Excessive Gun Control is Inconsistent with Liberal Values

Excessive gun control is inconsistent with liberal values. I realize that I'm making a lot of people's eyes bulge out with that statement. Allow me to explain.

Modern liberal values are based on the notion that society has a moral responsibility to it's most vulnerable elements and that government is an appropriate means by which society can meet those moral responsibilities. I suggest that this is the fundamental concept that makes liberalism what it is. Positions, laws and policies which are truly liberal in nature are those which spring forth from this idea.

What makes the invention of firearms so truly unique in mankind's history of weapons use is how very useful they can be to almost anyone. Historically, most other weapons you could think of depend on physical strength and agility. A broad sword is a very effective means by which a fit, healthy young man may kill a lot of people. History is sadly riddled with accounts of this happening. But how useful is that same broad sword in the hands of an 80 year old grandmother in a wheelchair? What good is a mace or a knife to a 98 pound woman when confronted by several able-bodied men away from the eyes of law enforcement?

Before modern firearms were invented, the strong always devoured the weak. In a confrontation, strong younger males had the inherant power to to as they wished to others. Guns changed that. There is a reason why the Colt pistol was called 'the great equalizer.' The 80 year old grandmother in a wheelchair can aim and fire a pistol just as effectively as Rambo. Firearms allow the most vulnerable people in our society to defend themselves in a way that was never possible before. Women can prevent themselves from being raped. Elderly people can defend themselves against intruders. Low income people (usually minorities) who are forced to live in dangerous neighborhoods can have some measure of protection against gangs or desperate junkies.

It is very easy for a white, middle-class person living in a safe neighborhood to say that guns are bad and that nobody should have them. Odds are that he or she does not have to worry about gangs of armed thugs wandering around their home at all hours. Even if you could take away the guns from the gangs as well as from the innocent people living in those dangerous neighborhoods, that would hardly improve things. A large group of young, strong male criminals armed with knives or big sticks will kill, injure and generally intimidate unarmed people just as surely as they did with guns.

We all want to depend on law enforcement and in general our police officers do a pretty good job. But they can't be everywhere and because of this they are usually better at arresting people for having committed violent crimes than they are at stopping them in the first place. Here in Charlottesville we've had the same serial rapist terrorizing women for many years. If I was a woman whose circumstances required walking in isolated places you better believe I would get a concealed weapon permit and learn how to safely handle a pistol. Access to firearms is something that generally favors women as a group and can enable them to rise out of the position of automatic victimhood to which they have been subjected by men for thousands of years.

One of the favorite bumper stickers of Second Amendment advocates is "if guns are outlawed then only criminals will have guns." Many people like to scoff at this and feel that it is possible to crack down on the firearms trade to such an extent that guns will no longer be available to more than a handful of criminals. Even if such a thing were desirable, consider the fact that the federal government banned the possession and use of both marijuana and cocaine about 80 years ago. Tell me, how's that been working out? Because from what I can see, cocaine is still easily available in just about every single town and city in America despite having been not only banned but the target of a massive, sustained interdiction effort costing billions and billions of dollars. Cocaine is illegal in America, it's illegal in Mexico and in Canada in it's illegal in those countries' neighboring states. Yet this hasn't prevented criminals from easily building a sophisticated and comprehensive distribution network around the world and everywhere in America. If foreign criminals can ship thousands of tons of cocaine every year to criminal gang members in cities all over America, then what would possibly prevent them from doing the same thing with guns?

The answer is nothing. As the failed drug war has proven, you cannot effectively ban the import of something that large numbers of criminals want to get their hands on. Which is why even a total ban on the possession of any gun anywhere in the US could not result in a major drop in violence any more than the total ban on the possession of cocaine resulted in a drop in the rate of overdoses.

My own thoughts about the role of guns in our society were changed dramatically by Hurricane Katrina. Previously, the notion of needing guns to defend one's home and family against anything more than a brief threat seemed silly in the modern age. We have a strong government that will always maintain law and order and protect us, right? What most of us had failed to consider was the possibility of someone with border-line down syndrome occupying the White House. For an entire week, a major American city was ceded to snakes and gangs. Where were the police? Out looting with the rest of the criminals. We all saw it on camera with our own eyes. Now we know that we are always one natural disaster away from total anarchy. An earthquake, a hurricane or something else totally unforseen could easily create a situation in which your life depends on your ability to personally defend it. When this happens and the village idiot happens to be President, should the weak suffer at the hands of the strong? Of course not. Liberals who value the most vulnerable people in our society should support and encourage their right to defend themselves.

One question that has to be asked is whether it's really worth it. Does the inherant danger of possessing a firearm outweigh the overall benefits? According to the National Safety Council's data for 2002, 762 people in the US were killed as a result of the accidental discharge of firearms. Is this a lot? Considering that 1,598 people were killed by falling down the stairs a reasonable person would have to say that it is not. Even if you and your children are among the 50% or so of American households that posesses a gun, you are still more likely to be killed by your own stairs than by an firearms-related accident. I haven't seen fatality numbers for this (so it's not an apples-to-apples comparison), but about 40,000 people in North America wind up in emergency rooms every year as a result of using a chainsaw. Tools are dangerous. Sharp, pointy things are dangerous. Stairs are dangerous. So we learn how to use them safely and apply some standards to them, like finger guards on power tools, railings on staircases and safeties on guns.

For these reasons that I have outlined I see no reason why an anti-gun position is in any way liberal. The anti-gun movement is one of those things that has somehow attached it's self to the Democratic party as a special interest totally unrelated to the party's core values. Many Democrats got used to weakly cheering the issue on just because their leadership had to cut a deal with them for a few elections in order to get to 51%. It makes about as much sense as the Republican base being both rabidly pro-life and in favor of massive tax cuts for the rich. There is no relationship between these two issues whatsoever. No relationship between opposition to abortion and traditional conservative philosophy. These shouldn't be partisan issues.

I have noticed over the last year that most Democrats I talk with don't seem very interested in more gun control. The stereotype of the frothing-at-the-mouth liberal who wants to ban all guns would appear to be a very rare bird indeed around these parts. I spent several years on the Charlottesville Democratic Committee including some time on the Executive Committee. I've worked on more political campaigns than I can even recount here, including several at a senior level. I rarely miss a caucus or a district meeting and attended the last state convention as a delegate for John Kerry. In all of that experience working with and speaking with Virginia Democrats I could count the number of times that gun control was even mentioned on the fingers of one hand. Even in private, nobody is pushing for it. There is a general sense that we have reached the point of diminishing returns where we've got some good policies in place for keeping weapons away from violent criminals and anything more will just be a hassle for law-abiding citizens.

What we have to do now as a party is get the word out. While Virginia Democrats as a group have long since stopped advocating for new restrictions on firearms we have allowed the Republican party and conservative organizations to continue to portray us as major opponents to the Second Amendment. I can't tell you how often I see people on firearms discussion sites talking about how much they wish the GOP would lose control of the House except that they're scared as hell that Nancy Pelosi will try to take their hunting rifles away. Truthfully, I can't blame them. We've done a terrible job of demonstrating the Democratic party's gradual disentanglement from the Republican-led anti-gun lobby (Sarah Brady is a Republican and still touts her party credentials in her official biography). Please, folks; let's be realistic about which issues are really a part of our core values and which are just special interests leaching off of our organization and costing us elections.