Firearms and Freedom

Mark Thornton

Libertarian Candidate for U.S. Senate

There is no liberty under heavier attack than the right to keep and bear arms bequeathed to us by our Founding Fathers. Democrats and Republicans are equally guilty for these infringements on the Second Amendment. Democrats drafted Title XI of the 1994 Crime Bill (which banned assault rifles). Thirty Republicans in the House and six in the Senate insured its slim passage into law. This flagrant violation of the U.S. Constitution was one of the largest factors in the Republican win of both houses of Congress in the Nov. 1994 election. Despite this, Bob Dole and the Republicans are running as fast as they can from their promise to repeal the ban.

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.

Statists of all stripes, from Robert Bork to Ted Kennedy, argue that the Second Amendment of the Bill of Rights does not grant individuals the right to keep and bear arms. They try to argue that the "well-regulated militia" mentioned in the first clause refers to state national guards. But "well-regulated" in eighteenth-century language meant well prepared. George Mason adequately clarified whom the term “militia” referred to: “Who are the Militia? They consist now of the whole people.”1 Liberal legal scholar Sanford Levinson has highlighted the inconsistencies of those making this argument. “Such an argument founders upon examination of the text of the Bill of Rights itself and the usage of the term `the people' in the First, Fourth, Ninth, and Tenth Amendments.”2 In other words, it is inconsistent for socialists to argue that the phrase “the people” refers to individuals in the First, Fourth, Ninth, and Tenth Amendments but not in the Second Amendment.

Semantics aside, it could not be clearer what the Founding Fathers intended at the time of the amendment's ratification:

To disarm the people [is] the best and most effectual way to enslave them--George Mason3

Arms in the hands of citizens may be used at individual discretion in private self-defense --John Adams4

Americans [have] the right and advantage of being armed - unlike citizens of other countries whose governments are afraid to trust the people with arms--James Madison5

No free man shall ever be debarred the use of arms--Thomas Jefferson6

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 those only who are neither inclined nor determined to commit crimes. 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. They ought to be designated as laws not preventive but fearful of crimes, produced by the tumultuous impression of a few isolated facts, and not by thoughtful consideration of the inconveniences and advantages of a universal decree--Thomas Jefferson (quoting 18th century Italian criminologist Cesare Beccaria)7

A strong body makes the mind strong. As to the species of exercises, I advise the gun. While this gives moderate exercise to the body, it gives boldness, enterprise and independence to the mind. Games played with the ball and others of that nature, are too violent for the body and stamp no character on the mind. Let your gun therefore be the constant companion of your walks--Thomas Jefferson8

The Constitution shall never be construed to authorize Congress to prevent the people of the United States, who are peaceable citizens, from keeping their own arms--Samuel Adams9

Before a standing army can rule, the people must be disarmed, as they are in almost every kingdom in Europe. The supreme power in America cannot enforce unjust laws by the sword, because the whole body of the people are armed, and constitute a force superior to any band of regular troops--Noah Webster10

An exhaustive exposition of the original intent of the Second Amendment is beyond the scope of this document. Additional sources of information are available for those who are interested in this topic.11

"Assault Weapons"

The origin of assault rifles can be traced to World War II to the fully-automatic German Mkb 42. Since then, the term assault rifle had been used in military nomenclature to designate a short-barreled, intermediate-caliber, machine gun. Such weapons have never been legal for U.S. civilians to use or own. Despite this, the term "assault weapon" became hijacked and bastardized to suit the interests of a propaganda campaign against semi-automatic firearms. The culmination of this campaign was the ban on over 150 semi-automatic pistols, shotguns, and rifles in the 1994 Crime Bill.

Not even one claim made by the supporters of the ban had any basis in truth. Bill Clinton claimed that semi-automatics were the "weapons of choice of drug traffickers, [and] gang members" and that they were "weapons of war whose sole purpose is to kill people." Yet as the Wall Street Journal noted,12 the best statistical evidence revealed that semi-auto "assault" guns were involved in no more than 1% of homicides. In testimony to the Senate Judiciary Committee, Deputy Police Chief Joseph Constance of Trenton, New Jersey said it all:

[A]ssault weapons are/were used in an underwhelming .026 of 1% of crimes in New Jersey. This means that my officers are more likely to confront an escaped tiger from the local zoo than to confront an assault rifle in the hands of a drug-crazed killer on the streets13

In crime-ridden Florida the results were not much different. In 1989, the Florida Assault Weapons Commission surveyed 415 state law-enforcement agencies on the use of “assault weapons” in crimes over the previous four years. “Assault weapons” were found to be used in less than 50 crimes while other weapons (conventional firearms, knives, fists) were used in 108,600 crimes.14

The second lie propagated by the gun grabbers and their sympathetic media was the military/sporting distinction. Many proponents of the ban asserted that "the Founding Fathers never intended for citizens to possess dangerous military weapons capable of killing hundreds of people a second." The last part of this claim is nothing but a deliberate attempt to confuse semiautomatics with machine guns. The first part implies that the Founding Fathers never intended citizens to own military-type weapons.

The military/sporting distinction is the most bizarre claim of all. First, this distinction did not exist when the Second Amendment was ratified in 1791. The same weapons used to gain independence from the British were used daily to hunt wild game. Second, every firearm in existence today has a military origin, regardless of whether its action is bolt, lever, revolver, or semiautomatic. Semi-automatic technology has existed for more than 100 years. It is not the problem, our revolving-door criminal justice system is.

Waiting Periods

Another sacred cow of the Washington establishment is the alleged effectiveness of waiting periods in deterring crime. Proponents cite other advantages of waiting periods such as their effectiveness in "cooling off" people who contemplate suicide or murder. "At the very least," they ask, "what harm can a waiting period do?" First, "there is not a single study published in any academic journal which concludes that waiting periods are effective"15 in deterring crime. As for contemplating suicide or murder, people who contemplate these two types of actions factor in waiting periods into their selection of a means to accomplish these actions. In other words, if the murder or suicide is planned, then the waiting period can be circumvented. If it is an act committed in the heat of passion, means other than firearms can easily be obtained. The "Trial of the Century," in which O.J. Simpson was accused of brutally murdering his ex-wife and a friend, is an excellent illustration of this.

Gary Kleck, a professor of criminology at Florida State University has concluded that the only way a cooling-off period could be effective would be if (1) the desired gun is the only one the subject would own, (2) the subject obtained the gun from a source that was subject to obeying the waiting period, and (3) the firearm was acquired and used in a time period shorter than the cooling-off period. He concluded that about 0.5 percent of all homicides nationally would satisfy these types of conditions. He could find none in Florida that satisfied the conditions.16

What harm can waiting periods cause? The cases of Catherine Latta and Bonnie Elmasri demonstrate clearly the huge costs waiting periods can impose on individuals. Latta was a mail carrier in Charlotte, North Carolina who was being harassed by an ex-boyfriend, his behavior becoming more violent each day. First she was beaten on several occasions and then robbed. After being raped, she went to the local police to get permission to purchase a handgun. She was told that her request would take 2-4 weeks. "I'll be dead by then," Latta told the clerk. That afternoon she drove to a bad part of town and purchased an illegal $20 semi-automatic pistol. Five hours later she was once again attacked and beaten by her ex-boyfriend at her house. After shooting him dead, the prosecutors decided not to bring charges against her for the illegal gun or self-defense homicide.17 The case of Bonnie Elmasri didn't turn out as well. Her husband, who had been subject to a restraining order, had been threatening her and her children. On March 5, 1991 she telephoned a local firearms instructor and asked him about purchasing a handgun. She was told that Wisconsin had a 48-hour waiting period. Twenty-four hours later she and her children were brutally murdered by her husband.18

A handgun might not have saved the lives of O.J. Simpson's ex-wife and her friend Ron Goldman. But firearms are estimated by Kleck and Gertz to be used more than 2 million times a year for legitimate defensive purposes.19 In many cases, a shot is never fired as the aggressor flees at just the sight of the gun and the possibility of being killed or wounded. Mrs. Elmasri was denied even this non-violent means of intimidating a potential assailant by Wisconsin's waiting period. The 15-day waiting period had a similar effect in California where thousands of home and store owners in Los Angeles helplessly watched their city torn apart by riots and fires in May 1992.

International Comparisons

Today the nation of Switzerland stands as a living refutation of gun-control fallacies. Marcus Funk reports that among Switzerland's 6 million citizens there are more than two million guns. Among these weapons are 600,000 fully-automatic rifles. With such a large per capita rate of ownership of deadly weapons, the Swiss murder rate is only 15% that of the U.S.20 This demonstrates that "there is no consistent correlation between gun laws or gun ownership rates and high murder or suicide or crime rates across a broad spectrum of nations and cultures."21 It is almost a universal article of faith among American journalists and some academics that there is a cause and effect relationship between strict foreign gun laws and low rates of violent crime. But "such laws cannot have caused the low European homicide rates because those rates long preceded the laws."22

It has been claimed that in every nation of the world, including Israel and Switzerland, guns are licensed by the state and there is less homicide and suicide as a result. This is a classic deception by half truth. First, there is less homicide and suicide in Israel and Switzerland as well as gun licensing. However, the licensing applies to only people who want to own guns. Outside of licensing, millions of Swiss and Israeli citizens are loaned weapons from local armories where they can obtain handguns as well as fully-automatic submachine guns and (true) assault rifles.

The U.S. government oppressively forbids even law-abiding collectors from owning automatic weapons. It is also illegal to carry a concealed handgun for self-defense in all but one state (Vermont); most states require a permit. In Israel, carrying a handgun, even unconcealed, is encouraged by the government because this removes the gun from the home where it can be found by children or burglars and it also prevents the population from becoming easy prey to a gunman in a public place. Abraham Tennenbaum, a criminology professor at Bar Ilan University in Israel, reports that Israelis are shocked at how Americans allow themselves to be gun fodder for any madman who opens fire in a public place.23 A few weeks before the slaughter at McDonalds in San Ysidro, California in 1984, three terrorists tried to machine gun a crowd of people at a Jerusalem bus stop but were quickly gunned down by an armed citizen carrying a pistol. The one surviving terrorist revealed that he had no idea how well-armed Israelis were. The terrorists had planned to machine-gun Israelis at several gathering places and escape before police or soldiers could arrive.24 In America they would probably have been successful.

The Real Agenda Behind Gun Control

Today our streets are safe. We have disarmed the people and public safety is now a secure reality--Adolph Hitler, Radio Address to the German People, 1938.

This just shows you what you can expect from Jews if they lay hands on weapons--Joseph Goebbels, Diary Entry for May 1, 1943, in the wake of the Warsaw ghetto revolt.25

Several years ago Washington Post columnist Carl Rowan called Washington D.C.'s 911 service to report that he had shot a teenager who was trespassing on his property. Rowan was home at night and heard splashing sounds coming from his backyard. Investigating the noise, he saw two teenagers swimming in his pool. When Rowan asked the two teens to leave, they refused. Rowan then seized a pistol and shot one of the teens in the arm.

Rowan had used his Post column for years as a merciless bully pulpit for the elite party line on guns: gun owners were psychotic loonies who needed to be hauled away in straight jackets and locked up. When the NRA pointed out Rowan's hypocrisy, Rowan sniffed that the gun was not even his. Of course this revelation hardly made things better. Not only did Rowan have a gun in his home (which is illegal in D.C.) but the gun was not even his.

When she was mayor of San Francisco in the 1980s, Dianne Feinstein signed into law a handgun ban. She warned the public about the danger of handguns. It was immoral to keep these devices around the home where they could be used against family members, especially children. Feinstein herself turned in a pistol. Interpreting the act for what it ostensibly was, many people followed her lead, turning in their handguns to the police. The public did not know that Feinstein not only had another pistol at home, but also had a permit to carry it concealed on her person at all times.

By far the worst case was that of Sen. Jay Rockefeller (D, WV) who, several days before he voted to ban "assault weapons," admitted to a reporter that he kept a Colt AR-15 (one of the 153 "assault weapons" banned) in his Washington D.C. townhome. He even bragged what a great shot he was with the rifle. Not only is it illegal to have a firearm of any kind in D.C., but the semi-auto AR-15 is strangely classified by a city ordinance as a "machine gun."26 To this day, no charges have been filed against Rockefeller.

Not only do certain politicians believe that gun laws are for the "little people," but so does a growing number of law-enforcement officers. Some officers claimed that "assault weapons" are designed for mass killing and have no place in a civilized society. They then turned around and lobbied to be exempted for the ban. Now why would law-enforcement agencies need these "weapons of mass destruction?" Allegedly to fight well-armed criminals. But that begs the question as to why criminals would be well armed if gun control and gun bans really worked. Hence, the case for unilateral mass disarmament completely collapses. If the citizenry is going to be disarmed, there is no logical reason why law enforcement should remain armed. The propensity for police to believe that they can be trusted with arms while ordinary citizens cannot is permeated with the same arrogance displayed in the hypocritical behavior of the politicians above.

An examination of the behavior of certain law-enforcement officers is very revealing as to whether they are really more morally upright than the "little people." One good example is the case of Chicago police superintendent LeRoy Martin. In the wake of the June 1989 Tiananmen Square massacre, the NRA ran full page ads in American newspapers warning citizens of the dangers of giving up their right to self defense. Martin, a vehement proponent of complete gun prohibition, accepted a trip to China paid for by China's communist government. Returning home, he professed admiration for China's criminal justice system and proposed that zones be set up in America where the Constitution would be suspended.27 Of course such places already existed: In 1941, about 100,000 Japanese Americans (allowed to keep only the property that they could carry away with them) were forced to enter concentration camps and were kept there well after they poised any threat to national security.

What gun control is really all about is mass disarmament. Sarah Brady of Handgun Control Incorporated (HCI) doesn't even believe in the right to self defense. "To me, the only reason for guns in civilian hands is for sporting purposes."28 Of course what "sporting purposes" really are remains conveniently undefined. Brady favors a "needs-based-licensing" system where prospective owners have to prove a "need" to local police to be authorized to purchase a gun. Brady knows that in Great Britain, where such a system exists, police so rarely grant permission for gun purchases that gun owners are now only 4% of the population.29 (This percentage of gun owners will likely decline in the wake of the school massacre in Dunblane, Scotland. Authorities blame the massacre on inadequate gun control; an absurd explanation for a place with the strictest controls in the world. No matter how many controls are in place, more controls are always put forth as the solution.) Guns, or any private means of self-protection, undermine the police monopoly of "public protection." This is the essence of police support for gun control in the U.S..

Is mass disarmament a legitimate alterative to the crime problem? To those who would quickly choose this solution, there are several questions that need to be answered. Can politicians that write laws that they don't obey be trusted with a monopoly of arms? Can police superintendents such as LeRoy Martin, who believe that the Constitution is an irritating inconvenience to their job, be trusted with a monopoly of "public protection?" Does a government that has such a dismal record of protecting Native Americans, African Americans, and Japanese Americans really have an unquestionable claim to the authority to disarm them? The quotes at the beginning of this section as well as careful consideration of over 200 years of history, should make even the most dogmatic gun prohibitionists pause to think carefully about these questions and their implications for an unarmed citizenry.

I will work to overturn the assault weapon ban and waiting period to buy firearms. I am determined that Washington will not disarm America and I will do everything in my power to prevent further regulation of firearms and to remove existing government interventions.

Mark Thornton

Libertarian Candidate for the U.S. SenateReferences

1. Jonathan Elliot, Debates in the General State Conventions, 3d ed. (1937), p. 3.

2. Levinson, Sanford. “The Embarrassing Second Amendment.” Yale Law Journal 99 (December 1989):637-59.

3. Jonathan Elliot, Debates, op. cit., p.425-426.

4. John Adams, A Defense of the Constitutions of the Government of the United States, 1788, p.471.

5. James Madison, The Federalist, No.46. (Rutland, VT: Tuttle, 1992), p.245.

6. Thomas Jefferson, Proposal for the Virginia Constitution, Thomas Jefferson Papers, C.J. Boyd, ed. 1950, p.334.

7. Cesare Beccaria, An Essay on Crimes and Punishments, 3d ed. (London: F. Newbery, 1770) p.87-88. Jefferson translated this passage and included it in his collection of all-time great quotations.

8. Thomas Jefferson, Encyclopedia of Thomas Jefferson, Foley ed., 1967, p.318.

9. Massachusetts Ratification Convention, 1788.

10. An Examination Into The Leading Principles of the Federal Constitution Proposed by the Late Convention, 1787.

11. See Stephen Halbrook's That Every Man Be Armed: The Evolution of a Constitutional Right, David B. Kopel's Guns: Who Should Have Them?, and Joyce Lee Malcomb's To Keep and Bear Arms: The Origins of an Anglo-American Right.

12. Wall Street Journal, Aug. 8, 1994.

13. Wall Street Journal, Jan. 6, 1994.

14. Florida Commission on Assault Weapons, Final Report, May 18, 1990, Florida Dept. Of State.

15. David Kopel, Guns, op. cit., p. 73.

16. Gary Kleck, Point Blank, Aldine, 1991, ch. 8.

17. Gary L. Wright, "Woman Won't Be Charged: Boyfriend's Slaying Ruled Self-Defense," Charlotte Observer, Oct. 3, 1990.

18. David Kopel, Guns, op. cit., p.61-2.

19. Gary Kleck and Marc Gertz, "Armed Resistance to Crime: The Prevalence and Nature of Self-Defense with a Gun," Journal of Criminal Law and Criminology 85, no. 2 (1995).

20. Marcus Funk, Journal of Criminal Law and Criminology, Winter 1995.

21. Don B. Kates et al., "Bad Medicine: Doctors and Guns," Guns: Who Should Have Them?, David Kopel ed., p.253.

22. Ibid.

23. Abraham Tennenbaum, "Handguns Could Help," Baltimore Sun, Oct. 26, 1991.

24. David Kopel, Guns, op. cit., p.255.

25. Elliott C. Rothenberg, “Jewish History Refutes Gun Control Activists.” American Rifleman, Feb. 1988. Rothenberg is an attorney with B'nai B'rith's Anti-Defamation League.

26. "John D. Rockefeller IV, Gun Nut," Washington Times, Sep. 8, 1994.

27. David B. Kopel, Guns, op. cit., p. 203.

28. Tom Jackson, "Keeping the Battle Alive," Tampa Tribune, Oct. 21, 1993.

29. David B. Kopel, The Samurai, the Mountie, and the Cowboy, Prometheus, 1992.