Maestro, Cesare Beccaria and the  Origins  of
Penal Reform, (Philadelphia, Temple University Press: 1973),
134-138.
  7  Maestro,  141; Stephen P. Halbrook, That Every  Man  Be
Armed, (University of New Mexico Press: 1984); reprinted  by
The Independent Institute, Oakland: 1984), 35, 209.
  8  Cesare  Beccaria, trans. by Henry Palolucci, On  Crimes
And Punishments, (New York, Bobbs-Merrill Co.: 1963), 87-88.
  9 Oregon Revised Statutes (1989), 166.291.
  10 Pennsylvania Crimes Code (1989), ù 6109.