A Return to Foaming Polemic:
Putting a Case for Guns
by Sean Gabb

 My thriller set in mediaeval Rome is now finished. That is to say, the first draft is complete. I have no doubt there will be many changes before it is published. But it is complete. I have never enjoyed any act of composition for than this. Writing for about four hours a day, three days a week, I managed to turn out the last 60,000 words in twelve days – which is good progress whatever the quality of the output. And I am assured by Mr Huet – who is a stern critic – that the output is of high quality. All that keeps me from starting work on a sequel is the knowledge that I have other work to do, and that I must get the first novel published before committing time to another. 

I am considering whether to make unbound hard copies of the novel available at £20 each – good value for money, I insist, as it works out to over 300 pages in book format and is filled with graphic violence and much learning. 

However, let me turn back to politics. Yesterday, I did a brief interview on BBC Radio Lancashire about the right to keep and bear arms for defence. Though I did much on it during the controversy that followed the Dunblane shootings in 1996, I had done almost nothing on it during the following eight years. 

An mp3 file of the interview is available at: http://www.libertarian.co.uk/multimedia/multimedia.htm

But the owner of The England Project blog – http://www.theenglandproject.net/mt/ —has taken what I know from experience to be the great trouble to transcribe the interview. I could have tidied up the usual pauses and broken grammar, but decided not to. Here it is: 

05/07/05—BBC Radio Lancashire Dr Sean Gabb

Interviewer: …let's get another view on this. I'm pleased to say joining us now from the Libertarian Alliance is Dr Sean Gabb. Sean good afternoon. 

Dr Sean Gabb: Good afternoon. 

I: Um, lets, let's go back to the simple equation. The more people who have guns, the more dangerous people have guns, the more dangerous society is isn't it?  

SIG: Not at all, before 1920 you could walk into a gun shop in this country and without showing any identification or any permit buy as many guns and ammunition as you could afford and you could carry that round and keep them at home for defence of your life and property. In those days England was an astonishingly peaceful country. There were millions and millions of guns in circulation and yet gun crime was almost unknown. Now there is no straight equation between the number of guns legally available and the amount of crime.  

I: Do you think this is a choice then, you're from the Libertarian Alliance, do you think this is a choice of personal freedom here, personal choice?  

SIG: I think it's a question of personal freedom. You have the right to protect yourself and your family in the best way available.  

I: Does that mean if you have a gun to shoot an intruder though?  

SIG: Yes it does. If anyone breaks into your house he takes his life into his own hands and if you do not kill him you are acting mercifully. No, this is a question about you, about the listeners, do you want to be able to feel secure in your home, do you want to be able to protect yourself and your family?  

I: But does society feel more secure if there are more guns around, if there are more guns in people’s homes? In the glove box of cars?  

SIG: No, no, the evidence is absolutely overwhelming. Those countries where guns are easily available for law abiding people are much more peaceful. We [unknown] America, but America is a big place, it's 52 states all with their own laws. Those states which have very liberal gun control laws where you can have a gun at home and where you can use it do not have very much crime. Those parts of America which have very strict gun control laws, almost as strict in some places as our own, have very high levels of gun crime. The fact is that if you ban guns all you do is disarm the honest respectable public. Do you think criminals are at all deterred by gun control laws? No, it disarms us, they remain armed.  

I: I just wonder though… 

SIG: They can run through us like a fox through chickens.  

I: It is the old scenario, isn't it, of why did you answer the door with a gun in your hands sir? I mean, having guns in the home is open to a fit of pique isn't it, it's open to people's temper.  

SIG: If you believe that people are not fit to keep arms for their own defence, um, you know, it's a bit odd that you believe that people who have the right to vote in a government that, um, rules all out lives. You either trust people or you run the country like some gigantic open air lunatic asylum which is what the present government is doing.  

I: Well let's talk about America then and, and, because there the gun lobby in America is, is hugely powerful isn't it? We mentioned Charlton Heston and, er, his colleagues and so on who, a really powerful lobbying voice there. Do you think in this country, if you own a gun, if you own a gun for sport, not necessarily for protecting, er, you and yours that you are seen as somehow odd, that you are seen as a pariah of society?  

SIG: You are seen as somehow odd but I must say I'm not interested in owning guns for sport. The only use, as far as I'm concerned, the only place for guns in sport is to get people practiced so they can use guns for self defence. Um, look…  

I: So you'd have a country that is armed to the teeth with personal arsenals at home?  

SIG: Yes… 

I: That sounds dangerous to me. 

SIG: Well, it sounds like you want to run the country like an open air lunatic asylum. Now let me give you a little statistic. In this country 53% of burglaries take place in homes which are occupied. In America that figure is only 13% and the reason is because burglars, in America, are frightened that if they break into an occupied home they'll be shot. In this country burglars know that once they’ve broken in through the door they can do as they like with you. They can tie you up, they can pop your eyes out.  

I: So to your mind it is redressing the balance?  

SIG: Um, I'm not talking about redressing the balance, I'm talking about giving people like you and me and the listeners the most effective way to protect ourselves and our loved ones from the predations of the various armed street trash who are running uncontrolled on the streets of our country.  

I: Ok Sean, we'll leave it there. Thank you very much for you time today.

 So there is the interview. And here is a short article I was asked to write last week for a trade journal called The CostCo Connection: 

Article for The CostCo Connection
On the Right of Shopkeepers to Arm Themselves against Attack
Sean Gabb

 The question is whether shopkeepers should have the right to arm themselves against violent robbery.

My answer is that they most certainly should have that right. However, I am not fundamentally interested in their right to keep baseball bats or pepper sprays. These have their use – but not against the sort of determined attackers who are the real danger to life and property. Nor am I specifically interested in the rights of shopkeepers to the exclusion of all other persons in this country. 

Shopkeepers – and everyone else in this country – should have the right to arm themselves with guns. 

Since I am one of the few people in the country willing to say this, I want above all else to be clear. So let me begin by saying that I believe in the right of adults to be able to walk into a gun shop, and, without showing any licence or proof of identity, buy as many guns and as much ammunition as they can afford. I also believe that adults should be free to keep guns at home and in their businesses and to carry them about in public, and use them in defence of their life, liberty and property. 

I am not saying this because I am a gun owner: I am not nor ever have been. I say it because I believe that the right to self-defence is a fundamental human right, comparable to freedom of speech and association. Anyone who is denied this right—to keep and bear arms—is to some extent enslaved. That person has lost control over his life. He is dependent on the State for protection. 

Of course, most people watching me will say that I am mad. Do I want a society where every criminal has a gun, and where every domestic argument ends in a gun battle? 

The short answer is no. The longer answer is to say that more guns do not inevitably mean more killings. There is no evidence that they do. What passes for evidence is little more than an excuse for not trusting ordinary people with control over their own lives. 

Take armed crime, both professional and domestic. Great Britain had no gun controls before 1920, and very low rates of armed crime. Today, Switzerland has few controls, and little armed crime. Those parts of the US where guns are most common are generally the least dangerous. There is no necessary correlation between guns and armed crime. 

Focussing on professional crime, gun control is plainly a waste of effort. Criminals will always get hold of guns if they want them. At most, it needs a knowledge of the right pubs to visit. All control really does is to disarm the honest public, and let the armed criminals roam through them like a fox through chickens. 

Indeed, free ownership of guns may often reduce armed crime. Just consider what might have happened had someone else beside Michael Ryan been carrying a gun in Hungerford High Street in August 1987. He might have been cut down before firing more than a few shots. Think of the burglaries, rapes and other crimes that might never happen if the victims were armed, and therefore able to deal with their aggressors on equal terms. As the saying goes: "God made men equal, and Smith and Wesson make damn sure it stays that way". 

But let us move away from armed burglars and rapists and the occasional lone psychopath. We need guns to protect us from the State. So far from protecting us, the State is the main aggressor. A low estimate puts the number of civilians murdered by states this century at 56 million—and millions of these were children. In all cases, genocide was preceded by gun control. How far would the Holocaust have got if the Jews in Nazi Germany had been able to shoot back? How about the Armenians? The Kulaks? The Chinese bourgeoisie? The Bosnians? In all previous societies, guns and freedom have gone together. I doubt if our own is any different. 

Laugh at me. Call me mad. Call me evil. But just remember me when you or your loved ones are being raped, or mugged, or dragged off never to be seen again—and you are an obedient, disarmed little citizen who can do nothing about it.

I hope my next Internet article will be an original composition. But I hope the above will do for now.