Date: Tue, 28 Jun 94 11:55:16 EDT From: John Grossbohlin Subject: File Transfer To: Jeff Chan Jeff: Following is a collection of Don Kates' "shorts" that he used to use on Prodigy. Each short starts with *****, followed by the file name, then an introductory paragraph, the short, and then ends with ***EOF***. John ***** 2NDLIMIT.TXT Don B. Kates, Jr., addresses the issue of limitations on the 2nd Amendment. Kates has provided this text and given his permission to distribute it on BBSs. Kates is a Constitutional Lawyer, Civil Liberties Lawyer, Gun Regulation Researcher, and also writes the GunRights column for Peterson's HANDGUNS magazine. [John Grossbohlin JOHN.GROSSBOHLIN@HVBBS.COM or DIRPP@HVBBS.COM] ------------------ Limitations on the 2nd Amendment Don B. Kates, Jr. The Second Amendment is no more "absolute" than any other constitutional right. All constitutional rights are subject to a variety of exceptions and qualifications. The "speech" protected by the 1st Amendment is deemed not to include pornography. Nor does freedom of speech give you the right to broadcast in a residential area with a loudspeaker at 3:00 a.m. It should be understood that I see far more limitations on the Amendment than does the gun lobby. (For my debate with the NRA's expert, who denounces my views as "Orwellian Newspeak", compare Kates, The Second Amendment, 49 Law & Contemp. Prob. 143 (1986) to Halbrook, What the Framers Intended: A Linguistic Analysis of the Right to "Bear Arms", id. at 151.) We agree that firearm ownership may be selectively prohibited to felons, juveniles and the mentally unstable. From this I (but NOT they) conclude that the state may employ screening devices like permit requirements to exclude gun ownership by criminals, juveniles and the mentally unstable. Restrictions on the kinds of weapons owned are implicit in the major Supreme Court decision on the Amendment, United States v Miller (1939). There the Court recognized that the Amendment may be invoked to protect gun ownership by ordinary citizens, noting that the "militia" the Amendment refers to consists in the entire populace -- armed with their own guns. Concomitantly, however, the Court held that ONLY "militia-type" arms are protected. This includes handguns and rifles, but excludes arms like garrotes and brass knuckles that serve only criminal uses. Arguably it also excludes "Saturday Night Specials", if that elusive term is narrowly defined to mean only sub-standard weapons too low caliber or poorly made to be adopted for military service. Finally, the Amendment does not protect ownership of tanks, bombers, atomic bombs, rockets, bazookas and similar destructive devices. By its own language, what the Amendment protects are weapons people can "keep AND bear" -- excluding, therefore, cannon, the ultra-destructive device known to the 18th Century. From that exclusion it is fair to assume that the Amendment guarantees the right to own only ordinary small arms, not ultra-destructive weapons like tanks, bombers, bazookas and other weapons comparable in destructiveness to 18th Century cannon, rather than to the blunderbuss, the most destructive small arm known to the Founders. *** eof *** ***** ARMEDDAN.TXT Don B. Kates, Jr., addresses the issue of felons and their firearms as discussed ARMED AND DANGEROUS. Kates has provided this text and given his permission to distribute it on BBSs. Kates is a Constitutional Lawyer, Civil Liberties Lawyer Regulation Researcher, and also writes the GunRights column for Peterson's HANDGUNS magazine. [John Grossbohlin JOHN.GROSSBOHLIN@HVBBS.COM or DIRPP@HVBBS.COM] ------------------ ARMED AND DANGEROUS: A SURVEY OF FELONS AND THEIR FIREARMS (Aldine de Gruyter Press, 1986) analyzes responses of 2,000 state prison inmates in a survey sponsored by the National Institute of Justice. The responses are particularly interesting on the crucial question of weapons substitution, i.e. what weapons would criminals rely on if handguns were unavailable. The argument for banning handguns is to save lives by forcing attackers to use knives, which only kill about 2.4% of those they wound rather than handguns which are 1.31-3 times deadlier. But what if banning handguns led felons to use rifles, weapons which are 5-11.4 times deadlier than handguns? Or shotguns, weapons so much deadlier that in medical studies they are not to be "compared with other bullet wounds... [A]t close range they are as deadly as a cannon."? Of course long guns could not be used in all the circumstances in which handgun woundings now occur since long guns are much less concealable (unless sawed off). But, based on medical studies, it is estimated that if a handgun ban caused only 50% of the wounds now inflicted with handguns to be inflicted with long guns instead, the number of dead would double -- even if not one victim died in the other 50% of the cases in which (hypothetically) knives would be substituted. (For citations see my "Firearms and Violence: Old Premises, Current Research" in v. 1 of Prof. Gurr's VIOLENCE IN AMERICA [1989].) The felons surveyed in ARMED AND DANGEROUS this whole line of thought as unrealistic -- for they regarded it as silly to imagine that a handgun ban would keep them from getting a handgun. But when told to assume that handguns had disappeared from the earth, 82% answered "If a criminal wants a handgun but can't get one he can always saw off a long gun." That would be "easy" according to 87% of those felons who had often used handguns in crime and 89% of those who had often used shotguns. From these responses Prof. Lizotte calculates that, far from saving lives, the current handgun death toll could more than triple if a handgun ban led to long gun substitution at the rates indicated. The authors of ARMED AND DANGEROUS comment: "If someone intends to open fire on the authors of this study, our STRONG preference is that they open fire with a handgun.... The possibility that even a fraction of the predators who now walk the streets armed with handguns would, in the face of a handgun ban, prowl with sawed-off shotguns instead causes one to tremble." *** eof *** ***** CENT-KLK.TXT Don B. Kates, Jr., addresses the role guns play in crime. Kates has provided this text and given his permission to distribute it on BBSs. Kates is a Constitutional Lawyer, Civil Liberties Lawyer, Gun Regulation Researcher, and also writes the GunRights column for Peterson's HANDGUNS magazine. [John Grossbohlin JOHN.GROSSBOHLIN@HVBBS.COM or DIRPP@HVBBS.COM] ------------------ The Role of Guns in Crime Don B. Kates, Jr. In the last several days I have been posting notes calling attention to current criminological thinking on the role guns play in crime. (In addition to this board, see Arts Club: Non-fiction Books for discussions of the books POINT BLANK, UNDER THE GUN and ARMED AND DANGEROUS.) It bears emphasis that none of the scholars I have cited are reactionaries or minions of the neanderthal gun lobby. Their conclusion that widespread gun ownership among the general citizenry does not promote crime, but rather helps combat it, is COMPELLED by the irrefutable results of their research -- results they did not expect or welcome. As Prof. Brandon Centerwall recently commented: "If you are surprised by my findings, so am I. I did not begin this research with any intent to 'exonerate' handguns, but there it is -- a negative finding, to be sure, but a negative finding is nevertheless a positive contribution. It directs us where NOT to aim public health resources." (Centerwall, "Homicide and the Prevalence of Handguns: Canada and the United States, 1976 to 1980", AMERICAN JOURNAL of EPIDEMIOLOGY v. 134 pp. 1245-65.) I have been primarily citing the dean of modern researchers in gun crime, Professor Gary Kleck of Florida State's School of Criminology. It bears emphasis Kleck is a very liberal Democrat who, among other things, personally opposes the death penalty and many decisions of the newly conservative Supreme Court. His liberalism is evident from the conclusions to a paper he presented last September to the 1991 annual meeting of the American Political Science Association: "Gun control is a very minor, though not entirely irrelevant, part of the solution to the violence problem, just as guns are of only very minor significance as a cause of the problem. The U.S. has more violence than other nations for reasons unrelated to its extraordinarily high gun ownership. Fixating on guns seems to be, for many people, a fetish which allows them to ignore the more intransigent causes of American violence, including its dying cities, inequality, deteriorating family structure, and the all- pervasive economic and social consequences of a history of slavery and racism. And just as gun control serves this purpose for liberals, equally useless "get tough" proposals, like longer prison terms, mandatory sentencing, and more use of the death penalty serve the purpose for conservatives. All parties to the crime debate would do well to give more concentrated attention to more difficult, but far more relevant, issues like how to generate more good-paying jobs for the underclass which is at the heart of the violence problem." *** EOF *** ***** COP-PROT,TXT Don B. Kates, Jr., addresses the role of police in the protection of individuals. Kates has provided this text and given his permission to distribute it on BBSs. Kates is a Constitutional Lawyer, Civil Liberties Lawyer, Gun Regulation Researcher, and also writes the GunRights column for Peterson's HANDGUNS magazine. [John Grossbohlin JOHN.GROSSBOHLIN@HVBBS.COM or DIRPP@HVBBS.COM] ------------------ The Role of Police in the Protection of Individuals Don B. Kates, Jr. Despite court decisions, statutes, and such examples as the LA riots and the New York blackout of several years ago, the mythology persists that there is a "right" to police protection. Get it through your heads, people: The law expects individuals to protect THEMSELVES and their families. The police provide only AUXILIARY, secondary protection by way of general patrol services and the apprehension of criminals AFTER they strike. Of course, the police will intervene to protect a citizen if they HAPPEN across a crime in progress. But the police CANNOT be everywhere at once, police forces were NOT established to substitute for individual self- protection and that is NOT their job. An illustrative case is Warren v District of Columbia in which three rape victims sued the city under the following facts: Two of them, who were upstairs repeatedly called the DC police when they heard the other being attacked by men who had broken in downstairs. Half an hour having passed and their roommate's screams having ceased, they assumed the police must have arrived. In fact, their calls had somehow been lost in the shuffle while the roommate was being beaten into silent acquiescence. When they went downstairs to see to her (as the court's opinion graphically describes it) "For the next fourteen hours the women were held captive, raped, robbed, beaten, forced to commit sexual acts upon each other, and made to submit to the sexual demands" of their attackers. Having set out these facts, the District of Columbia's highest court exonerated the District and its police, because (to reiterate) it is "a fundamental principle of American law that a government and its agents are under no general duty to provide public services, such as police protection, to any individual citizen." 444 A.2d 1, 6 (1982). This principle is fundamental because police resources are not remotely sufficient to protect individuals. Even in theory, the US has only 500,000 police officers. But there are nothing like 500,000 PATROL officers: to determine how many police are actually available on any one shift the 500,000 figure must be divided by four (three shifts per day, plus officers on days-off, sick leave etc.). But only half of those are on patrol; the other half are assigned to investigations, juvenile, records, laboratory, traffic etc., rather than patrol. Thus, at any one time there are only 60,000+ patrol officers -- a number pitifully inadequate to protect 250 million citizens from upwards of 10 million criminals who enjoy the luxury of deciding when and where to strike. As riot victims and women threatened by former or current (or would-be) boyfriends, husbands etc. have found, the police are not responsible for protecting individuals. In California, as in many other states, this is set out in the Government Code, as well as court decisions: Neither a public [entity nor an] employee is liable for an injury caused by failure to enforce any law or to provide police protection or to provide sufficient police protection or to make an arrest or to retain an arrested person in custody." (sections 821, 845, 846.) People are required to protect themselves and their families; that is NOT the job of the police. As noted in my earlier bulletin, the fundamental principle that the police have no duty to protect individuals only reflects practical necessity. There are not remotely sufficient police to supplant the traditional duty of people to protect themselves. Moreover, that is not the police function, the police were never intended to provide protection for individuals. Police were established only to AUGMENT citizen self-protection by systematic patrol to deter crime and to detect and apprehend criminals if a crime occurs. Historically there was no thought of the police displacing the citizen's right of self-protection. There were no police, even in large American or English cities, before almost the mid-19th Century. Citizens were not only expected to protect themselves (and each other), but legally required in response to the hue and cry to chase down and apprehend criminals. The very idea of a police was anathema, American and English liberalism viewing any such force as a form of the dreaded "standing army." (See F. Morn, "Firearms Use and the Police: A Historic Evolution of American Values", in my book FIREARMS AND VIOLENCE). This view yielded only grudgingly to the fact that citizens were unwilling to spend their leisure hours patrolling miles of city streets and incapable even of chasing fleeing criminals down on crowded city streets -- much less tracing and apprehending them or detecting surreptitious crimes. So police were created for the SOLE purpose of AUGMENTING citizen self-protection by patrolling to deter crime and detecting and apprehending criminals if a crime occurs. That remains their SOLE function, as expressly defined by statute and court decision: see, e.g. Cal. Gov't. Code 821, 845, 846, 85 Ill. Rev. Stat. 4-102, Stone v State, 106 C.A.3d 924, (Cal. Ct. of Ap. 1980) Jamison v City of Chicago, 48 Ill. App. 567 (Ill. Ct. of Ap. 1977) and 18 McQUILLIN ON MUNICIPAL CORPORATIONS sec. 53.80. Consider the matter just in terms of the number of New York City women who each year seek police help, reporting threats by ex- husbands, ex-boyfriends etc.: to bodyguard just those women would exhaust the resources of the nation's largest police department, leaving no officers available for street patrol, traffic control, crime detection and apprehension of perpetrators, responding to emergency calls etc., etc. Given what courts have called "the crushing nature of the burden" [Weiner v Metropolitan Transit Authority, 433 N.E. 2d 124, 127 (N.Y. App. Div. 1982)], the police cannot be expected to protect the individual citizen. Individuals remain responsible for their own personal safety, with police providing only an auxiliary general deterrent; see generally: Morgan v District of Columbia, 468 A.2d 1306 (D.C. Ct. of Ap. 1983), Calogrides v City of Mobile, 475 So. 2d 560 (S.Ct. Ala. 1985), Morris v Musser, 478 A.2d 937 (1984), Davidson v City of Westminster, 32 C.3d 197, (S. Ct. Cal. 1982), Chapman v City of Philadelphia, 434 A.2d 753 (Sup. Ct. Penn. 1981), Weutrich v Delia, 382 A.2d 929, 930 (1978), Sapp v City of Tallahassee, 348 So.2d 363 (Ct. of Ap. Fla. 1977), Simpson's Food Fair v Evansville, 272 N.E. 2d 871 (Ct. of Ap., Ind.), Silver v City of Minneapolis, 170 N.W.2d 206 (S.Ct. Minn. 1969). **** EOF *** ***** DEFENCE.TXT Don B. Kates, Jr., addresses the utility of defensive guns. Kates has provided this text and given his permission to distribute it on BBSs. Kates is a Constitutional Lawyer, Civil Liberties Lawyer, Gun Regulation Researcher, and also writes the GunRights column for Peterson's HANDGUNS magazine. [John Grossbohlin JOHN.GROSSBOHLIN@HVBBS.COM or DIRPP@HVBBS.COM] ------------------ The Utility of Defensive Guns Don B. Kates, Jr. Having reread my note it occurs to me that it might be a good idea to go into the underlying facts in greater detail. After all, those who oppose defensive gun ownership have widely publicized the claim that guns are not effective defensive weapons because criminals strike too rapidly for a gun to be brought into play against them. Pete Shields, founder and former Chairman of Handgun Control Inc. asserts: "The handgun owner seldom even gets the CHANCE to use his gun." Thus he argues that a victim is foolish to physically resist robbery or rape IN ANY WAY: "the best defense against injury is to put up no defense -- give them what they want". [GUNS DON'T DIE, PEOPLE DO, 1981, pp. 124-5; emphasis by Shields.] Diametrically opposite conclusions emerge from a thorough, NEUTRAL review by Florida State University criminologist Gary Kleck of all the available data. Writing in an eminent academic journal SOCIAL PROBLEMS (February, 1988; vol. 35, #1), Prof. Kleck concluded that handguns are used more often by victims to defeat crime than by criminals to commit it: victims use handguns to defend against about 645,000 crimes each year but there are only about 580,000 handgun crimes yearly. (Handguns are used another 215,000 times annually to defend against dangerous snakes and animals.) As to their effectiveness, Kleck finds that handguns work equally well for both criminals and victims: in about 83% of the cases in which an victim is faced with a handgun, he (or she) submits; in 83% of the cases in which a victim with a handgun confronts a criminal the criminal flees or surrenders. Kleck's findings are almost as negative to the anti-gun claims about the dangers of resisting. He does find that the anti-gunners are right insofar as it is dangerous to resist with any weapon OTHER than a gun. Victims who resisted with knives, clubs or other weapons were about twice as likely to be injured as victims who submitted (But, naturally, those who resisted were much less likely to be robbed or raped.) Those who resisted with a gun, however were far less likely yet to be injured -- and not just less likely to be injured than those who resisted with other weapons. VICTIMS WHO RESISTED WITH A GUN WERE ONLY HALF AS LIKELY TO BE INJURED AS VICTIMS WHO DID NOT RESIST AT ALL -- and far less likely to be robbed or raped! For those interested in a more detailed review I recommend Prof. Kleck's just published POINT BLANK: GUNS AND VIOLENCE IN AMERICA (1991) and my own article in v. 18 of AMERICAN J. OF CRIMINAL LAW 113-67 (1991). *** EOF *** ***** DETERENC.TXT Don B. Kates, Jr., addresses the effect of highly publicized armings of civilians on crime rates. Kates has provided this text and given his permission to distribute it on BBSs. Kates is a Constitutional Lawyer, Civil Liberties Lawyer, Gun Regulation Researcher, and also writes the GunRights column for Peterson's HANDGUNS magazine. [John Grossbohlin JOHN.GROSSBOHLIN@HVBBS.COM or DIRPP@HVBBS.COM] ------------------ Don B. Kates, Jr. The following is quoted from my article in vol. 18 of the AMERICAN J. OF CRIMINAL LAW (1991): In 1982 the Atlanta suburb of Kennesaw, became a national laughingstock by requiring that a gun be kept in every household. But the joke redounded as the resulting publicity seemed to produce a virtual end to residential burglary which continues to this day. Similar results appeared from a highly publicized 1966 program in which 3,000 civilian women received defensive handgun training from Orlando, Fl. police. Based on the FBI Uniform Crime Report for 1967, rape attacks in the city itself were reduced 88.2%, while aggravated assault and burglary declined by approximately 25%. No explanation other than the firearms program credibly accounts for this phenomenon. The rest of the surrounding Standard Metropolitan Area experienced only an 8.7% decline in rape which may itself have represented a spill-over from the Orlando city program; rape actually increased by 5% in Florida overall that year and by 7% in the United States overall. Nor was the effect in Orlando limited to that year. Though rape gradually increased again after the program ended, five years later the rate was still 13% below the pre- program level. In contrast, during that five year period the national rape rate increased 64% and the Florida rate increased 96.1%. Most impressive of all, the same five year period found rape increasing by 308% in the surrounding Standard Metropolitan Area. An equally startling example of the crime-deterrent value of well-publicized gun ownership occurred in 1967 in Highland Park, Michigan, a Detroit suburb. Having read of the Orlando and similar firearms training programs, Police Chief Bill Stephens conducted a firearms training program for retail merchants who were being plagued by an unprecedented number of armed robberies. This was denounced by the anti-gun Detroit Police Commissioner, resulting in headlines in Detroit newspapers. Four months after the program began Chief Stephens reported that armed robbery of retail stores had been averaging two every three days immediately prior to the announcement of the training program; but from the day the newspapers carried the story, there had been not a single retail store robbery in the city. In Detroit itself a grocers' association sponsored such classes which were publicized both because of the Police Commissioner's criticism and because in the following few months seven armed robbers were killed by store owners -- and Detroit grocery store robberies dropped by almost 90%. **** EOF **** ***** HCI-6TO1.TXT Don B. Kates, Jr., addresses Handgun Control, Incorporated's use of the 6:1 ratio for guns kept in the home being used to kill relatives and acquaintances rather than criminals. Kates has provided this text and given his permission to distribute it on BBSs. Kates is a Constitutional Lawyer, Civil Liberties Lawyer, Gun Regulation Researcher, and also writes the GunRights column for Peterson's HANDGUNS magazine. [John Grossbohlin JOHN.GROSSBOHLIN@HVBBS.COM or DIRPP@HVBBS.COM] ------------------ Who is Killed by Defensive Guns? Don B. Kates, Jr. Basic to the anti-gun argument is the claim that guns are rarely used to protect their owners, that guns more often end up being used in an accident that kills or injures them. But Prof. Kleck's research descried in my previous posts shows this simply is not true. Kleck's evidence is confirmed by a National Institute of Justice survey of 2,000 imprisoned felons: 34% had been "scared off, shot at, wounded or captured by an armed victim," and 69% knew at least one other criminal who had also. Answering two other questions: 34% of the felons said that when thinking about doing a crime they either "often" or "regularly" worried that they "Might get shot at by the victim"; and 57% agreed that "Most criminals are more worried about meeting an armed victim than they are about running into the police." This seems hard to square with a Cleveland study supposedly showing that handguns kill 6 family members (by accident) for every burglar they kill. On closer examination, however, the number of fatal handgun accidents in that study seems highly inflated; apparently vast numbers of suicides were misclassifyied as handgun accidents. This grossly exaggerates the likely benefit of a handgun ban: if deaths are misclassified as by handgun accident, they seemingly would not have occurred if there were no handguns; but a handgun ban would do little to avert suicide since most people who want to shoot themselves would either use a long gun or kill themselves some other way. At the same time the Cleveland study's wrongly playing down defensive gun use by giving statistics only for burglars killed by householders. Of course burglars are rarely killed by householders since 88% of the time burglars strike when no one is home. But that does not gainsay the value of guns in the kinds of instances in which victims can use them in self-defense, e.g. shopkeepers attacked by a robber and women attacked by a rapist or murderous ex-boyfriend. NATIONAL data (not just from Cleveland) covering non-fatal as well as fatal outcomes refute the Cleveland study; they show that handguns are used six and a half times more often in defending against criminals than they are misused in accidental injury or death. More important -- since handgun misuse in crime is far more frequent than in accidents -- is that this data shows handguns are used even more often by victims to defend against crime than by criminals to commit it. **** EOF **** ***** INTLSTAT.TXT Don B. Kates, Jr., addresses the issue of comparing international statistics on crime and guns. Kates has provided this text and given his permission to distribute it on BBSs. Kates is a Constitutional Lawyer, Civil Liberties Lawyer, Gun Regulation Researcher, and also writes the GunRights column for Peterson's HANDGUNS magazine. [John Grossbohlin JOHN.GROSSBOHLIN@HVBBS.COM or DIRPP@HVBBS.COM] ------------------ International Crime and Gun Statistics Don B. Kates, Jr. People who are unfamiliar with the history of gun controls commonly attribute the much lower violence rates which have ALWAYS prevailed in SOME foreign countries to strict gun control. But international criminological studies disprove this since European violence was even lower BEFORE strict firearm laws. Those laws were not adopted to curb our kind of crime but as an antidote to political violence, an ill of which the US has been uniquely free, but which has always troubled Europe, regardless of firearm laws. And they have not insulated Europe from the vast increase in apolitical violence which afflicted all Western nations in the post World War II period. Rates are actually rising faster in Europe than in the US. They remain lower only because they started from a base which was so much lower -- in the era before Europe adopted stringent gun controls. Conversely, severe anti-gun laws have not prevented nations like South Africa and Taiwan (where illegal firearm possession is a capital offense) from suffering apolitical homicide rates 100- 150% greater than America's. One might generalize from the foregoing that peaceful nations do not need firearm laws and violent ones do not benefit from them. While well-tailored firearm laws may have marginal benefits, the true determinants of criminal violence are socio-economic and cultural. Consider Switzerland and Israel where, though a permit is required to own a handgun, "for a law abiding citizen it is easy to get a permit..." In Israel the permit allows the handgun to be carried concealed on the person, a practice which Israel strongly encourages, contrary to American policy which severely restricts it. Massacres in which dozens of unarmed victims are mowed down before police can arrive are inconceivable to Israelis who note "what occurred at a Jerusalem cafe some weeks before the California McDonalds' massacre: three terrorists who attempted to machine-gun the throng managed to kill only one victim before being shot down by handgun-carrying Israelis. Presented to the press the next day, the surviving terrorist complained that his group had not realized that Israeli civilians were armed. The terrorists had planned to machine-gun a succession of crowd spots, thinking that they would be able to escape before the police or army could arrive to deal with them." The unimportance of firearm availability as a "cause" of violence is illustrated by differences in national policies concerning real assault weapons (i.e. fully automatic ones, not mere semi-automatic copies). Though banning semi-automatics is only now under consideration in the US, full auto weapons have been banned or subjected to strict state and federal controls-cum- prohibitive taxation for 50+ years. Regrettably, no reductive effect on American violence rates can be observed. In contrast, for military preparedness, Israel and Switzerland not only allow such weapons, but distribute them to civilians by the millions -- again without observable effect in raising those countries' crime rates. [For references see my article "Firearms and Violence: Old Premises, Current Research" in Professor Gurr's VIOLENCE IN AMERICA v. 1. *** EOF *** ***** MORALKIL.TXT Don B. Kates, Jr., addresses the different moral positions taken on the issue of defensive killings. Kates has provided this text and given his permission to distribute it on BBSs. Kates is a Constitutional Lawyer, Civil Liberties Lawyer, Gun Regulation Researcher, and also writes the GunRights column for Peterson's HANDGUNS magazine. [John Grossbohlin JOHN.GROSSBOHLIN@HVBBS.COM or DIRPP@HVBBS.COM] ------------------ The Question of Morals in Defense Don B. Kates, Jr. The following arguments have been made for the morality of being armed and defending yourself: from gun guru Jeff Cooper -- "Weapons compound man's power to achieve; they amplify the capabilities of both the good man and the bad, and to exactly the same degree, having no will of their own. Thus, we must regard them as servants, not masters -- and good servants to good men. Without them, man is diminished, and his opportunities to fulfill his destiny are lessened. An unarmed man can only flee from evil, and evil is not overcome by fleeing from it." >From a modern giant of the criminal law, Prof. Herbert Wechsler: "there is no social interest in preserving the lives of the aggressors at the cost of those of their victims." 300 years ago philosophers of every stripe saw self-defense as "the primary law of nature". Our Founding Fathers saw arms possession as a civic virtue, believing: that citizens "who do not defend themselves abandon a vital part of their power and virtue", "in an important sense or senses, cease to be citizens"; that for one to disarm, and thus be entirely dependent on others for defense of her family and liberty, "is to be contemptible"; that disarming people "palsies the hand and brutalizes the mind", "totally destroys the moral [power]; men lose at once the power of protecting themselves and of discerning the cause of their oppression." To Jefferson a gun "gives boldness, enterprise and independence to the mind." To Patrick Henry "The great object is that every man be armed ... Every man who is able [to defend his family, his liberties and the state] may have a gun." 19th Century philosophers held that "Sudden and strong resistance to unrighteous attack is not merely a thing to be tolerated ... as a necessary evil [but] a just and perfect" right; a woman attacked by rapists has "a moral duty...." to use all force necessary to apprehend or otherwise incapacitate criminals rather than to submit or retreat. The notion that self-defense may even be a duty has been urged on a variety of religious grounds. God having given people life, and the means to defend it, 17th and 18th Century religious thinkers felt people bound to do so: refusal denies and disparages God's gift and is tantamount to suicide. 20th Century theologians like Reinhold Niebuhr and Lewis Smedes regard deadly force in self- defense as a necessity in our imperfect world, as preserving life, not as "killing". Others see the biblical injunction to care for one's family as requiring that any force necessary be used to protect them from violence, including rape. Though the Sixth Commandment has been mistranslated "thou shalt not KILL" the original Hebrew actually means "thou shalt not MURDER." Indeed the 6th Commandment is almost immediately followed by Exodus 22:2 exonerating the good citizen who kills in resisting a felon. Also see Matthew 24:43 where Christ extols "the good man's" willingness to defend his home against burglars. *** EOF *** John A. Grossbohlin SUNY at New Paltz - Business Administrtion Dept GROSSBOJ@NPVM.NEWPALTZ.EDU SUNY at Albany - Organizational Studies Ph.D. Program JG7831@UACSC2.ALBANY.EDU