Why the Left Hates Guns

                                                            

“President Obama says the biggest frustration of his tenure is the lack of new gun control laws.”

                              USA Today, July 24^th, 2015

Unlike most of the President Obama’s declarations – “If you like your doctor, you can keep your doctor”, for example – this one, above, was true.  You could believe him for once. Obama always hated guns and if it had been in his power he would have confiscated every firearm in the country down to the last BB gun, except for those carried by the Secret Service detail that continues to protect him and his family.

Obama is a man of the left and the left hates guns more than almost anything else they remotely associate with the despised right, more than gas guzzlers, home school families, coal companies, confederate flags or pro-life protestors. Just the mention of the NRA will trigger spasms of fury and outpourings of disgust from a leftist. The NRA for them is evil incarnate. No other organization is likely more detested.

What is it about guns that make people on the left hate them so much and harbor so much contempt for those people – not so much the criminals who use them, but the ordinary, law-abiding people who insist on owning them?

Begin with the basics:  a gun is an amazing instrument of power. A ninety pound woman physically confronted by a two hundred pound man with a BMI of 25 has little power to resist his assault or aggression.  A gun in her hand completely changes the power equation.  Sans gun by virtue of his superior size and relative strength, the man can seriously injure or even kill the woman.  It happens. With the gun she can easily kill him if he attempts to harm her. This does not happen often enough. The right person in this scenario takes the ride to the morgue. His advantage-conveying, extra 110 pounds and bigger bones and muscles are nullified by the discharge from her 25 ounce Ruger.

Guns enforce power-relations which is why police and soldiers carry them. Guns also can change power-relations which is why so many people want them both for reasons legitimate and some not so much. The left wants to take away guns (primarily those of the “bitter clingers”) so as to render them powerless.

The left would love to confiscate all the guns in this country claiming that it would end gun violence. This is idiotic on the face of it. Criminalize the possession of something in high demand and relatively easy to produce and you will see a dramatic spike in its price because of the seller’s criminal risk. High prices attract high-risk entrepreneurs (aggressive young men usually) into the marketplace who form powerful, sophisticated crime syndicates that are (a) very competitive and hence extremely violent and (b) cater successfully to vast markets for their illegal product. The massive infusion of drugs into the U.S. with the accompanying violence dramatically illustrates how the unintended consequences of firearm confiscation, if attempted, would unfold.  Government confiscation of guns would drastically increase (criminalized) gun ownership and vastly increase gun violence, not to mention the exhaustion of law enforcement resources and the complete political alienation of large numbers of American citizens. 

The loathing of the left for guns in part comes from their jealousy of power. Guns are highly-charged symbols as well as practical instruments of power, and power, they believe, belongs exclusively to them. This is not just about what guns can do.  It is about what they symbolize – individualism, independence and self-sufficiency – for the collectivist, regulation-loving, control-obsessed left, anathemas.  

The thinking on the left goes something like this: because we are compassionate, smart, right-thinking and destined by the progressive march of history to eradicate – pick your evil – racism, sexism, homophobia, imperialism, global warming, we and we alone deserve power.  If not us, who?  And, whatever we must do to get it and keep it is fine because above all else we are well-intentioned and virtuous and if we are not in charge, then it’s, well, “the other”, the corrupt and morally benighted people who oppose us  – racist, bigoted, greedy, stupid, indifferent to the plight of the poor and unfortunate.  Leftists neither practice nor believe in loyal opposition: for the opposition they have only contempt.

Gun ownership confers power and thus just the suggestion that people might legitimately arm themselves constitutes an encroachment on the left’s perceived prerogative and arouses their jealousy and outrage.  People, they groan, do not neeeeeed guns! They know what people need and don’t need and are clearly annoyed that the unenlightened rubes who live outside of the civilized regions of Manhattan, San Francisco, Washington, DC and Madison, Wisconsin cannot grasp this obvious truth.  

Self-defense, they sneeringly dismiss as a legitimate reason to own a gun – that is what the State is for.  Try not to choke on the hypocrisy.  They are protected 24x7 by armed secret service personnel (Obama and his family) or live in safe, posh suburbs with expensive, sophisticated security systems and reliable, predicable police protection. But for those “folks” for whom they have so much compassion and about whom they know so little, those folks who have to worry about the muggers, rapists, wife-batterers, drug peddlers and strung out junkies who populate their neighborhoods? Well, they are supposed to cherish how virtuous they will feel without those awful guns they don’t need and hope a cop might show up before someone in the family gets raped or murdered. We all know that there are large sections of some of the cities in the U.S. (governed by anti-gun Democrat politicians) where the police reluctantly go. The State is quite selective in the protection it provides for its citizens. The “State” for the “ruled-over” is a useless abstraction and the pervasive cynicism and skepticism now aimed at those who operate it are completely justified.  These “public servants” enjoy all of the perks of their offices that the rest of us only envy. (“Last Friday, [Hillary] Clinton flew to Bergdorf Goodman in New York, where the stylist at the salon gives $600 haircuts. The department store was locked down for her.” http://thehill.com/opinion/ab-stoddard/249734-ab-stoddard-clinton-must-be-joking) Our political class betters make onerous rules for their inferiors to live under, but not for themselves. At election time these vultures descend from their comfortable, lofty perches to perform tedious rituals of pretending to care when what they really want is just more power and the advantages and privileges that come with it.

The animosity of the left for guns is also about the special kind of snobbery they indulge that relates to the work they do and the way they live. They tend to work in the realm of ideas and at activities intended to influence the thinking and actions of others.  They teach in schools and universities, run media outlets and newspapers, manage and administer organizations, market and sell products, process paper in government offices. Some of them are “grievance specialists” at universities and other organizations, professional busybodies and scolds who operate under the rubric of “diversity”, a code word that permits them to hector and bully whomever they please. These types don’t change the oil in their own cars, fix things they own when they break down, make or grow anything they use or consume.  They pay “other people” to do things like this, and they mostly look down on them.  These “other people” tend to like guns. They live and think conservatively and work at jobs such as policemen, firemen, mechanics, truck drivers, construction workers and run small businesses. They hunt, fish, bowl, fix their own cars, go to church, take care of their grandparents, join the military and do many other things that offend the sensibilities of the left.  For the Prius-driving, inequality-obsessed Sociology professor who campaigned for Obama, the gun-toting policeman he loathes and execrates in his 101 classes could not respond quickly enough to his summons when he thinks a burglar might be near.    

The left will never relinquish their hostility toward gun owners and never abandon their efforts at gun control.  “Gun control” is a euphemism, an essential piece of the larger picture that defines the essence of the left and what they aspire to, complete control of others. Because they believe themselves to be uniquely entitled to order and manage the lives of everybody, they observe no restraints of honesty or fair play. Be assured, they will relentlessly intrude themselves into every corner of our lives so as to make the rest of us into what they think we should be, pale, inferior imitations of themselves.  Guns are a huge obstacle to this goal. Viva the cold dead fingers!

     

Of Guns and Government: Viva the Cold, Dead Fingers

To improve the efficiency and effectiveness of the health care system, the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act of 1996 (HIPAA), Public Law 104-191, included Administrative Simplification provisions that required HHS to adopt national standards for electronic health care transactions and code sets, unique health identifiers, and security. At the same time, Congress recognized that advances in electronic technology could erode the privacy of health information. Consequently, Congress incorporated into HIPAA provisions that mandated the adoption of Federal privacy protections for individually identifiable health information.  

Got that? This is the argot of those who rule over us, and this production is direct, concise and simple compared to the prose in the War and Peace length of the recently enacted Affordable Care Act, otherwise known as Obama Care.

Yet, for all the apparent complexity of intentions, the essential activities of government can be reduced to three.  The first and most basic activity is to tax.  Taxation for a government is equivalent to respiration for a person. Just as a person cannot live without breathing, a government cannot exist, cannot do anything to or for its subjects without the resources that come from taxation. The second is to regulate, to manage the behavior of the subjects.  To govern by its very nature is to exert control, to make people do some things (e .g. take off their shoes and jackets in airport security lines) and abstain from doing other things (e.g. buy soft drinks that exceed a certain volume).  The third is to punish.  While most people are willing to do what they are ordered to do or not to do, not everyone is so inclined.  Those individuals must be given certain incentives to encourage them to conform. 

If the government decides, for example, to build a road it taxes its subjects to pay for the construction and maintenance, and it builds the road wherever it chooses, regardless of whose private property it may cross. To ensure some level of safety on the roads, the driving must be regulated – the government makes traffic rules that the subjects are required to follow. If they fail to do so the government will punish them.      

What then becomes very clear when these basic activities are duly noted and seriously contemplated is that at its fundamental, rock bottom core, government is an organ of coercion.  No one in the government says “please”, “thank you” or “may I?” but instead, “you owe this amount of tax…”, “report for jury duty…”, “I sentence you to…” , “you will comply with this regulation…”  None of the obligations or directives its places on its subjects are voluntary: government forcibly takes peoples’ money (taxes); its rules, commands and regulations are pervasive and are backed up with the threats of fines, prison, even death. 

Not only is government at its core coercive, it is monopolistically coercive. Only its representatives may use threats and resort to force to secure compliance with their rules, regulations and dictates.  This unique monopoly is justified by the governing elite’s (the politicians’) benevolent intentions.  Everyone, so the rationale goes, is always much better off doing what the coercers want them to do.  A quick glance back at the last century suggests otherwise – ask the Germans, the Russians, the Chinese, the Cambodians.  Ask two-thirds of the people on the planet.

The simple, obvious fact is that while all governments are coercive in nature, the less coercive ones are better than the more coercive ones. Their politicians promise less; they have less power; they do less damage.  FDR was less lethal for his subjects than Hitler.  Nixon was gentler than Mao.  A second obvious fact is that the natural tendency of government is always in the direction of more, not less coercion. Politicians in all governments (from the worst to the best) work ceaselessly to increase their power, in a word, they aim to up the level of coercion – more taxes, more laws, more regulations.  In that regard, Obama is no different than Vladimir Putin or Raul Castro. The 2,000 page Affordable Care Act mentioned above enacted in 2010 is a stunning massive, intrusive piece of regulation and coercion that will reach deep into the lives of ordinary Americans for years to come.  A third, perhaps less obvious fact is that the politicians evade or exempt themselves from the rules they make for the rest of us.  Do President Obama, Janet Napolitano, the member of Congress strip off their jackets, shoes, belts and jewelry and submit to the gropers whenever they fly?  Will all of the complexities and constraints of Obama Care affect them?  Not ever.

Now let us speak of guns.  People hate them; they love them.  There is no topic in the United States that arouses more extreme, intense passion than the limits of gun ownership. One reason, I would argue, is that guns, both symbolically and practically, challenge and threaten the government’s jealous protection over its monopoly of coercion. Guns equalize great physical inequality. An infirmed, elderly person wielding a derringer can defend herself against a young, strong assailant.  A ninety pound woman with a Beretta can protect herself from a 300 pound raging rapist.  People with guns are in a much better position to do what the government never, ever wants them to do on their own – resist coercion!

The gun-haters and gun-lovers unite into two hostile, acrimonious camps, those who trust the coercers (who believe that if the government criminalizes gun ownership and confiscates the guns, many fewer people will be murdered), and those who are perennially suspicious of the politicians and believe that criminalizing gun ownership will make ordinary citizens more vulnerable to real criminals.    

History and common sense favor the gun lovers. First, one should never believe the promises and claims of the politicians. Vice President Biden, who leads the current gun “control” efforts is a man whose career, even by the miniature ethical standards of Washington, is remarkable for its unrelenting, flagrant dishonesty. A confessed plagiarist, a habitual liar, a serial fabricator and exaggerator, his contact with the truth is almost always accidental.  After the Newtown, CT. shooting President Obama in one of his many speeches said, “We must change!”  Who exactly is the “we”?  Being, as always, unassailably virtuous he no doubt exempts himself.  The "we" is a typical Obama subterfuge. What specifically is the “change” he wants to coerce others into making? We will all be safer he wants us to believe if the gun owners, those “bitter clingers” as he condescendingly labeled them in 2008, become former gun owners.  There is no good reason to believe him. He has a long documented history of antagonism to gun ownership and has never failed to politicize any event to his advantage.  Massacres, like the one in Newtown, for him are an “opportunity.” There is little evidence that establishes strong correlation between strict gun ownership laws and gun violence.  In fact, the contrary seems to be more the case.  Gun-strict New York City, Chicago and Washington D.C. have much higher levels of gun crime than gun-easy San Antonio and Salt Lake City.

Second, whenever government criminalizes a commodity that is easily made and that many people want, the commodity remains in easy supply. Criminality then expands because buying and selling the now-prohibited commodity are criminal enterprises.  How hard was it to get liquor after the passing of the 18th amendment to the U.S. Constitution and the Volstead Act?  No one, of course, drank during Prohibition.  How difficult has it been over the last forty years to buy marijuana? 

Third, since less coercive governments are better than more coercive ones, the citizenry should reflexively, instinctively push back on all efforts by the coercers to increase their dependency and ultimately establish their helplessness.  Anyone who believes that the government’s reach for guns will ever stop until they are all illegal is hopelessly naïve.    

Fourth, consider the hypocrisy. As President Obama splashes in the Hawaiian surf, makes his many golf rounds, whenever and wherever he goes, rest assure that hordes of security personnel bristling with guns will be near by.  He and his family will spend the rest of their days under the tax-supported protection of layers of gun-bearing, government employees.  If he has his way those "bitter clingers" he sneers at and the ordinary folks in their houses and apartments across the land will watch the thugs kick in their doors. They, however, unlike their leader will have to call and wait for the police who may or may not come to help them.  But Obama will be gratified to know that they are virtuously gun-free and thus can confront their attackers with their government-bequeathed moral superiority.