David Virtue's Irrational Hoplophobia - Part 3 in a Series

Gun Madness in America: Avoiding the Obvious, an article Mr. Virtue posted in Virtue Online on February 17, 2018.  In this reply and subsequent ones I will respond to salient passages in italicized bold.  The reader will need to refer to the article for context:

"Another round of gun madness, another round of killings, the 18th school shooting so far this year. More can be anticipated. Since 2013, there have been nearly 300 school shootings in America — an average of about one a week with no end in sight because of the collective amnesia by Washington politicians, the NRA and millions of Americans who believe that freedom can only be found spurting bullets from the end of a gun."

"The NRA and millions of Americans who believe that freedom can only be found spurting bullets from the end of a gun."  That, ladies and gentlemen, is kind of misrepresentative, hyperbolic and emotive rhetoric to which Virtue repeatedly resorts in his anti-gun arguments.  As you will see in this post and in the next few parts to this series, it is all he can muster (no pun intended.)

"America needs to ban assault weapons like the AR-15 because they serve no purpose but to kill another human being. No one is safe in America any more. You can be in a school, church, supermarket, shopping mall or theatre. You can be in a rich or poor neighborhood, a so-called “gun-free zone” and still you risk your life."

Mr. Virtue is either oblivious to or willfully suppresses the fact that *all* weapons are designed to kill human beings, or animals or both.  That is what a "weapon" is.   Moreover, not for Virtue, apparently, is the fact that the right to keep and bear arms as enshrined in the Second Amendment to the United States and as reaffirmed by the United States Supreme Court in the Heller, McDonald and recent Buren decisions protects exactly the kind of firearms he decries, mainly firearms suited for military use (e.g., the AR platform).  The Second Amendment, which at the time of its drafting had neither recreational shooting or hunting in mind, but in connection with the needs of a "well-regulated militia".  This was affirmed in the 1939 US Supreme Court decision U.S. v. Miller.  

At the time of the amendment's drafting and adoption, black powder rifles, handguns and other small arms were the weapons used by the militia and Continental Army. And the amendment says the "the people" have the right to own such arms.  Gun-control advocates such as Virtue repeatedly trot out the tired, old argument that the Founding Fathers could not have foreseen the technological development of more potentially lethal weaponry, but this false on its face.  The Founders were learned men of the Enlightenment, conversant with old and evolving technologies of all kinds, and they accordingly knew that military small arms technology would continue to evolve.  Thomas Jefferson owned two Giradoni rifles, a precursor to automatic-fire technology.  The Puckle Gun, patented in 1718, was an early Gatling Gun.

And with every new development of military small arms - muzzle-loading to breech loading, single shot to multiple shot (revolvers, lever action rifles and bolt-action rifles), to semiautomatics (late 19th century), to full automatics - American civilians were deemed to have just as much a right to access the evolving technology as the military did.  This argument commonly spewed by hoplophobes that the Second Amendment does not guarantee the right to own "weapons of war" is thereby roundly refuted.

"On Wednesday, Nikolas Cruz killed 17 people at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Florida. He was able to purchase a deadly assault rifle quite legally, yet was legally prohibited from buying a hand gun. The tragedy has left grieving families broken and a community shattered. It also showed up America as being the only country in the world that allows its citizens unfettered access to semi-automatic weapons."

Well, Mr. Virtue will have to take that up with America's Founding Fathers, whose political philosophy was quite different than that of the Kiwis, Aussies, Brits and Europeans on this and other matters, as well as with the United States Supreme Court.

An evangelical movement calling itself Prayers and Action for Gun Safety had this to say:

“To the rest of the world, the situation looks insane. No other nation on earth would put up with this level of violence if it could stop it. America accepts it as a price worth paying for the right to bear arms. Fanatical gun-rights campaigners resist any infringement on those rights. . . .

Resisting gun control on principle is faithlessness, they say. “Christians ought to be the first to call for serious talks about how to reduce the number of gun deaths in America. And if that means giving up some costly 'freedoms', evangelicals ought to be first in line. Because when freedom becomes an excuse for doing wrong, or allowing wrong, it's corrupted (Galatians 5:13).”

Perhaps Mr. Virtue should explain precisely why left-leaning Evangelical organizations unstudied on this issue are any more competent to pontificate on it than he is.  In another article he has essentially admitted that this is a minority position among American Evangelicals.

"In 1996, Australia introduced major gun law reforms that included a ban on semiautomatic rifles and pump-action shotguns and rifles and also initiated a program for buyback of firearms. From 1979-1996 (before gun law reforms), 13 fatal mass shootings occurred in Australia, whereas from 1997 through May 2016 (after gun law reforms), no fatal mass shootings occurred."

Indeed. So?  As noted above, the United States is not Australia, and if recent events in that country and other Commonwealth countries are any indication, it's a good thing.  No wonder such regimes want draconian gun laws.   Mr. Virtue needs to listen carefully: *we do not follow Australia's or New Zealand's lead* on this and any number of other political issues, such as the right to free speech. (Ahem.)

"And the same arguments over the same issues are rehearsed in the same words by the same people. Among them is the plea not to use this event to push for gun control, because now is a time for grieving, not for politics. Nonsense. After Sandy Hook wherein 28 people died, the NRA moved in and exhorted parents of kids still alive to buy even more guns to fight against an imaginary enemy in the name of “freedom”. The Russians never came, ISIS is on the ropes, Al Qaeda and the Taliban will never darken American homes. And the government will never come to take away over 300 million guns already out there."

Virtue is right about one thing:  the government *will* never come to take away over 300 million guns already out there.  Even if gun confiscation became law in flagrant violation of both state and federal constitutions, the United States government does not have the wherewithal to do it, and what's more, most American law enforcement and military do not have the will to do it.  It would mean suicide for many of them, not to mention civil war.  But again the paragraph above is nothing more than a highly rhetorical bird's nest of confusion.  There is nothing logically compelling about it at all.

"From a national-security standpoint, the Amendment’s suggestion that a “well-regulated militia” is “necessary to the security of a free State,” is quaint. The Minutemen that will deter Vladimir Putin and Kim Jong-un are based in missile silos in Minot, N.D., not farmhouses in Lexington, Mass."

A statement which indicates that Mr. Virtue needs to spend some quality time in a library researching 4th-Generation Warfare.  In his watershed Yale Law Journal article "The Embarrassing Second Amendment", liberal law professor Sanford Levinson, who stated at time that he was neither a gun owner nor a gun-rights activist, wrote this:  "It is simply silly to respond that small arms are irrelevant against nuclear-armed states: Witness contemporary Northern Ireland and the territories occupied by Israel, where the sophisticated weaponry of Great Britain and Israel have proved almost totally beside the point. The fact that these may not be pleasant examples does not affect the principal point, that a state facing a totally disarmed population is in a far better position, for good or for ill, to suppress popular demonstrations and uprisings than one that must calculate the possibilities of its soldiers and officials being injured or killed." 

Determined insurgencies are rarely defeated by powerful states.  Levinson and Michael S. Lind, who has written extensively on 4th-Generation Warfare, explain why if Virtue is up for some study.

"From a personal liberty standpoint, the idea that an armed citizenry is the ultimate check on the ambitions and encroachments of government power is curious. The Whiskey Rebellion of the 1790’s, the New York draft riots of 1863, the coal miners’ rebellion of 1921, the Brink’s robbery of 1981 — does any serious conservative think of these as great moments in Second Amendment activism?"

The mind boggles here.   The Whiskey Rebellion, the New York draft riots, the 1921 coal miners’ rebellion of 1921, and the Brink’s robbery of 1981 are arguably great moments in Second Amendment activism?  Please, David.

"An editorial in The New York Times called for a repeal of the Second Amendment. “I have never understood the conservative fetish for the Second Amendment. From a law-and-order standpoint, more guns means more murder. States with higher rates of gun ownership had disproportionately large numbers of deaths from firearm-related homicides,” noted one exhaustive 2013 study in the American Journal of Public Health.”

It won’t happen of course. “A well-regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed.” Former Chief Justice Warren Burger Justice called it a “fraud on the American public.” That’s how he described the idea that the Second Amendment gives an unfettered individual right to a gun. When he spoke these words to PBS in 1990, the rock-ribbed conservative appointed by Richard Nixon was expressing the longtime consensus of historians and judges across the political spectrum."

Yes, well, Burger was speaking in his capacity as a private individual expressing a personal opinion after he left the US Supreme Court.  And the US Supreme Court has since then roundly refuted Burger's opinion.  It has no legal relevance whatsoever.  Why?  Because he was factually wrong.

As an aside, Burger was not, as Virtue asserts, a "rock-ribbed conservative": "Although Burger was nominated by a conservative president,^[1] the Burger Court also delivered some of the most liberal decisions regarding abortion, capital punishment, religious establishment, and school desegregation^[2] during his tenure.^[3]" (Wikipedia)

"But sometimes, that's just the point at which politics becomes personal enough for something to change."

Mr. Virtue needs to elaborate on how he proposes to change settled constitutional law.  He and his fellow hoplophobes need to understand that they've lost this war and are going to have to find a better narrative.

" So the violence continues and nothing will happen because there isn't the political or social will to change anything. And cynical politicians, too afraid of upsetting the NRA and it cohorts and millions of brainless gun owners who believe freedom comes with collateral damage if you should just happen to get in the way of a bullet, will continue."

See, as I noted previously, this is standard emotive David Virtue fare.  "The NRA and its cohorts and millions of brainless gun owners."  Consider such inflammatory rhetoric and what it reveals about the way Virtue "thinks" with respect to this issue.  In this post below, Virtue calls his interlocutor, who happens to be a Facebook friend of mine, "you idiot" and flames on about "AHOLE America."  This isn't the mark of a sober Christian thinker but of a man driven by anger, and as I told Mr. Virtue in that post, St. John Cassian once said something to the effect that anger dulls the intellect. And that is precisely the dynamic operating in all of Virtue's tirades against our constitutional right to keep and bear arms.

Part 4