The Tao of Spartacus Jones

Guns and Ruses

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.
— 2nd Amendment of the Constitution of the United States (1791)

I'm not a big fan of firearms. Never have been, probably never will be.

First of all, I'm a little suspicious of people with a technology fetish. I've known guys who were so immersed in the technical particulars of certain strings, certain pick-ups and so on that they were oblivious to the fact that none of that gear enabled them to play the guitar any better. Or people who become so obsessed with the minutiae of their stereo systems that they don't even hear the music anymore. Some guys who are really "into" guns lean that way, too.

Funny, I've never known a carpenter to get all soft and mushy about a particular hammer or saw. They're just tools. Either they do the job or they don't. A solid gold hammer with mother-of-pearl inlay on a hand-carved walnut handle won't build a better house than a Sears ten-dollar on-sale Craftsman hammer. After all, it's the carpenter that builds the house, not the hammer. Or you might say, hammers don't build houses; people build houses.

Secondly, so many of the guys who love guns are hunters.
I'm not a big fan of hunting. Never have been, probably never will be.

Don't get me wrong; I'm not a tofu and granola eating, Birkenstock-wearing, tree-hugger, although, I confess, some of my best friends are. If I had to hunt to survive, to feed my family, I certainly would. Some hunters — like the Indians cruising the Great Plains back in the waybackwhen — I greatly admire.
They had a reverent attitude about this life-and-death-struggle thing. They'd say a little prayer for the buffalo tribe, ask the buffalo's forgiveness, and express their thanks for the buffalo's sacrifice. They never killed more than they needed and used every bit they took, wasting nothing. And, when they died they gave their bodies back to mother earth, which fed the grass, which fed the buffalo.
Reciprocity. Fair is fair.
If more hunters were like that, I'd have more respect for the activity. Maybe it's just the particular guys I've met. Maybe they're not a representative sample. But they don't have to hunt; they choose to hunt. They don't hunt to survive.
They hunt for fun. They hunt for sport.
Personally, I've just never enjoyed killing all that much, under any circumstances, no matter how necessary. And I don't know where that sport part comes in. I always think of a sport as a contest between equally matched competitors. Not many deer out there carrying rifles or shotguns, are there? Seems to me, hunting is as much of a mismatch as it would be for me to climb in the ring with Lennox Lewis. Come on, now, be honest. How much money would you put on me to win that one — or even survive it, for that matter?

There are two things in particular I dislike about firearms, one of them technical and the other, philosophical.
The former is when people talk about the defensive use of a firearm. Folks commonly use the term "defense" with far too much poetic license. "Defense" comes from "de" plus "fendere (Latin. "to strike") means to "ward off" an opponent's attack. There are two ways to do that: either remove the target from the attack or remove the attack from the target. The first method might include ducking, dodging or running like hell. The second might include a parry or a block or wearing body armor. In either case, the attack — not just the threat of attack — must actually exist. You cannot defend yourself against an attack that hasn't happened. You can certainly protect yourself by preventing an attack, but that isn't the same thing as defending against one.

So let's just get our terms straight. Strictly speaking, a firearm has no defensive use. It cannot defend you from an attack in progress. You simply cannot parry with your pistola. What you can do is either counter-attack (make your own offensive action during your opponent's attack) or attack on the opponent's preparation, which simply means attacking your opponent before he can launch his imminent attack against you.
While these are protective actions, neither of these are defensive actions: they are offensive actions. In the case of a counter-attack, you strike during your opponent's attack (which does you little good unless his attack fails) or you yourself become the attacker by striking first — a position which, unfortunately, can easily lead to all kinds of errors and excesses.
I suppose this "defensive" talk bothers me not just because it's technically incorrect, but because it allows a person a way to get off the hook for taking responsibility for the consequences of his or her actions. If you can't 'fess up to committing an offensive action, then you might do better buying body armor, stronger locks and a bigger dog and leave the guns alone.

I don't necessarily object to using an offensive weapon, mind you, I just think we should be clear about it, honest about what its role is, and understand what it can and cannot do.

The philosophical thing I dislike about firearms is that they enable you to kill from a greater distance, and distance is one of the things that makes killing easier. I think if you're going to kill somebody, you should do it up close and personal. You should be able to see the expression on his face, smell the sour fear on his body, feel his warm blood wash over your hands, hear his groans of pain, watch the light go out in his eyes. You should experience all those things that might make you think twice beforehand or deeply regret it afterwards.
If the person you're killing is an indistinct shape far, far away, it's just too damned easy.
Too much like a video game.
But, hey, that's just me.

As much as I generally dislike guns and the guys who love them, I dislike the people who want to ban them even more. I have just one question: Why would someone — anyone — want you not to have the capability of protecting yourself?
Who would that benefit?
Not you, obviously, so who?

Well, let's see. It would certainly benefit criminals. Every year between 1.5 and 2.5 million citizens use a gun to defend themselves from criminals (although they only have to actually kill or wound the attacker about 8% of the time).

Eliminating guns would certainly help all those poor would-be rapists out there.
Back in '79 under then-President Jimmy Carter the Justice Department found that out of 32,000 attempted rapes, 32% were actually committed. But when the woman was armed with a gun, the rate dropped to 3%.
That shouldn't really have been a news flash. In 1966–67 in Orlando, Florida, women were offered a highly publicized course on how to use a gun. While the rape rate remained the same for the rest of the state, rapes in Orlando dropped 88%.
About 200,000 of those annual self-defense cases I mentioned are women protecting themselves from sexual assault.

Everywhere you look, you'll find that citizens with guns take a bigger bite out of crime than good old McDuff. While the cops shoot about 600 criminals every year, citizens shoot about 1500. The main difference here is that the chance of a cop shooting an innocent person is at least 11% (certainly higher if you look closely at some of the "justifiable" homicides police officers commit) but a citizen shoots an innocent person by mistake only 2% of the time. So I guess if you really want to make the streets safer, you should arm citizens and dis-arm the cops.

What about the children? Isn't there an epidemic of gun violence killing our children?
In a word, no.
Not according to the National Center for Health Statistics, anyway.
Data on the causes of injury deaths for both sexes, all races, ages 1-16 in the year 2000, show 122 accidental deaths, 370 suicides and 515 homicides attributable to firearms. (This should not be taken to mean that persons in this same age group were necessarily the ones responsible for the accidents and homicides; only that these were the victims.) That's a total of 1007 firearms-related deaths of kids under 16 years of age. No doubt about it, that's way too many and we should certainly do what we reasonably can about it. Reasonable or not, that's why some people are on a rampage to outlaw all firearms, but especially handguns.

You should know, however, that in the same year, 3577 young people were killed in automobile accidents — more than 3 times as many as were killed by firearms. Indeed, auto accidents are the leading cause of death for the 1-16 age group.

But I don't know of any committee beating the drum to outlaw all motor vehicles.

Do you?
Didn't think so.

Accidental drowning is the second leading cause of death for the 1-16 age group.
But I don't know of any committee out to ban swimming pools, either.
The third leading cause of death for the 1-16 age group is fire, but I don't know of any grand campaign to require more fire extinguishers or ban combustible materials — or even to promote fire safety.
Among accidental deaths, firearms ranks 8th. Poisoning, pedestrian accidents, and accidental suffocation all claim more lives of our children than gun accidents.
Yet, note by its absence, the hue and cry.

If you hunt around, you'll find a different study that claims a higher firearm-related death rate for children. To get those elevated figures, however, they define "children" to include the 18-24 age group. I certainly know 24-year-olds whom I would consider, in some sense, "children." Some 34-year-olds, too. And a few 44-year-olds. And it's true each of these people is someone's "child." Yet, I consider it, at best inaccurate to include them in the "children" category, knowing full well that we all commonly think of "children" as folks, say, 14 and younger. Statistics are like guns; you always have to check them to see if they're loaded.

As long as we're crunching numbers though, here's a couple of interest.
According to the Department of Health and Human Services (quoted in an article in the Benton County News Tribune, November, 1999) there are 700,000 physicians in the US. These physicians cause 120,000 accidental deaths per year, a rate of 0.171 per physician.
The BATF (quoted in the same article) says there are 80,000,000 gun owners in this country and they cause 1,500 accidental firearm deaths per year. That's a rate of 0.0000188 per gun owner.
Compare those figures and you'll see that physicians are approximately 9,000 times more dangerous than gun owners.

If banning guns won't make us safer on the streets and in our homes, and won't protect our children, then why would anyone want to eliminate them? Why would anyone propose "gun control" laws?
Good question.
You won't like the answer.
So I'll sneak up on it.

The Ottoman Turkey (1916-17) government enacted gun control laws, first requiring permits, which gave the government a convenient list of gun owners and then instituting a ban on private gun possession. The government then murdered 1-1.5 million Armenians, mostly Christians, who were now, having been "law-abiding" folks, without the means of fighting back to protect themselves.
But maybe that was just a coincidence.

In the bad old Soviet Union laws were enacted licensing gun owners and then banning the private possession of firearms. Between 1929 and 1945 Stalin killed an estimated 20 million political opponents, who were now, having been "law-abiding" folks, without the means of fighting back to protect themselves.
Maybe that one's a coincidence, too.

Under Adolf Hitler, in Germany and occupied Europe, laws were enacted first requiring gun registration and licensing and then a ban on private possession.
Between 1933 and 1945, the Nazis killed as many as 20 million Jews, Gypsies, gays, political opponents and other people they found undesirable or inconvenient, who were now, having been "law-abiding" people, without the means of fighting back to protect themselves.
Wow. Another weird coincidence.

In Nationalist China from 1927 to 1949, and Red China periodically from 1949 to 1976, laws were enacted establishing a government permit system, then a ban on private possession, and then the death penalty for anyone supplying guns to "counter-revolutionary criminals." Over that half century, as many as 45 million political dissidents and other "enemies of the state," who were without any means of fighting back to protect themselves, were put to death.
That must be just a coincidence, don't you think?

Guatamala enacted laws requiring the registration of guns and gun owners with exorbitant licensing fees, and then a ban on carrying and then even owning firearms.
Between 1960 and 1981 100,000-200,000 political enemies, Mayans and other Indians, now disarmed without the means to resist, were killed.
What a surprise.

In Uganda and Cambodia in the '70's and Rwanda in '94, registration of guns and gun owners, licensing and confiscation preceded wholesale slaughters. 300,000 Christians and political enemies in Uganda; 2 million political dissidents in Cambodia; 800,000 Tutsi people in Rwanda.
Gee, never saw that one coming, huh?

Hitler, Mussolini, Franco, Stalin, Pol Pot, Idi Amin — all great champions of gun control laws. I think you'd have to admit, that's a lot of damned coincidences.

Indeed, the history of the world is a long tale of woe detailing what better-armed men did to lesser-armed or unarmed men — and we probably don't even know the worst of it since those same better-armed men were the ones who survived to write history. Almost without exception, governments have been characterized by greed, oppression and ruthlessness, and the U.S. government is not the exception, if that's what you were thinking.

Having read a little history, I find gubmint-orchestrated orgies of overkill like that at Ruby Ridge, Idaho and Waco, Texas deeply disturbing.

The Weaver family was targeted by the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms (how come those three things are together, anyway?) after a BATF informant convinced Randy Weaver to do him a favor and saw off a pair of shotguns. The only thing "illegal" about Weaver doing that is that he didn't have a federal firearms permit and didn't pay about $400 worth of taxes.
Federal agents raided the Weaver home and murdered Weaver's wife, Vickie (200 yards away and holding a 10 month old infant, she could hardly have presented a threat to the FBI sniper who shot her) and his 14 year-old son.

The FBI/BATF raid on the Branch Davidian church began as a search for alleged illegal machine guns. Although David Koresh had previously invited BATF agents to enter and examine the weapons in question, the agents opted instead to descend on the church in a military-style assault using tanks and highly incendiary CN tear gas, in the process killing 74 innocent people, including 22 children.

If these incidents are any indication — and I'm very afraid that they are — it seems that, when it comes right down to it, our government doesn't care one whit more about anyone's "inalienable rights" than most other governments.
Although every local, state and federal law enforcement officer takes an oath to protect and preserve the Constitution, a whole lot of them must have had their fingers crossed. If the FBI or BATF will go after the Weavers and the Davidians on the flimsiest pretext, what's to keep them from coming after me?

Or coming after you?

To make a bad situation even worse, the "PATRIOT" act and "Homeland Security" act unconstitutionally grant law enforcement officers and federal agents of every stripe more and more license and less and less accountability. In the wake of the 9/11 tragedy and the so-called "war on terrorism," what's painfully obvious to anyone even slightly permeable to reason, is that the "war on terrorism" is a political ruse to conduct a war on the Bill of Rights. The only thing worse is that so many otherwise intelligent Americans seem to be perfectly willing to goose-step along to that same old drummer, just as if they'd never even seen those late night re-runs of Casablanca.
Maybe I'm lucky that way. As a kid, I knew several German ex-patriots who shared their memories of what it was like to be swept up in or by the Nazi frenzy.
Most Germans apparently believed it couldn't happen there, either.
Therein, a lesson for us all.

All this probably sounds a little like I don't trust the government very much.

I don't.
But if I don't, it's only because this government — like most others, to be fair — has proven itself untrustworthy. I'm in pretty good company, on that one, if you don't mind me including Thomas Jefferson, Tom Paine, Patrick Henry and a host of other be-wigged, be-ruffled gentlemen. I know full well that some of these gents had serious failings — slavery, for one. Yet, even if they themselves failed to practice a lot of what they preached, the Bill of Rights they penned still makes pretty good reading. And many decent and freedom-loving people took it quite seriously. And still do.

The second amendment of the Bill of Rights is about guns. It says:
"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 entire purpose of the second amendment is to make sure that We the People are not out-gunned by Them the Government.
That's what it's for.
Period.
It isn't about hunting, it isn't about shooting sports, it isn't even about personal self-defense. And it certainly isn't about the National Guard. The "militia" it refers to includes, essentially, every able-bodied citizen who could grab his musket (the M16 of the 18th century) and come a-runnin' in time of trouble. The intent of the amendment was "that every man be armed."

The creepy chain-rattling of the Ghost of Genocide Past makes me strongly in favor of citizens possessing firearms and other equipment of a military nature, including (gasp!) so-called "assault" rifles — many of which are not, incidentally, of a military nature.
I say, if the cops, the FBI, BATF, DEA and Army — increasingly and unlawfully employed in a law enforcement role despite the posse commitatus act — all have automatic weapons, then the citizens should have them, too.
I say, if the federales have bullet-proof vests, then the people should have them.
Gas masks, pepper spray and teflon bullets?
If the goose has them, so should the gander.
That way, at the very least, whenever and wherever a trigger-happy Goon Squad goes in without proper regard for the rights of the citizens they're supposed to "serve and protect," they should know that they may just wind up getting as good as they give.
Seems fair to me.
Or as one of those German ex-patriots I mentioned confided to me as he showed me his small collection of firearms. "Next time, I won't be eight years old and I won't be unarmed."

Now, I'm not necessarily advocating armed rebellion.
Only a strategic moron would engage a stronger opponent in a head-on confrontation if he didn't absolutely have to. Not smart to stand toe-to-toe and trade volleys with the Redcoats when you can duck behind a tree, you see? All I'm saying is that, if it came down to it, I wouldn't want to go into the ring against Lennox Lewis with just my legs in my shorts.
Would you?