Bordering on Insanity

by Vin Suprynowicz
by Vin Suprynowicz

I wish I could say it was amusing, but that would be disingenuous. It's more like having to deal with a child who continually wakes up screaming that there are monsters under the bed.

For a child, patience and reassurance are appropriate. It's far more embarrassing when supposedly responsible adults go running about, shrieking and behaving in ways that require frequent changes of underwear.

With their unerring instinct for irony, the editorial scriveners of The Washington Post chose July 4 to pen an editorial headlined "Guns Over Democracy," which offered their dumbfounded readers the following:

"Parliamentarians gathered in Washington this holiday weekend from Europe and North America arrived just in time to witness the U.S. House of Representatives – on the eve of the anniversary commemorating the signing of the Declaration of Independence – trample upon the right of self-determination. Morphing themselves into city council members, a House majority overturned a city law and voted to allow D.C. residents to keep in their homes loaded shotguns and rifles, as well as handguns bought before 1976, unbounded by trigger locks or disassembled. The deed itself makes a mockery of Congress as a federal body. If the action is allowed to stand, however, the consequences could be even worse: The nation's capital will become a deadlier place in which to live.

"The gun safety law that the House voted to repeal makes all the sense in the world. It enjoys the full backing of the city's mayor, council, police chief and, most important of all, the city's residents. Perhaps residents and their leaders want the law on the books because they know, even if the House does not, that properly locked or secured guns help prevent gun violence and accidental shootings. Perhaps District of Columbia residents support their gun safety laws because they now see crime in their city at a 20-year low. ... But perhaps they are outraged most of all because they have no vote in Congress. ...

"We hope opponents of the House action are successful in stopping the repeal in the Senate. ... The notion of Congress encouraging citizens in the nation's capital to keep loaded and unprotected guns in their homes borders on insanity. ..."

Goodness. Space limitations require that I be brief. Please administer some Valium and cold compresses while we itemize:

1. The United States is a republic, not a democracy. The difference is that in a republic, the rights of the minority may not be overturned by majority vote.

The Postmen's fondness for majority "self-determination" is newfound and not very convincing. Do they support the right of California's majority to defy federal authority by legalizing medical marijuana (which at least reaffirms a minority right – this one guaranteed by the Ninth Amendment – instead of stripping one away)? No. In a June 8 editorial, these die-hard statists embraced the ongoing torture of sick people, so long as it protects, "The Constitution's commerce clause ... the foundation of the modern regulatory state, underpinning since the New Deal huge swaths of federal law."

Would the Postmen support the right of a majority in some redneck Southern backwater to "self-determination" if that meant mandating Christian prayer in the schools? Of course not.

It seems to be only gun owners whose rights must be sacrificed to the misguided enthusiasm of the mob.

The right of even a minority of Washingtonians to keep and bear arms of military usefulness in their homes and on their persons is guaranteed by the Second and 14th amendments – it is proof against any scheme of regulation or licensing. (If when the Postmen claim the victim disarmament law enjoys "the full backing of the city's residents," they actually mean "the unanimous backing," then none will acquire self-defense weapons, and the question is moot ... right?)

2. The scholar John Lott (in company with professor David Mustard) has demonstrated through unrebutted statistical evidence in his book More Guns, Less Crime, that every county and state that has "allowed" more law-abiding citizens to keep and carry firearms has seen its rate of violent crime drop – not increase.

To say the District of Columbia now enjoys a 20-year low in crime is disingenuous, since virtually every America jurisdiction now experiences this phenomenon, due to an aging populace and a record high prison population. But the D.C. crime rate is still vastly above those of Vermont and the inland West, where virtually all law-abiding citizens are allowed to keep and carry arms.

3. The Founders placed the national capital inside no state, in order to prevent the federal Congress from being held hostage to the laws and jurisdiction of any one superior sovereignty. Everyone who moved to Washington, D.C., knew this going in. They are, almost to a man and woman, leeches on the federal tax dollar. If they want to elect congressmen, they should return to their home states to do so.

If there are people living in the District full-time when Congress is not in session, that is the phenomenon that must be corrected. With the exception of offices and accommodations for a few diplomatic and naval functionaries, the only proper use for the lands of the District when Congress is not in session is the grazing of livestock.

July 11, 2005

Vin Suprynowicz [send him mail] is assistant editorial page editor of the daily Las Vegas Review-Journal and author of The Black Arrow.

Copyright © 2005 Vin Suprynowicz

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