Most think guns should be banned because various psychopaths shot kids in schools, fired into concert crowds or attacked religious services. Horrible enough to justify banning guns. The NRA’s solution, of course, is more guns. They claim that putting more guns in more hands will stop or dissuade vicious killers.
But more guns in more hands means the gangs, death squads, terrorists and private armies of Haiti, Central American, Africa and Eastern European states. It means everyone can take the law into their own hands – and will – indeed they will feel like they have to. It is an argument only an insurrectionist could like because it supports plans to start a revolution.
Plenty of evidence establishes that proliferation of weapons is the surest predictor of insurrection and the breakdown of law and order.[1] I want to stress the connection between the availability of guns and the likelihood of insurrection and violence because I don’t think the public gets it. Gun violence across the world isn’t confined to individual events. Guns become tools of revolution and systemic chaos. Kids become targets for gangs, women for rape, and their world is dominated by threats and extortion. One girl we know was sent here because her parents feared she would be forced into a terrorist organization in their country. In her case we knew and communicated with her parents when they were making that decision. In fact, many people arriving at our southern border struggled to get there because they’ve been threatened, and fear their children will be abused by or forced into the gangs. More, those groups seek to dominate their countries. We’re negotiating with gangs in Haiti because there is no choice – they have the weapons and weapons put them in control. Across the globe, guns rule and make life hell. We have to throttle the prevalence of guns or turn our country over to force, intimidation and revolution.
This Supreme Court won’t reconsider the nonsense perversely called “gun rights,” in opposition to the rights of people, citizens, men, women and children. That’s why I’d pack the Court with decent Justices and change its rulings before it tears the country apart as surely as Dred Scott contributed to the Civil War.
For our country to survive, we have to stop shooting our way out of every disagreement, stop producing guns for the private market so that more and more can shoot their way out of more disagreements even against heavily armed police, militia and military forces, and stop sending guns to resellers in more and more lawless countries. This has got to stop for the sake of our country. And it has nothing to do with immigration – immigrants are actually less likely to kill or commit other crimes than native born Americans – hostility to immigrants has been about blaming others for our own sins.
[1] Stephen E. Gottlieb, Unfit for Democracy: The Roberts Court and the Breakdown Of American Politics 11, 175 (NYU Press 2016).
Steve Gottlieb’s latest book is Unfit for Democracy: The Roberts Court and The Breakdown of American Politics. He is the Jay and Ruth Caplan Distinguished Professor Emeritus at Albany Law School, served on the New York Civil Liberties Union board, on the New York Advisory Committee to the U.S. Civil Rights Commission, and as a US Peace Corps Volunteer in Iran.
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