Presents
Pamphlet #224

by Phil Brennan

"Are We Fit to Be Free?"

http://www.newsmax.com/archives/articles/2001/12/19/15257.shtml
Phil Brennan Wednesday, Dec.  19, 2001

It happened again.  Some poor guy caught in a love triangle he couldn't
handle went berserk and shot a number of co-workers before killing himself.

These things are happening more and more frequently, the list of victims
continues to grow, and much of the blame for the deaths and woundings can be
laid squarely at the doors of the nation's rabid anti-gun zealots.

If that sounds harsh, keep in mind the fact that in every single instance of
mass shootings, the victims were all defenseless, largely because anti-gun
laws and irrational anti-gun sentiments kept victims and bystanders from
having weapons that could have been used to stop the killers in their tracks.

That could have been true at Columbine High School where, had just one
teacher had a concealed handgun to protect his students, the killing spree
could have been ended and the list of victims sharply diminished.

In every single case, by the time police arrived on the scene the damage had
been done, dramatically underscoring the fact that Americans cannot rely on
the police to protect them in such circumstances.  As a result, laws banning
or prohibitively restricting citizen gun ownership are putting Americans at
the mercy of murderous crackpots and felons.

Had pilots on the three hijacked planes on Black Tuesday been armed, there is
every chance that the twin towers at the World Trade center would still be
standing, the Pentagon would be intact, and thousands of innocent victims
would still be among us, alive to celebrate Christmas with their loved ones.

That they aren't is largely the fault of the fascistic anti-gun fanatics who
have used dishonest statistics and outright lies to blame firearms, and not
those who criminally use them, in order to create a national distaste for
firearms.

Gun Control Studies

A February 2000 study by acclaimed researchers John R.  Lott Jr.  and William
M.  Landes concludes that "the only policy factor to influence multiple
victim public shootings is the passage of concealed handgun laws."

The study conclusively shows that such crime deterrents as more police and
wider use of the death penalty tend to curb "normal"
instances of murder.  They do nothing, however, to prevent such school
shooting tragedies as have occurred in a number of the nation's public
schools since 1997.

To support their insistence that the availability of guns in or near public
schools prevented more death and injury, Lott and Landes cited a number of
examples, including the following:

In the Pearl, Miss., shooting, an assistant principal retrieved his gun from
his office and used it to physically immobilize the shooter before he caused
additional harm.

In an Edinboro, Penn., shooting, which left one teacher dead, "a shotgun
pointed at the offender while he was reloading his gun prevented additional
harm.  The police did not arrive for another 10 minutes" after the assailant
was apprehended by school staff.

According to Lott, far and away the best-informed scholar on the subject, "in
the U.S., the states with the highest gun ownership rates have by far the
lowest violent crime rates.  And similarly, over time, states with the
largest increases in gun ownership have experienced the biggest drops in
violent crime.

"Research by Jeff Miron at Boston University, examining homicide rates across
44 countries, found that countries with the strictest gun control laws also
tended to have the highest homicide rates," Lott wrote.

News reports in Britain showed how crimes with guns have risen 40 percent
since handguns were banned in 1997.  Police are extremely important in
stopping crime, but almost always arrive on the scene after the crime occurs.
 Passive behavior is much more likely to result in serious injury or death
than using a gun to defend oneself.  The only serious research on this issue
has been conducted in the United States.

"The National Crime Victimization Report, done by the U.S.
Department of Justice, indicates consistently that women who behave passively
are 2.5 times more likely to be seriously injured than women who defend
themselves with a gun.  It is the physically weakest people (women and the
elderly) who benefit the most from having a gun.

"Criminals, overwhelmingly young males, like to attack the targets that will
give them the least trouble.  A gun represents a great equalizer.  Defensive
gun uses are almost completely ignored by the media, but Americans use guns
defensively about two million times a year, five times more often than guns
are used to commit crimes."

Media's Role

Lott takes aim at the media, pointing the finger of blame for the
disinformation that abounds about gun ownership directly at those who report
the news.

"No one would ever learn this by simply watching the news.  In part this
disregard by the media might arise because an innocent person's murder is
more newsworthy than when a victim brandishes a gun and an attacker runs away
with no crime committed.

"Unlike the crimes that are avoided, bad events provide emotionally gripping
pictures.  But covering only the bad events creates the impression that guns
only cost lives.  Even the rare local media coverage of defensive gun use
seldom involves more than very brief stories.  News worthiness also dictates
that these stories are not the typical examples of self-defense, but the rare
instances where the attacker is shot.  In fact, in up to 98 percent of the
cases, simply brandishing a gun is sufficient to stop a crime.

"Fewer than one out of 1,000 defensive gun uses results in the attacker's
death.  Worldwide we hear about crimes like the public-school shootings, as
we should, but we never even hear locally about the many more lives saved.
Since the well-known public shootings started in the fall of 1997, 32
students and four teachers have been killed in any type of shooting at
elementary or secondary schools, an annual rate of one death per 4 million
students.  This includes deaths from gang fights, robberies, accidents, as
well as attacks such as the one at Columbine.

"But some sense of proportion is needed.  During that same period,
53 students died playing high school football."

Shall we ban high school football?

Concealed-Carry Laws and Crime Reduction

Noting that he analyzed the FBI's crime statistics for all U.S.  counties by
year from 1977 to 1996 as well as extensive cross-county information on
accidental gun deaths and suicides, Lott explained that his study examined
states that adopted so-called "objective" or shall-issue concealed handgun
laws.  Thirty-one states, he wrote, "now have shall-issue laws, while another
12 permit citizens to carry guns if they can demonstrate a need to public
officials."

The findings of the study, he said, were dramatic.  The more people obtain
permits over time, the more violent crime rates decline.  For each additional
year that these laws are in effect, murders declined.

"Giving law-abiding adults the right to carry concealed handguns had a
dramatic impact.  Thirty-one states now provide such a right under law.  When
states passed right-to-carry laws, the number of multiple-victim public
shootings plummeted below one-fifth, with an even greater decline in deaths.
To the extent attacks still occur in states after enactment of these laws,
such shootings tend to occur in those areas in which concealed handguns are
forbidden.  The drop in attacks in states adopting right-to-carry laws has
been offset by increases in states without these laws."

He cites the following incidents where citizen gun ownership proved decisive:

Clearwater, Fla.: At 1:05 a.m., a man started banging on a patio door,
briefly left to beat on the family's truck, but returned and tore open the
patio door.  At that point, after numerous shouts not to break into the home,
a 16-year-old boy fired a single rifle shot, wounding the attacker.

Columbia, S.C.: As two gas station employees left work just after midnight,
two men attempted to rob them.  The sheriff told a local television station:
"Two men came out of the bushes, one of the men had a shovel handle that had
been broken off and began to beat [the male employee] ...  about the head,
neck and then the arms." The male employee broke away long enough to draw a
handgun from his pocket and wound his attacker, who later died.  The second
suspect, turned in by relatives, faces armed robbery and possible murder
charges.

Detroit: A mentally disturbed man yelled that the president was going to have
him killed and started firing at people in passing cars.  A man at the scene,
who had a permit to carry a concealed handgun, fired shots that forced the
attacker to stop shooting and run away.  The attacker barricaded himself in
an empty apartment, fired at police and ultimately committed suicide.

West Palm Beach, Fla.: After being beaten during a robbery at his home just
two days earlier, a homeowner began carrying a handgun in his pocket.  When
another robber attacked him, the homeowner shot and wounded his assailant.

Grand Junction, Colo.: On his way home from work, a contractor picked up
three young hitchhikers.  He fixed them a steak dinner at his house and was
preparing to offer them jobs.  Two of the men grabbed his kitchen knives and
started stabbing him in the back, head and hands.  The attackers stopped only
when he told them that he could give them money.  Instead of money, the
contractor grabbed a pistol and shot one of the attackers.  The contractor
said, "If I'd had a trigger lock, I'd be dead."

Columbia Falls, Mont.: An ex-boyfriend is accused of entering a woman's home
and sexually assaulting her.  She got away long enough to get her handgun and
hold her attacker at gunpoint until police arrived.

Salt Lake City: Two robbers began firing their guns as soon as they entered a
pawn shop.  The owner and his son returned fire.
One of the robbers was shot in the arm; both were later arrested.  The shop
owner's statement said it all: "If we did not have our guns, we would have
had several people dead here."

Baton Rouge, La.: At 5:45 a.m., a crack addict kicked in the back door of a
house and entered.  The attacker was fatally shot as he charged toward the
homeowner.

What advice would gun control advocates have given these victims?
Should they have behaved passively?  Unfortunately, by making it difficult
for law-abiding people to get the most effective tool to defend themselves,
gun control often puts victims' lives in jeopardy.

On the other side of the coin, gun control has proved deadly, as is the case
in England where under the Firearms Act of 1997 all handguns and most rifles
were outlawed and confiscated.

Wrote Richard Poe in his best-selling book, "The Seven Myths of Gun Control":

"What happened next is something most Americans know nothing about because
the press has not reported it in this country.  A terrifying crime wave swept
England.  Stripped of the ability to defend themselves, Britons were left
helpless against criminal attacks.
And the criminals knew it.  Their attacks grew bolder, as well as more
frequent."

To prove how true is the old adage "If guns are outlawed only outlaws will
have guns," Poe reports that "Between April and September 2000, street crime
in London rose 32 percent over the same period in
1999."

Lies and Progaganda

Aside from keeping such vital information from their fellow Americans, the
mainstream U.S.  media have shamefully promoted anti-gun propaganda and lies.

Take, for example, Professor Michael Bellesiles' book in which the author
claims that the idea of a well-armed America in revolutionary times and
afterward was a myth.

As NewsMax reported at the time: "Frenzied anti-self-defense zealots hailed
his book as proof that colonial Americans owned few guns and that the idea of
a nation of well-armed citizens was a myth, and he won a prestigious award
for his rooting out the truth about guns in early America.  But new research
indicates that in many instances historian Michael A.  Bellesiles simply
twisted the facts to fit his own agenda.

"In a blockbuster exposé published in the Boston Globe, much of Bellesiles'
book ''Arming America: The Origins of a National Gun Culture'' was called
into question.

"According to Bellesiles, he examined more than 11,000 probate records of
more than 1,200 counties, counting the number of guns listed in probate
inventories.  He wrote that he learned that between
1765 and 1821, no more than 17 percent of the inventories listed guns.  He
claimed that the rate of gun ownership was even lower in the 1760-1795 period
– a mere 14 percent, he said.  "[O]ver half of these guns were listed as
broken.  ...  "

According to a Dec.  9 story in the New York Times, "Emory University
professor Michael Bellesiles, whose book 'Arming America: The Origins of the
National Gun Culture' caused a sensation with Second Amendment foes last year
with its claims that gun ownership in the U.S.  was 'an invented tradition,'"
may have perpetrated what the Times described as "one of the worst academic
scandals in years."

According to the Times, scholars who examined Bellesiles' data were unable to
substantiate his claim that 11,000-plus probate records from 40 counties in
colonial America showed that fewer than 7 percent actually owned working
guns.  Those scholars who tried to corroborate the book's sensational
findings were stunned by "an astonishing number of serious errors," the Times
reported, "almost all of them intended to support [Bellesiles'] thesis."

"In some cases his numbers were off by a factor of two or three or more,"
Randolph Roth, a history professor at Ohio State University, told the Times.

"The number and scope of the errors in Bellesiles' work are extraordinary,"
Roth told the Times, saying they include "misinterpretation of militia
returns, literary documents and data from many other sources."

The academics who studied Bellesiles' contentions found that his book was
filled with blatant misrepresentations.

For example, Bellesiles told one critic that he'd managed to obtain detailed
probate records from the 1850s from the San Francisco Superior Court.  But
the courthouse said all probate data from that decade had been destroyed in
the great earthquake of 1906.

"[The San Francisco records] were not available in two other Bay area
libraries, either," the Times said.  "Mr.  Bellesiles now says he must have
done the research somewhere else and cannot remember where."

"Arming America" won Columbia University's prestigious Bancroft Prize in
American History and Diplomacy.  Before the book's rampant errors were
discovered, legal scholars had said Bellesiles' work could impact on several
court challenges to Second Amendment protections.

Despite this obvious fraud, the U.S media have failed to apologize for
initially giving the book such wide publicity and praise.

The Second Amendment

Finally, the gun control nuts and their socialist allies in the media have
sought to distort the meaning of the Second Amendment's provisions which
guarantee the right of the citizens to bear arms, even though the intent of
those who wrote the Bill of Rights is crystal clear.

Wrote Patrick Henry, for example, "The great object is that every man be
armed.  ..."

Then there was Richard Henry Lee, who said, "To preserve liberty it is
essential that the whole body of the people always possess arms, and be
taught alike, especially when young, how to use them."

In his book, Richard Poe cited a speech in the House during the debates
concerning adoption of the Bill of Rights that sets out the clear meaning of
the Second Amendment:

"As civil rulers, not having their duty to the people duly before them, may
attempt to tyrannize, and as the military forces which must occasionally be
raised to defend our country, might pervert their power to the injury of
their fellow citizens, the people are confirmed by the next article in their
right to keep and bear their private arms."

Poe explores the history of the militia concept, showing how it applied, for
example, in the case of the Minutemen, armed citizens who formed the backbone
of the colonial forces who won our liberty.
After the American Revolution it was understood that the militia –
specifically consisting of men between the ages of 16 and 60 – constituted
the force that would prevent the new government from becoming a tyranny.

Said Noah Webster, "The supreme power in America cannot enforce unjust laws
by the sword because the body of the people are armed.
..."

During the debates about the adoption of the Bill of Rights, delegate members
of the Anti-Federalist forces demanded that the 10 amendments include one
that would guarantee the right, as Patrick Henry put it, "that every man be
armed.  ..."

The result was the Second Amendment, and its meaning was as clear as a bell:
All Americans have the right to keep and bear arms.
All Americans!

We live in dangerous times.  The threats we face are more numerous than
merely those posed by al-Qaeda and other terrorists groups.  We live in a
society where hordes of conscienceless criminals are armed.
Not a single gun control measure has changed that fact.  They have instead
restricted gun ownership by honest Americans.

In short, these laws have allowed the outlaws to have guns while depriving
honest Americans of their Second Amendment right of self-defense.

Sure, there are dangers inherent in widespread gun ownership.
Accidents will happen.  Some people will do stupid things with their guns.
Some people are simply unfit to own weapons.

There are dangers inherent in widespread ownership of automobiles.
Accidents will happen.  Some people will do stupid things behind the wheels
of their cars.  Some people are unfit to own cars.

Let's ban autos.  After all, they kill tens of thousands of Americans every
year – far more than are killed in firearms accidents.

Citizen gun ownership is a feature of a free society.  We are either fit to
be free or we are not.

***

Phil Brennan is a veteran journalist who writes for NewsMax.com.  He is
editor & publisher of Wednesday on the Web (http://www.pvbr.com)
and was Washington columnist for National Review magazine in the
1960s.  He also served as a staff aide for the House Republican Policy
Committee and helped handle the Washington public relations operation for the
Alaska Statehood Committee which won statehood for Alaska.

He can be reached at pvb@pvbr.com

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