If there is a lesson to learn from the “Roaring Twenties,” it is that attempting to control certain types of social behavior doesn’t work, especially when it is codified in the Constitution. The attempt to control alcohol through the XVIII Amendment ushered in one of the most brutal periods of crime in the history of the nation. It gave rise to the criminal mobs, the most notorious being the Al Capone gang. His outfit gained control of the illegal liquor business, aided and abetted by corruption in the Chicago Police Department. Fortunately, the Amendment was repealed; the oversight of alcohol laws returned to the states, causing the elimination of most of the alcohol related gang activity. The lesson which should have been learned is obvious. The purpose of the Constitution is to limit government, not individual behavior though nationwide mandates. Properly, the states are the ones to control the use of the product, not the federal government.

Now, once again we are seeing an attempt by the federal government to not control behavior as such, but to eliminate guns which is believed to be the source of criminal conduct. By controlling guns, the wrong-headed view is that criminal conduct will cease. That was the same wrong-headed approach to eliminating alcohol. It didn’t work, only serving to criminalize drinking behavior that wasn’t illegal before the amendment. Whereas the ownership of guns has the opposite effect when criminals know or suspect that their intended victim is armed, they look elsewhere. The major difference between the XVIII Amendment and the Second is simple. The Former increased crime while the latter actually deters crime.

The Second Amendment was designed to keep the nation safe from hoodlums, marauders, invaders and a wicked government when it might become necessary. But the efforts to control guns by eviscerating the Second Amendment has allowed criminals to ride roughshod over decent citizens, who by not being allowed to carry arms, are at the mercy of the thugs. Daily, the news media are filled with accounts of decent, peaceable, law abiding citizens being slain by armed thugs who feel secure knowing they don’t face armed citizens.

The wrong-headed thinking by those in charge is that if no guns are allowed on a given premise then the safety for all will be greater. That type of thinking only assures that the shooter will be safe while he carries out his diabolically murderous schemes. Then after the shootings occur, the dunderheads call for more gun control. Do they not understand that criminals don’t obey laws? If they did, there would be no shootings in the gun free zones. Those zones are similar to baiting an area so the game will arrive; then the ducks are at the mercy of the baiters. The unarmed are at the mercy of the shooters since the gun free zones are the bait that lures them to the area.

As can be seen, the law of unintended results operated in the XVIII Amendment resulting in an increase in crime and death for those criminals (innocents were also killed) in the liquor business. In like manner, unintended results are occurring in the quest to ban guns. Only in this instance it is the innocents who are the victims, not the criminals.

A light turned on in Kennesaw, Georgia, in 1982. All households are required to be armed. The result has been a dramatic drop in crimes of all kinds which is exactly the opposite the anti-gun proponents predicted. In other areas of the nation, armed residents have stopped shooters in malls and churches. Their acts prevented more carnage.  

It should be obvious that armed citizens don’t go on shooting rampages and those who are fearful of such events are impugning the integrity of decent citizens due to irrational fear. The worst is that the laws arising out of that fear is causing deaths to innocent people. The prohibition of alcohol didn’t work and the prohibition on guns isn’t working either, except to make it safer for criminals. In Sorting It Out, armed citizens take away the safety factor favoring criminals.

12-10-2007 DEC

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