From Baltimore Sun columnist Gregory Kane:

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Quickly, now, who said it?

"The great object is that every man be armed. ... Everyone who is able may have a gun."

Most Americans of the liberal/left persuasion, the ones who believe guns are evil, might think it's Charlton Heston, president of the National Rifle Association. These days, lefty anti-gun nuts think of Heston as something akin to the Antichrist. They revile the NRA with a passion previously reserved for the Ku Klux Klan and Nazis. So Heston, of course, would be their prime suspect. No. 2 on the list would be anyone associated with the NRA.

But, as in their position on the Second Amendment, they'd be wrong. The one who said it was Patrick Henry. You might have heard of him. Yeah, the guy of "Give me liberty or give me death" fame. One of the Founding Fathers. A patriot. A revolutionary. One of those guys who knew the intent of the Second Amendment, because he was there when it was written.

That tidbit of information comes from The Seven Myths of Gun Control, authored by Richard Poe, editor of FrontPageMagazine.com. If you're thinking of Poe as another gawd-awful conservative, you'd be right. FrontPageMagazine.com is the Web site of conservative upstart David Horowitz, who caused a ruckus this year by taking out an ad in several college newspapers denouncing reparations for slavery as a bad, racist idea.

But it's high time we conservatives took the offensive in the battle for the Second Amendment, isn't it? Because that's what the debate is about. This tiff between conservatives and liberals isn't about gun control. What's at stake is the very existence of the Second Amendment itself. Anti-gun nuts, in their more honest moments, will admit this.

Misinformation about the Second Amendment's intent - specifically, that it only applies to militiamen - is one of the myths Poe tackles in his book. He gives the Henry quote and another from Richard Henry Lee, a signer of the Declaration of Independence and great-uncle of Confederate Gen. Robert E. Lee.

"To preserve liberty, it is essential that the whole body of the people always possess arms, and be taught alike, especially when young, how to use them."

It is on that issue of children and guns that the gun controllers get most frantic. But that's another of the seven myths that Poe challenges. It's No. 3 on his list ("Guns pose a special threat to children") and Poe destroys it with statistics that show far more children die from drowning, burning and car crashes. Those stories about kids finding daddy's gun and accidentally shooting playmates make poignant news, but, compared to other activities that put children at risk, simply don't happen that often.

Poe began his book with a tale of how the effort to keep guns away from children led to tragedy. In Merced, Calif., a man broke into the house of the Carpenter family and stabbed two children to death. All five children, ranging in ages from 14 to 7, had been trained by their father to use his .357-caliber Magnum. When the man broke in, the gun, as California law demanded, was high on a closet shelf and unloaded. Alas, the children were home alone. None could reach the gun.

The incident occurred last August. Poe stressed that news reports made no mention that a gun was in the home and that California law prevented any of the children from using it in their defense. Those passionate about gun control who are justifiably horrified when a child is shot by another playing with a handgun should consider this: 9-year-old Ashley Carpenter and her 8-year-old brother John are just as dead as any child killed accidentally with a handgun.

The other myths on Poe's list are:

• Guns increase violent crime. Not so, Poe says, pointing to John Lott's book More Guns, Less Crime, which argues that states with right-to-carry laws have less crime than states that don't. Poe also says that England - one of those civilized industrial nations with strict gun laws that anti-gun nuts want us to emulate - had 40 percent more muggings than the United States in 1998. Assault and burglary rates were 100 percent higher. In the category of "hot burglaries" - where the thieves enter houses while people are at home - the rate for the United States is 13 percent of all burglaries. It's 50 percent in Canada and England.
• Pulling a gun on a criminal endangers you more than the criminal. Nope. In most cases, criminals - stupid but not crazy - flee for their lives.
• We should treat guns the same way we treat cars, requiring licenses for all users. Licenses, Poe argues, are for privileges. Gun ownership is a right.

(Stephen interjects: I disagree here. I have no objection in principle with the training and testing, followed by licensing, of gun owners.)

• Reasonable gun-control measures are no threat to law-abiding gun owners. Refer to the fate of the aforementioned Carpenter children.
• The Second Amendment is an obsolete relic of the frontier era. I wonder if those Korean store owners who protected their property with shotguns and assault rifles during the 1992 Los Angeles riots have such a Pollyanna view of the innate good intentions of latter-day Americans.

The war for the Second Amendment continues to rage. Gun rights advocates should add The Seven Myths of Gun Control to their arsenal of arguments.

-- Anonymous, July 31, 2001

Answers

Poole:

In all honesty, when an article starts off by calling people names, I just don't read it. Makes no difference if it is on the web or in the old line press. Just turns me off.

Best Wishes,,,,

Z

-- Anonymous, July 31, 2001

Poole, you are dangerous. We will sanitize you.

Only the government should have guns. We know what is best for you.

-- Anonymous, July 31, 2001

[We should treat guns the same way we treat cars, requiring licenses for all users. Licenses, Poe argues, are for privileges. Gun ownership is a right. (Stephen interjects: I disagree here. I have no objection in principle with the training and testing, followed by licensing, of gun owners.)]

Stephen: I agree that any one who keeps a gun around should learn to use it. But I also think people should be required to pass a basic IQ test before there allowed to vote to, so I not always a good one to listen to on these things. We have to be very careful about what restrictions we allow on a right or that right ceases to be.

I have often wondered if the whole debate isn't really about whether we as individuals have a right to protect our selves from someone intent on harming us. Depending on what state you live in this can be a real thorny issue. I find it interesting that many states pohibit us from owning or carrying almost anything that might be effectively used to defend ourselves. (Tasers, pepper-spray, sword canes. etc.) Even martial artists have to weigh their response. If they get to aggressive in the heat of a confrontion they end up being arrested. One would think that the right to defend one person would be one of the most basic of rights.

Brett(If they read the rest of the bill of rights as narrowly as they want to read the second ammendement, we would have no rights.)

-- Anonymous, July 31, 2001

Brett,

We've allowed the court system to make law rather than interpret the laws passed by elected representatives. I could make the argument that *MOST* of the Bill of Rights is being ignored nowdays, from the restrictions against illegal search and siezure to the fact that those powers not specifically granted to the federal government should remain vested in the states.

The problem is getting people to understand this. Because they have one or two pet issues (Roe V. Wade is the most common) that might be threatened if we reined in the courts, they oppose it, thereby shooting themselves in the foot.

The loss of Second Amendment rights in this country is only part of it.

-- Anonymous, August 01, 2001

We've a sovernign nation that can't stop tons of drugs from crossing our borders every month. What could possibly prevent guns from replacing or augmenting that trade? Who then would own guns after we'd made our nation gun safe from ourselves?

-- Anonymous, August 01, 2001

Stephen: Oh I agree. The 10th amendment is completely ignored. What's facinating to me is that one of the main objections to the bill of rights in the first place was that there was a fear that it would be interpeted as the "only" rights we had. About 200 years later, we see that come all to true. Sad ain't it. I have a personal cundrum over training and licensing requirements. I truely believe it would save lives to require it. But I'm not sure that the number of lives saved is worth the legal degridation of the basic right. Understanding we won't even drive slower in this country to save lives.

Brett(yes I spell phonetically, get off my case. :)

-- Anonymous, August 01, 2001

Poole:

I have had this discussion with Flint on one of the last versions of the board. We agree.

Let me explain myself. I grew-up in rural West Virginia. During WWII, meat was scarce. We raised some but used wild-life. I learned to shoot a gun when I was 3. I started hunting with my grandfather at 4. I have a number of guns.

Personally, I am uncomfortable in agreeing with the lunatic fringe on this subject. I don't agree on the concealed weapons issue. I do believe this is part of the coming disagreement between urban and rural people [like me]. I don 't know where it will go. I do know that they will have to pry my Leica out of my dead cold hands. *<)))

Best wishes,,,,

Z

-- Anonymous, August 01, 2001

Two simple questions. No answers yet.

-- Anonymous, August 03, 2001

(yes I spell phonetically, get off my case. :)

Don't worry about it, they are used to it, they're used to me.

If the NRA and their followers would get off of the "spin", I think most people would come to agreement on gun issues.

They push the idea that gun control equates a ban on gun ownership.

I believe that there should be background checks made on people before they can purchase a gun. I believe they should be licensed. I believe a basic safety course should be required for all "future" gun owners, along with a basic lesson on their how to use them properly. Gun shows should not circumvent the law by selling guns without background checks. I believe in adults being held responsible for the safety of the guns in their possesion~in other words, they should be charged and sentenced for any harm done by a gun in their home that they own which has not been secured from use by their children. I don't think guns should be outlawed. I see absolutely no justifiable reason for assault weapons. I do not mean hunting rifles, but arms that are specifically made for war-like use. The same goes for armor piercing ammunition.

If the NRA would stop acting like laws to control the use of weapons and registration of arms equate a complete ban on them, then the big argument would fizzle out.

The second amendment was made during a time when it was necessary to own a weapon, for hunting to provide food to protection from a society that had a completely different set of dangers.

I don't understand the stubborn, bullheaded mentality of the NRA extremists, exaggerating the dangers of loss of our "right to bear arms" and advocating for total freedom of all firearms and ammunition, when basic common sense and support of reasonable legislation would go a long way towards society accepting people's right to arm themselves. They whine about total gun bans (which is not the goal of most who believe in gun control) and yet they want all sorts of dangerous guns etc. to be allowed. They are the ones with the problem. As long as they keep their mentality, they will create opposition from more of society.

-- Anonymous, August 04, 2001