I begin with an insight
offered by Professor Carroll Quigley (1910—1977), who taught history to
Bill Clinton at Georgetown University. He had such a profound impact on
Clinton that Clinton referred to him in his 1992 nomination acceptance
speech. Quigley is famous among conservatives for his book, Tragedy and Hope (1966),
in which he devoted 20 pages to the connections between Wall Street
banking firms and American foreign policy, which has been dominated by the
liberal left (pp. 950ff). But Quigley was also an expert in the history of
weaponry. One of his books, Weapons Systems and Political
Stability: A History, was printed directly from a typewritten
manuscript and is known only to a handful of specialists, was a 1,000-page
history of weaponry that ended with the Middle Ages. In Tragedy and Hope,
he wrote about the relationship between amateur weapons and liberty.
By amateur, he meant low cost. He meant, in the pejorative phrase of
political statists, Saturday-night specials.
In a period of specialist
weapons the minority who have such weapons can usually force the majority
who lack them to obey; thus a period of specialist weapons tends to give
rise to a period of minority rule and authoritarian government. But a
period of amateur weapons is a period in which all men are roughly equal
in military power, a majority can compel a minority to yield, and majority
rule or even democratic government tends to rise. . . .
But after 1800, guns
became cheaper to obtain and easier to use. By 1840 a Colt revolver sold
for $27 and a Springfield musket for not much more, and these were about
as good weapons as anyone could get at that time. Thus, mass armies of
citizens, equipped with these cheap and easily used weapons, began to
replace armies of professional soldiers, beginning about 1800 in Europe
and even earlier in America. At the same time, democratic
government began to replace authoritarian governments (but chiefly in
those areas where the cheap new weapons were available and local
standards of living were high enough to allow people to obtain them).
According to Quigley, the
eighteenth-century’s commitment to popular government was reinforced —
indeed, made possible — by price-competitive guns that made the average
colonial farmer a threat to a British regular. Paul Revere’s midnight
warning, “The regulars are out!” would have had no purpose or effect had
it not been that the “minute men” were armed and dangerous.
With this in mind, let me
present my thesis.
THE SECOND AMENDMENT IS
FAR TOO WEAK
The Second Amendment to
the U.S. Constitution asserts the right — the legal immunity from
interference by the State — of American citizens to keep and bear arms.
This means a rifle strapped to my back and a pistol or two strapped to my
hip, day or night.
It doesn’t go far enough.
It leaves guns in the hands of a subculture that has proven itself too
irresponsible to carry them: the police.
If I were called upon to write the constitution for a free
country, meaning a country no larger than Iowa, I would require every
citizen to be armed, except members of the police. A policeman would
have to apply for an on-duty gun permit. He would not be allowed
to carry a gun on duty, just like England’s bobbies are not
allowed to carry them.
Every child, male and female,
beginning no later than age six, would be trained by parents regarding the
moral responsibility of every armed citizen to come to the aid of any
policeman in trouble. Unarmed people deserve protection.
Children would be also
taught that the first person to pull a gun to defend an unarmed policeman
or any other unarmed person deserves the lion’s share of the credit.
Late-comers would be regarded as barely more than onlookers. This is
necessary to offset the “Kitty Genovese phenomenon.” In 1964, this young
woman was attacked and murdered in full view of 38 onlookers, in their
Queens, New York, neighborhood. Despite her screams for help, no one even
bothered to call the police. This is the “who goes first?” problem.
Anyone so foolish as to
attack a policeman would be looking down the barrels of, say, a dozen
handguns. “Go ahead, punk. Make our day!”
A policeman would gain
obedience, like James Stewart in Destry Rides Again,
through judicial empowerment. He would not threaten anyone with immediate
violence. He would simply say, “Folks, I’ve got a problem here. This
person is resisting arrest. Would three of you accompany me to the local
station with this individual?”
He would blow his whistle,
and a dozen sawed-off shotguns accompanied by people would be there within
60 seconds.
Every member of society would be trained from an early age to
honor the law as an adult by being willing to carry a handgun. Everyone
would see himself as a defender of the law and a peace-keeper.
Guns would be universal. Every criminal would know that the man
or woman next to him is armed and dangerous. He would be
surrounded at all times by people who see their task as defending
themselves and others against the likes of him.
The only person he could
trust not to shoot him dead in his tracks for becoming an aggressor would
be the policeman on the beat. The aggressor’s place of safety would be
custody.
There would be another
effect on social life. When every adult is armed, civility increases. In a
world of armed Davids, Goliaths would learn to be civil. The words of Owen
Wister’s Virginian, “Smile when you say that,” would regain their original
meaning.
The doctrine of citizen’s
arrest would be inculcated in every child from age six. Then, at the
coming of age, every new citizen would take a public vow to uphold the
constitution. He or she would then be handed a certificate of citizenship,
which would automatically entitle the bearer to carry an automatic. Note:
I did not say semi-automatic. . . .
SELF-GOVERNMENT UNDER LAWFUL
AUTHORITY
Unarmed police, now fully
deserving of protection by gun-bearing citizens, would gain immense
respect. They would rule by the force of law, meaning respect for the law,
meaning widespread voluntary submission by the citizenry. This is properly
called self-government under lawful authority. The policeman’s word would
be law. He just wouldn’t be armed.
A criminal would not
escape from the scene of the crime by shooting the cop on the beat. He
would not get 20 yards from the cop’s body.
Citizens would regard a
law enforcement officer as they regard their mothers. They would do what
they were told with little more than rolling their eyes. If anyone
physically challenged a police officer, he would risk facing a dozen Clint
Eastwoods who have been waiting for two decades to get an opportunity to
make their day.
To make this system work,
the courts would have to enforce strict liability. Injure the wrong
person, and (assuming you survive the shoot-out) you must pay double
restitution. Kill the wrong person, and you must pay the ultimate
restitution: eye for eye, life for life. But no faceless bureaucrat hired
by the State would do the act. A group of armed citizens will execute you
under the authority of the court. Remember, the police are unarmed.
The fact that citizens in no
society think this way is evidence of how well the defenders of State
monopoly power have done their work. They want their agents armed and the
rest of us unarmed. A free society would reverse this arrangement.
CONCLUSION
There are those who will
reply that my proposal is utopian, that civilians do not have sufficient
courage to come to the aid of an unarmed policeman. Furthermore, they will
complain, the common man is not sufficiently self-disciplined to live
under the rule of law as I have described it. Both objections have
validity. I can only respond by pointing out that a society in which its citizens
possess neither courage nor self-discipline is not a free society. I
am not here proposing a technical reform that will produce a
free society. Rather, I am describing why freedom has departed
from this nation ever since, for lack of a better date, 1788.
[Gary North is the author of the 31-volume An Economic Commentary on the Bible and
scores of other books. He publishes daily at his subscription site GaryNorth.com.
This article originally appeared in expanded form as “Disarm the Police,”
LewRockwell.com, August 18, 2003.]