Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: SATURDAY, January 22, 1994 TAG: 9401240242
SECTION: EDITORIAL PAGE: A7 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: R. EDWARD MITCHELL
DATELINE: LENGTH: Long
On the conservative side, groups such as the National Rifle Association stubbornly oppose any sort of law or regulation that affects firearms, no matter how badly needed that regulation might be. On the other side, anti-gun forces sound as if they want to confiscate and destroy most personally owned weapons in the United States.
When emotions and political pressures mount, the executive and legislative branches of government often feel pushed to take action, even if it may be slightly unconstitutional or perhaps not in the country's best long-term interest. We fuel this pressure to ``do something, no matter what'' by pounding our elected representatives with barrages of telephone calls and mail.
Some officials receive such large volumes of correspondence for and against gun control that they are forced to gauge their constituents' leanings by weighing the mail. Can you imagine receiving 759 pounds of mail for gun control and 785 pounds against it? Would you actually cast your vote because of a 26-pound difference in paper? Unfortunately, many politicians think this way and that is the way they vote.
There is no rule that says legislators must vote the way the majority of their constituents want. (Doing so reduces government to the lowest form of democracy, namely mob rule.) To the contrary, we elect officials in the hopes they have the competence and conscience to do what is right.
As an alternative to tons of mail demanding support for one side or another of the issue, we need the quiet voices from the center to speak up. We should provide legislators and officials with insights into the values, morals and philosophies that apply to important situations, and we should try to express our best constitutional reasoning where these issues are concerned. Gun control is a difficult issue for lawmakers, chiefly because so few people understand the underlying values.
Why does our Constitution have the Second Amendment? Our founding fathers surely had strong reasons for establishing the right to bear arms as one of 10 fundamental rights in America. And there it is, in black and white, signed and duly ratified by all parties to the Bill of Rights:
``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.''
That language is clear and unambiguous. Each state has the right to form its own militia. Further, the government has no right to pass any law that infringes upon the peoples' right to own their own guns and carry them around.
Were the founding fathers crazy? No, they understood the ball-and-powder equivalent of ``might makes right.'' They understood that, by ensuring the peoples' right to own guns, they also were ensuring that government can govern only with the consent of the people. Widespread gun ownership was a pretty radical idea in most of the world during 1791, and it still is today. But the makers of our Constitution understood that an armed populace is the single greatest preventative against abuse of governmental force.
It is a formula of utter simplicity: If the population has more guns and more people who know how to shoot them than the government has, then America's government will never be able to usurp enough power to enslave people - as many other governments have done throughout history.
Today, many people discount the idea that America still needs an armed population to ensure its freedom and personal liberties. This is a dangerously naive point of view. One has only to observe recent history to realize that the power that comes with government posts can attract some very bad people. If such people get into positions of great power, one of the most effective checks and balances we have is the fact that they cannot force the American people to do anything. Instead, everything must be done through the due course of law.
The known presence of an armed population in America provides an absolute, bottom-line, last-ditch insurance policy for democracy. Despite the few criminals and insane people who sporadically commit heinous crimes with firearms, a well-armed population remains a true source of peace and domestic tranquility.
People in politics and the media often use rare, but highly spectacular, news events involving firearms to create exactly the opposite feeling about our armed population, namely fear. What has been one of the greatest strengths of the United States throughout its history is then cast by some as evil and horrible. Often this is done by people whose own personal careers profit and flourish from the attention they generate with this fear. And, often it is done by people who are simply ignorant or who are reacting from their own irrational fear.
During these times of threat to the Second Amendment, we need the wisdom of history and political resolve to protect this basic American strength. We need to keep our heads clear in the aftermath of terrible crimes and terrorism. We must resolve to punish and imprison those responsible, to ensure that convicted felons lose not only their freedom and their right to vote, but also their right to own or use firearms. We must institute a system of gun registration to prevent weapons from falling into the hands of convicted felons and the mentally disturbed.
But we must never, never vent our wrath and indignation against criminals by attempting to disarm law-abiding American citizens.
R. Edward Mitchell of Roanoke is a management consultant and technical writer who specializes in corporate focus, vision and strategic planning.
by CNB