Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: TUESDAY, April 17, 1990 TAG: 9004170473
SECTION: EDITORIAL PAGE: A-8 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE:
DATELINE: LENGTH: Medium
In this country, the National Rifle Association was quick to cite this as evidence of one of its central theses: In the hands of the common people, guns are an important means to keep tyrannical government in check.
We won't debate the intent of the Second Amendment and its "right . . . to keep and bear arms" in this article. It just seems a bit of a stretcher to invoke that as somehow pertinent to the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics - including those republics, like the Baltics, that would rather not be a part of the union.
The U.S.S.R.'s national constitution, for whatever it's worth, teems with guarantees of human rights. As you may have guessed, keeping arms is not among them. Except in some republics such as Soviet Georgia, privately owned weapons must be registered with the government. But it appears that most of them aren't. Radio Liberty mentions one official Soviet estimate that there are as many as 17 million unregistered guns in the country, two to three times the number that are registered.
The gun lobby in the United States views all governments, including our own, as potentially oppressive. It looks on efforts to register guns in this country as a prelude to confiscation.
Maybe the Soviets just do things differently. But they've had gun registration for lo these many years; illegal possession can even lead to a five-year prison sentence. Yet their government - until recently one of the most oppressive on Earth - has made no general effort to take those guns out of private citizens' hands.
More to the point, the great majority of Soviet citizens have lived under this oppressive rule all their lives. Peasants with guns did try, unsuccessfully, to resist collectivization several decades ago. That was a rare exception. Not until the past couple of years has it occurred to any Soviets to take up their arms, registered or otherwise, and oppose domestic tyranny. The uprisings in the Baltics, Armenia, Azerbaijan and elsewhere have occurred since the central government relaxed its hold, not because that grip was tightened.
It happens that, just as in America, guns are part of the popular culture in much of the U.S.S.R. Years ago, photographs of Politburo members often showed them in hunting dress, with shotguns. There are hunting societies and periodicals. In some areas, ethnic pride involves gun ownership. More Soviet people nowadays want a shooter. In most major cities, there is a brisk black market in guns, including military weapons.
If all this firepower isn't being employed in the name of freedom, how is it being used? Again as in America, in crime. Stephen Sestanovich, director of the Washington, D.C.-based Center for Strategic and International Studies, wrote not long ago in The Washington Post:
"Ordinary Soviet citizens are apparently beginning to feel the effects of all this arming. The media are full of statistics (and anxious letters from readers) on the rising levels of violent crime, especially from the so-called "mafias" that have long operated in the second economy and, taking advantage of Gorbachev's reforms, have become a force in the newly legal world of private business as well. ("As in, `Nice little cooperative restaurant you got there, comrade. It'd be a shame if something happened to it.")
In times of domestic turmoil, guns in the hands of private citizens can cause governments trouble. The existence of those guns, however, is not likely to give a determined regime pause in having its way. For some, it may be a nice thought that the common people can take up arms and eradicate tyranny. In the Soviet Union or any other country, a thought is about all it is.
by CNB