[Ed: This piece is excerpted from a much longer, and well worth reading, seven-part series first published by our colleagues at The Arbalest Quarrel on February 6, 2019.] 

Oppressive antigun measures do not promote public safety

Removal of guns from society won’t promote public safety. It never has; never will. (See . . .“The Failed Experiment, Gun Control and Public Safety in Canada, Australia, England and Wales,” Public Policy Sources (Number 71, November 2003), by Gary A. Mauser.) And, if, perchance, someone could prove, by argument, it did, it would never be worth the price of sacrificing our sacred rights and liberties. But, they can’t prove that draconian gun control measures will ever make the individual or . . . society as whole . . . any safer.

[Many a]ntigun politicians . . . probably [know that], but pretend otherwise. It fits the[ir] narrative . . . [even though]. . . the statistical evidence patchy at best. So antigun proponents squash debate, offering simplistic slogans in lieu of facts; in lieu of sound reasoning. . . . Many Americans want to believe the[ir] lies. Cognitive dissonance and confirmation bias kicks in to assist the gun grabbers’ false messaging.

Antigun zealots reduce discussion to two simple, basic declarations, one the corollary of the other: arms expansion endangers the public; arms reduction promotes public safety. Americans hear the message often. Through vehement exhortation and constant repetition the gun grabbers imprint their message on the public psyche.

The clarion call for mass arms reduction demands submission to governmental authority. Antigun proponents impel the public to rebel against their own best interests: to abandon a sacred right. They promise societal tranquility and serenity, if Americans but heed their call.

They [also] crush dissent. A sacred right for them is an object of scorn, emblematic of a “gun culture.

Antigun measures target average law-abiding citizens, not the violent criminal

Millions of law-abiding, rational Americans cherish the fundamental, unalienable right of the people to keep and bear arms [and to] exercise that right. These citizens don’t cause gun violence. If they did, Americans would see carnage on a scale beyond that unleashed by psychopaths, terrorists, drug cartel members, and garden-variety criminals, living among us.

Antigun politicians should deal with these violent elements. They don’t.

Hundreds of antigun federal and State Statutes, and many more local codes, rules, regulations, and procedures have done little to curb gun violence. . . [S]uch measures target millions of average, law-abiding, rational Americans, who don’t commit gun violence.  Antigun measures do significantly less to target the fringe element of society, that do commit gun violence.

The idea that fewer firearms in the hands of everyone will reduce gun violence is erroneous. [But f]or many people, the argument has an aura of plausibility, as so many wrong theories do. Consider instances of violent crime in the EU, and in Mexico and Central American Countries. The citizenry of these Nations has suffered, notwithstanding strict regulation of firearms.

And, no matter how many restrictive gun measures exist, it is never enough.

Antigun politicians call for ever more restrictive gun legislation. They direct antigun legislation [at] the law-abiding, rational American citizen. They maintain the pretense that once no law-abiding, rational American citizen has access to firearms, every law-abiding, rational American will be the better for it; will be safe and secure.

It is the mass of citizenry that antigun politicians seek to control; even if they state it is the criminal, the sociopath, the lunatic they seek to constrain and restrain. The extent and nature of antigun legislation bears this out. . . They seek to control the citizenry because they are distrustful of it.

This distrust in the Nation’s citizenry, in whom ultimate authority and power resides, consistent with the will of the founders of a free Republic, the founders of an indestructible Constitution, is endemic among those who espouse a collectivist agenda, reflected in totalitarian societies that have forever espoused strong Government control over . . . the citizenry. Societies structured on the precepts of Socialism, Communism, and Fascism exemplify this. Despite the subtle differences in economic and political ideology of these various totalitarian systems, they are all grounded on the notion of Collectivism—consisting of a set of precepts, completely at odds with those that define Individualism.

It was through application of the latter set of precepts, those grounded on Individualism, not the former, those grounded on Collectivism, that our founders drafted a Constitution upon which our Nation was founded and on which a great Nation has long stood. The new radical Left in this Country, . . . seeks to turn on its head all that our founders have accomplished.

Of the enumerated fundamental, unalienable rights, Leftist politicians know, the one etched in the Second Amendment is most difficult to dislodge. But these politicians are tenacious.

Leftists abhor the Second Amendment of the Bill of Rights of the U.S. Constitution, more so than any other elemental right set forth in the Bill of Rights, because [it] constitutes the greatest threat to their accumulation of power and their ability to maintain power over the American people.

The three antigun planks

Although gun laws enacted by Congress, State Legislatures, and subordinate bodies of the States, are numerous and complex, the strategy undergirding them is simple. That strategy has three primary planks. Each Governmental measure falls into one or more planks, and Leftist, antigun politicians . . . often pursue all three planks simultaneously. These three planks are as follows:

One, continually expand the domain of banned firearms, ammunition, and firearms’ components and paraphernalia. 

Two, continually expand the domain of individuals who cannot lawfully own or possess firearms, ammunition, and firearms’ components and paraphernalia. 

Three, . . . make the exercise [of the right to keep and bear arms] so onerous, so pernicious, so expensive, that few of these individuals will wish to continue to do so.

Through it all, there may be a silver lining for those of us who cherish the Second Amendment to the U.S. Constitution. . . .

[T]he Conservative wing on the United States Supreme Court will [we believe] continue to review antigun laws that impermissibly impinge on and infringe the Second Amendment, and . . . strike down unconstitutional laws, rules, regulations, codes, and procedures. The U.S. Supreme Court has done remarkably well with the issuance of favorable rulings in the seminal Heller and McDonald cases. While reluctant to take up any Second Amendment case since then until very recently, the fact that the high Court has now voted, finally, to hear a straightforward Second Amendment case, in the decade since Heller and McDonald, this may very well augur a good sign for things to come, apropos of preservation of our sacred Bill of Rights. . . (See our article, posted recently, titled, “U.S Supreme Court To Hear New York Gun Case; Mainstream Media Visibly Worried.”)

We must let Republicans in Congress and in State Government [and] the President know, too, that . . . preserving and strengthening the Second Amendment is . . . critical to the safeguarding of a Free Republic, and the safeguarding of our Nation’s Constitution, and the safeguarding of our Country’s core values, history, and traditions .

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— DRGO Editor Robert B. Young, MD is a psychiatrist practicing in Pittsford, NY, an associate clinical professor at the University of Rochester School of Medicine, and a Distinguished Life Fellow of the American Psychiatric Association.

All DRGO articles by Robert B. Young, MD