Connecting the War on Guns & Drugs [my title]

SHOTGUN NEWS ^ | 1/11/03 | Amicus Populi

[tpaine]

Ms. Nancy Snell Swickard - Publisher Shotgun News P. O. Box 669, Hastings, NE 68902

Dear Ms. Swickard,

I was very distressed to see the remark of one of your subscribers which you quoted on page 8 of your October 1 (1996) issue. The support of the "Drug War" by anyone who values the 2nd Amendment, and the rest of the Bill of Rights, is the most dangerous error of thinking in the politics of the "gun control" debate. This error is extremely widespread, although there have been some recent signs that some Americans are seeing through the propaganda of the Drug Warriors which affects all levels of our society.

Sadly, major players in the defense of the 2nd Amendment (like the NRA) show no signs of awareness of the part played by the Drug War in our present hysteria over violence. This is a serious error, because the violence produced by the Drug War is one of the main reasons that a majority of American citizens support gun control. Without the majority of a citizenry frightened by endemic violence, Mr. Clinton and his allies in the Congress would not enjoy the power they now possess to attack the Bill of Rights.

To understand the effect of the Drug War, we must understand it for what it is: the second Prohibition in America in this Century. I do not need to remind anyone who knows our recent history what a disaster the first Prohibition was. It is a classic example of the attempt to control a vice--drunkenness--by police power. It made all use of alcohol a case of abuse. It produced such an intense wave of violence that it gave a name--The Roaring Twenties--to an entire decade. It lead to the establishment of powerful criminal empires, to widespread corruption in police and government, and to a surge of violence and gunfire all over the land. And it produced a powerful attack on the Bill of Rights, including the most successful campaign of gun control laws in America up to that time.

Before the first Prohibition criminalized the trade in alcohol, liquor dealers were ordinary businessmen; after 1920 they were all violent criminals fighting for their territories. We had gang wars, and drive-by shootings, and the use of machine guns by criminals.

We now have the same effects of the first Prohibition in the present Drug War, and Americans appear to be sleepwalking through it with no apparent understanding of what is happening. It is testimony to the truth of Santayana's famous remark that those who do not know history are condemned to repeat it. We must understand that this has all happened before, and for the same reasons.

It is essential that defenders of the 2nd Amendment understand that the whole Bill of Rights is under attack by the Drug War, and that assaults on the 2nd Amendment are a natural part of that trend. What is the main premise of a gun-control law? It is that guns are implements which are too dangerous to entrust to the citizenry. What is the main premise of Drug Prohibition? It is that drugs are substances which are too dangerous to entrust to the citizenry. Both lines of reasoning say that because a few people abuse something, all Americans must be treated like children or irresponsibles. All use is abuse.

This is an extremely dangerous idea for a government, and it leads inevitably to tyranny. It is a natural consequence that such thinking will lead to attacks on the Bill of Rights, because that is the chief defense in the Constitution against abuses of government power.

Since the beginning of the Drug War, no article of the Bill of Rights has been spared from attack. There has been an enormous increase in police power in America, with a steady erosion of protections against unreasonable search and seizure, violations of privacy, confiscation of property, and freedom of speech. We have encouraged children to inform on their parents and we tolerate urine tests as a condition of employment for anyone. All who question the wisdom of Drug Prohibition are immediately attacked and silenced. These are all violations of the Bill of Rights. Are we surprised when the 2nd Amendment is attacked along with the others?

We understand that opponents of the 2nd Amendment exaggerate the dangers of firearms and extrapolate the actions of deranged persons and criminals to all gun owners. That is their method of propaganda. Do we also know that Drug Warriors exaggerate the hazards of drug use--"all use is abuse'--in the same way formerly done with alcohol, and extrapolate the condition of addicts to all users of drugs? That is their method of propaganda. Most Americans are convinced by both arguments, and both arguments depend on the public's ignorance. That is why discussion and dissent is inhibited.

Most Americans are moving to the idea that drugs and guns are evil and should be prohibited. Encouraging one way of thinking supports the other because the logic of the arguments is the same.

Why not prohibit a dangerous evil? If every drinker is a potential alcoholic, every drug-user a future addict, and every gun-owner a potential killer, why not ban them all? There is no defense against this logic except to challenge the lies that sit at the root of the arguments. Those are the lies promoted by the prevailing propaganda in support of all Prohibition. We cannot oppose one and support the other. To do so undermines our efforts because all these movements walk on the same legs.

If we do not explain to people that the fusillade of gunfire in America, the return to drive-by shooting, and our bulging prisons, come from the criminalizing of commerce in illegal drugs, we cannot expect them to listen to a plea that we must tolerate some risk in defense of liberty.

Why should we tolerate, for the sake of liberty, the risk of a maniac shooting a dozen people, when we cannot tolerate the risk that a drug-user will become an addict?

In fact, very few gun-owners are mass murderers and a minority of drug-users are addicts, but people are easily persuaded otherwise and easily driven to hysteria by exaggerating dangers. What addict would be a violent criminal if he could buy his drug from a pharmacy for its real price instead of being driven to the inflated price of a drug smuggler? How many cigarette smokers would become burglars or prostitutes if their habits cost them $200 per day? How many criminal drug empires could exist if addicts could buy a drug for its real cost? And, without Prohibition, what smuggler's territory would be worth a gang war? And why isn't this obvious to all of us?

It is because both guns and drugs have become fetishes to some people in America. They blame guns and drugs for all the intractable ills of society, and they never rest until they persuade the rest of us to share their deranged view of the evil power in an inanimate object.

They succeed, mainly, by lies and deception. They succeed by inducing the immediate experience of anxiety and horror by the mere mention of the words: Guns! Drugs! Notice your reactions. Once that response is in place, it is enough to make us accept any remedy they propose. An anxious person is an easy mark. They even persuade us to diminish the most precious possession of Americans, the one marveled at by every visitor and cherished by every immigrant, and the name of which is stamped on every coin we mint--Liberty. They say that liberty is just too dangerous or too expensive. They say we will have to do with less of it for our own good. That is the price they charge for their promise of our security.

Sincerely,

Amicus Populi

[tacticalogic]

An interesting aspect of Morrison is that Congress had specifically defined violence against women as a "class of activity" that had a substantial and direct affect on interstate commerce.

[robertpaulsen]

Again, it's encouraging to see the USSC ruling the way they did in Lopez and Morrison. Maybe there's hope.

[Redcloak]

Clicking a button on the internet isn't speech. Since this activity isn't specifically in the Bill of Rights, why do you think that you have such a right?

[robertpaulsen]

Why do you insist on calling this a right? I don't have some "right" to the internet. I bought it.

And I don't have a "right" to FreeRepublic -- I can be thrown off at the whim of the moderator.

[Redcloak]

So then, if one buys a baggie of weed...

[robertpaulsen]

So then, if one downloads child pornography...

C'mon Redcloak, try a different tack.

[Redcloak]

Is that specifically guaranteed in the Bill of Rights somewhere? I thought that the BOR was going to be the litmus test for what is or isn't allowed. And since purchasing internet time isn't called out anymore than purchasing weed is...

[tpaine]

"Most Americans are moving to the idea that drugs and guns are evil and should be prohibited. Encouraging one way of thinking supports the other because the logic of the arguments is the same."

"So then, if one downloads child pornography"...

One could be guilty of aiding/abetting an evil crime, child molestation, which a jury of your peers could decide.

C'mon paulsen, try a different tack.

[William Terrell]

Frankly, I've done all I'm willing to do.

The bottom line is this, Roscoe. You don't have enough social consciousness to keep your fears and prejudices from moving you to support governmental actions that destroy the range of non-tort personal choices available to the entire country of which you're a part.

Oh, yes, you'll say that it's social consciousness that makes you support them. But you have no evidence that to back up your concerns, so that means all you have to base your support on are fears and prejudices.

Lest you forget, the decades when this country grew the most and the fastest, and was the healthiest, was when there were no illegal drugs at all. The increase of drugs paralleled the increasing prohibition of them. We have not tried legalizing them to see the effect, and others who have legalized the more benign, such as cannabis, report no effect such that you're afraid of.

I can't see your problem. It looks like madness to me. But mumble on and happy trails. You're just one guy, or girl.

[Ken H]

Thanks and well said, rp.

[Roscoe]

Frankly, I've done all I'm willing to do.

Make ill-informed bogus assertions.

[tpaine]

Ill informed? Bogus? -- Lordy, but you're a mean little ass, roscoe.

[dcwusmc]

Roscoe, this self-serving piece of crap needs no refutation. Just because the Congress finds and declares something does not make it so. The CSA and its variants are just FedGov's attempts to make 2+2=5 and hope no one notices. Your pathetic attempts to justify FedGov's war on Americans means one of three things:
a.) you make your "living" as a JBT feeding off the misery you cause your fellow citizens;
b.) you are seriously misguided and need to have your eyes opened by a nocturnal visit from your local drug goon squad; or
c.) you suffer from terminal tongue-on-jackboot disease because you have never seen a FedGov prohibition you don't like or a Storm Trooper's a$$ you won't kiss.

No matter the problem you have, you are somewhere between despicable and pitiable for your delusions. Have a nice day.

[dcwusmc]

Let me see... we have BROAD attempts to sue firearms manufacturers out of business, coupled with attempts to outlaw the purchase of spare parts and ammunition. And THIS is to an object specifically protected under the second amendment. As to tobacco and fast foods, where is the protection for them? I can't find specific authorization for we the people to use tobacco and/or eat fast foods. Your logic tells me that if there is no specific amendment ALLOWING us to do something, gooberment can prohibit us from doing/owning/ingesting/whatever it... Yet the Constitution for the United States is a specific limitation on the powers of GOVERNMENT... and GRANTS NO RIGHTS WHATSOEVER... It compels government to recognize God-Given, PREEXISTING rights, INCLUDING BUT NOT LIMITED TO those enumerated. It also says that Government may only exercise the SPECIFICALLY ENUMERATED POWERS. You seem to want to turn that on its head for some reason. Why?

[tpaine]

You will get no rational answer.

The logic of this matter, - this socialistic effort to prohibit by government fiat, - is irrefutable.

[dcwusmc]

I know it. robertpaulsen suffers from one of the same three ailments as roscoe, as noted in my #213 post... and only ONE of the three is potentially curable. The other two will require the application of sterner measures. (I recommend death row for those Drug Warriors and Gun Grabbers who use violence in the commission of their nefarious deeds.) And maybe their enablers should be sent to some sort of re-education camps along the lines of what the North Vietnamese used when they finally overran the South.

(BTW, is it me or does North ANYPLACE have socialistic, totalitarian or just plain big-goobermental tendencies? Look at North Vietnam, North Korea, North Dakota (Wasn't that home to George McGovern?), the Northern States in the war of Northern Aggression... Russia (the USSR of old) is in the frigid north; a lot of China is that way; Merrie Olde England (home of the Fabian Society) is pretty frigid... Hmmmmmm)

[tpaine]

Those long cold winters inspire thoughts, [in the sheepies, like roscoe etc.], of huddling in the communal warmth of the almighty state.

[Texaggie79]

The USC does not GIVE rights, but it protects certain ones. To smoke crack in a state that outlaws it, I'm afraid, is not one of them. Now if a state were to outlaw guns, it would be unconstitutional because that is a PROTECTED right.

[dcwusmc]

Tex, what makes a right "protected?" Is it the mention in the BoR? Are those the SOLE rights protected? Seems to me the Ninth Amendment is still there, never having been repealed. Now, if a Sovereign State wants to prohibit PUBLIC USE of a substance because it can make you do crazy things when you are intoxicated with it, I can see that. Public intoxication, by whatever substance, can be regulated and controlled. Consumption of an intoxicant on PRIVATE PROPERTY may not be so controlled (except as to the age of the consumer...). The Ninth Amendment refers to rights not to be disparaged just because they are not mentioned by name. This obviously is where we derive the right to our coffee, Big Macs, Internet Speech and self-medication. Of course, it confers NO RIGHT or PROTECTS no right to violate the rights of others (the usual cry of the lunatic fringe when drug re-legalization comes up about repealing the laws against rape and murder)....

[Texaggie79]

The Ninth Amendment refers to rights not to be disparaged just because they are not mentioned by name. This obviously is where we derive the right to our coffee, Big Macs, Internet Speech and self-medication.

Indeed. However, where do we decide how far those right's extend? Sure, it's easy to say, "That which does not violate the rights of another.", but that is a paradoxical statement. To illustrate this, it would be similar to me answering the question "Who all is a female?", with the statement, "Whoever isn't a male." Well, it's not that simple. There are hermaphrodites, "gender benders", sex changes, ect. It is not cut and dry. There must be a precise definition if you want a precise answer.

I believe our founders knew this and gave us the 9th amendment.

The enumeration in the Constitution, of certain rights, shall not be construed to deny or disparage others retained by the people.

In this, it tells us "others retained by the people." Now. Where do we look to define what those "others" are? I believe the founders set up states for this purpose. You see, many things that the founders supported prohibiting in their own states, could be construed as rights by others (witchcraft, sodomy, ect). So, in order to enjoy those rights, not specifically identified in the BoR, one must live in a state with others that share the same view on whatever it is they see as a right; be it drugs, sodomy, prostitution, incest, and what have you.