Responsible Firearms Ownership 

End of an illusion
Bradley R. Gitz

The overwhelming vote in the U.S. House last week in favor of arming airline pilots represents one of those special political moments that allow us to declare a certain political cause dead.  The dead cause in question is gun control. The reason last week’s vote signifies its death, regardless of the subsequent fate of the same bill in the Senate, is that it decisively elevates the premise that guns equal security.
The idea that guns enhance security has always been central to the anti-gun control position. Going beyond sometimes arcane disputes regarding constitutional rights or studies purporting to demonstrate how this or that level of gun ownership produces this or that level of violence has been the fact that millions of Americans simply feel more secure when they have a gun in their home.

It doesn’t really matter whether that belief is true or not, or that there might be some evidence out there indicating that guns threaten homeowners who possess them as much as any intruders. No, what matters is that lots of quite reasonable people think a gun provides the most effective (and cheapest) home security system. And that it is not entirely unreasonable for them to believe that.

While the guns-equal-security assumption has always been a hindrance to gun control efforts, the event that elevated that assumption to the level of gospel was Sept. 11. Again, it doesn’t matter that guns played virtually no role in the events of that day, either by their presence or absence. Or that the linkage between combating terrorism and personal ownership of firearms is less than obvious.
The key is that, just as Sept. 11 reestablished the preservation of national security as the primary function of government, it also made the provision of security in all its manifestations and at all levels more relevant to the average citizen.

A complacent nation that suffers a devastating "bolt from the blue" attack is likely to be a nation also reawakened to the centrality of the concept of security (with an appreciation for security producing, in turn, an inevitably greater appreciation for guns). Indeed, in the wake of Sept. 11, one suspects that even a proposal allowing personal ownership of tanks would get a respectful hearing.

The idea of putting guns in the hands of pilots in cockpits also represents a decisive assertion of the related principle that the most effective way to stop a person wielding a gun is somebody else with a gun.

The focus has consequently shifted away from the pro-gun control goal of a world without guns toward acceptance of the pro-gun view that a world in which lots of bad guys have guns requires that lots of other people acquire them, too.

Put differently, is a terrorist more or less likely to try to hijack an airliner if the pilots have guns? The obvious answer to that question—less likely—tells us something that matters. Equally important, it raises, in tight if grim logical sequence, the next question, which is: What if every passenger aboard an airliner had a gun? Or perhaps every customer in a restaurant?

And if carrying a gun into such places to commit violence is a simple task for those determined to do so, will they be more likely to choose restaurant A (where everyone is known to be armed) or restaurant B (where no one is) as their target? What if they had to assume that at least some people in a restaurant had guns, but they didn’t know how many or which ones? What effect would the attendant uncertainties have on their thinking and subsequent action?

A reasonable assumption is that a world with lots of people walking around armed would be a highly dangerous and violent place, but perhaps also a place highly unfavorable for those intent upon committing premeditated acts of violence with arms, a la Columbine or Jonesboro.

We live either in a world in which the bad guys will always have guns or one in which we have the impressive power to guarantee that few people, including few bad guys, have them. Last week, the U.S. House of Representatives decided which of those worlds was the real one. Policy followed accordingly.

• Bradley R. Gitz teaches politics at Lyon College at Batesville, Arkansas. This story was published Thursday, July 18, 2002    *www.arkdemgaz.com*