SHOULD THE UNITED STATES LOOK NORTH FOR A SOLUTION TO ITS FIREARMS PROBLEM?[ Back | Home ][Copyright © 1. Temple International and Comparative Law Journal; David B. Kopel. Originally published as 5 Temple Int'l and Comp.
L. J. 1- 5. 0 (1. Permission for WWW use at this cite generously granted by the author. A firearm is a portable gun, being a barreled weapon that launches one or more projectiles often driven by the action of an explosive force. The first primitive. Learning to 'Live Free' comes from experience and personal growth. Lets break our conditioning! http:// http. The Lumiere Brothers and the Cinematographe: The innovative Lumiere brothers in France, Louis and Auguste (often called 'the founding fathers of modern. Friday, Jan 11, 2013 6:35 PM UTC The Hitler gun control lie Gun rights activists who cite the dictator as a reason against gun.For educational use only. The printed edition remains canonical. For citational use please obtain a back issue from William S. Hein & Co., 1. Main Street, Buffalo, New York 1. David Kopel is author of the book The Samurai, the Mountie, and the Cowboy: Should America Adopt the Gun Controls of Other Democracies? Amazon. com. He is also Research Director for Independence Institute where numerous other resources may be found.]By David B. Kopel[+]I. Introduction. Americans who support strict gun control laws often point to Japan and Great Britain as models. Gun control laws in those countries, however, border on prohibition, and it is not likely the heavily- armed United States will agree to adopt controls even closely resembling the British or Japanese models. Canada, on the other hand, has a uniform federal firearms control system that, while more strict than the controls in United States overall, is more lenient than some American jurisdictions. Indeed, Canada has one of the highest rates of gun ownership in the world. There are almost as many rifles per capita in Canada as in the United States.[1] Although there are important cultural differences, Canada and the United States "probably resemble each other more than any two nations on earth," observes sociologist Seymour Martin Lipset.[2] It is therefore somewhat surprising that American gun control advocates have not placed more emphasis on the Canadian model. This article examines the Canadian gun control system to consider whether it might serve as a model for restructuring gun control laws in the United States. The article will first summarize the history of guns and gun control in Canada, and then more closely examine the structure of Canadian firearms laws. This examination will reveal that it is possible for a nation to strictly control hand guns without slipping into severe restrictions on most sporting long guns.[3] After briefly examining what collateral effect, if any, the advance of Canadian gun controls has had on other civil liberties in Canada, the article addresses the efficacy (p. Canadian controls in light of recent evidence. Because Canada implemented a much tougher national system in 1. Canadian system further lends itself to an examination of the effects of particular changes in the law. Armed crime and firearms suicide are examined in detail, and some well- known but superficial studies of the Canadian laws are considered. The social implications of firearms ownership are also studied, with particular emphasis on police and civilian attitudes and practices regarding armed self- defense. Finally, the article examines the cultural aspects which have influenced Canadian firearms control, and discusses whether those controls would be suited for the United States. II. History. Justice Holmes observed, "the rational study of law is still to a large extent the study of history."[4] Likewise, Canadian gun control laws must be understood in the context of Canadian history. From the start, the advance by pioneers on the frontier in Canada was much less violent than in the United States. Since French fur traders could cooperate with the Indians, the French inhabitants of Canada had little to fear from the indigenous tribes. The Hudson Bay Company's motto for Indian relations was "never shoot your customers."[5] Unlike the English settlers to the south, the white inhabitants of New France had rarely crossed the Atlantic with the intent of staying forever. Their aim was to make some money through commerce and then return to Europe. Conversely, the British who sailed to America usually came to stay.[6] Unlike the French traders, they planned to farm and had to fight against the Indians for control of the land.[7] Thus, while America had sixty- nine Indian wars, Canada had none.[8](p. The most important trade in France's Canadian colony was firearms in exchange for beaver pelts. By the time the French were divested of Canada and the Louisiana Territory, almost all the tribes as far west as the Rockies were armed, thanks to French enterprise and Indian wholesalers. Based in Canada, the French penetrated deep into the interior of the continent and traded firearms as they went. The main trading partners of the French were the Ottawa,[9] who brought guns deeper into America. They shared in the French prosperity, much to the annoyance of their rivals, the Iroquois.[1. In the early 1. 7th century, the Iroquois nation allied with the Dutch settlers in the Hudson valley and with the nearby British, purchasing guns from each. By mid- century, the Iroquois were heavily armed, and had commenced a sixty- year campaign called the "Beaver Wars" to destroy the trade of France and her Indian allies, especially the Ottawa.[1. The Iroquois' main objective was to replace the Ottawa as middle- men, trading western beaver pelts for European guns. The French and Ottawa prevailed, however, and their trade continued to expand.[1. The victory in war with the Ottawa over the Iroquois confirmed to the Governor of New France, the Comte de Frontenac, that friendship with Indian traders was the best policy.[1. Building an empire of commerce that stretched deep into what would become the Louisiana Territory, Frontenac did everything possible to supply the Indians with guns. Because guns made big game hunting more profitable, and because many Indian tribes were involved in wars with each other, firearms were the most valuable commodity a European could offer.[1. The French explorer La Salle observed: "The savages take better care of us French than of their own children. From us only can they get guns and goods."[1. Frontenac's policy was the right one for France. Unlike the English, and (p. Americans, the French were not settling the land with waves of immigrant farmers. The French merely wanted to trade, and doing so among the sparse population throughout the Louisiana Territory and Canada did not threaten the Indians. Thanks to successful commerce with the Indians, the French coming down from Canada reached western Pennsylvania and Ohio before English settlers from the Atlantic coast found their way through the gaps in the Appalachian mountains. With the victory of Britain and its colonies in the French and Indian War of 1. French were expelled from North America. The French trading posts and the French gun trade with the Indians ceased. In a hundred years, France had sold the Indians 2. Thus, to the first white settlers of Canada, the gun was a symbol of friendly intercourse with Indians. To the white settlers of what would become the United States, the gun was the tool with which they would seize the continent by force. The dependence of the British colonists in the southern thirteen colonies on guns for individual self- defense only reinforced existing attitudes of individualism and self- reliance. In Canada, society developed without the need for such reliance. One of the cultural features left behind in New France, (now Quebec), was a tradition of authoritarianism which historian Kenneth Mc. Naught finds has not entirely disappeared from modern French Canada.[1. Under the firm and direct command of Paris, the French in Quebec developed few customs of self- government. There was less religious freedom than in France itself. After Britain wrested control of Canada from France, the British Governor, Guy Carlton, decided not to exterminate French culture, for in "the authoritarian structure of Quebec society he thought that he discerned a sheet anchor for British power in North America."[1. Two decades after Britain seized Canada, the United States of America wrenched itself from Britain in an eight- year war for total independence. One hundred and twenty thousand Americans, dismayed at the violent revolt against the King, fled to Ontario, New Brunswick, Nova Scotia and Quebec and called themselves United Empire Loyalists.[1. Their disgust with American "mob" democracy would powerfully influence Canada.[2. In contrast to the American revolutionaries, the Loyalists were not afraid of what the government would do to them. Rather, they were afraid of what would happen if the government (p. The settlers who came to Canada in the next century were typically British subjects who had decided that they would like to continue living under the Crown. Conversely, immigrants to the United States were typically those who rejected European governments. So while the Northern Irish Anglicans often migrated to Canada, Irish Catholics headed for the United States.[2. In 1. 86. 7, almost a century after the United States won total independence from Britain by war, the Dominion of Canada was peacefully granted autonomy for domestic affairs within the British Commonwealth by the British North America Act.[2. While there is a particular moment in time when the United States became an independent nation, namely ratification by the Continental Congress of the Declaration of Independence, there is no such precise moment marking Canadian independence. As late as World War II, Canada was still legally a "dominion" rather than an independent nation and it was not clear how much authority Canada had to carry out a foreign policy separate from the British Commonwealth. Thus, the American national character has been shaped by the violent, armed assertion of national independence, whereas Canada has been shaped by a reaction against the American tradition of armed violence. The contrasting attitudes- -which have shaped America and Canada ever since- -were especially visible in the War of 1. British again sought to regain control of its former colonies.[2. The Hitler gun control lie. This week, people were shocked when the Drudge Report posted a giant picture of Hitler over a headline speculating that the White House will proceed with executive orders to limit access to firearms. The proposed orders are exceedingly tame, but Drudge’s reaction is actually a common conservative response to any invocation of gun control. The NRA, Fox News, Fox News (again), Alex Jones, email chains, Joe “the Plumber” Wurzelbacher, Gun Owners of America, etc., all agree that gun control was critical to Hitler’s rise to power. Jews for the Preservation of Firearms Ownership (“America’s most aggressive defender of firearms ownership”) is built almost exclusively around this notion, popularizing posters of Hitler giving the Nazi salute next to the text: “All in favor of ‘gun control’ raise your right hand.”In his 1. NRA head Wayne La. Pierre dwelled on the Hitler meme at length, writing: “In Germany, Jewish extermination began with the Nazi Weapon Law of 1. Adolf Hitler.”And it makes a certain amount of intuitive sense: If you’re going to impose a brutal authoritarian regime on your populace, better to disarm them first so they can’t fight back. Unfortunately for La. Pierre et al., the notion that Hitler confiscated everyone’s guns is mostly bogus. And the ancillary claim that Jews could have stopped the Holocaust with more guns doesn’t make any sense at all if you think about it for more than a minute. University of Chicago law professor Bernard Harcourt explored this myth in depth in a 2. Fordham Law Review. As it turns out, the Weimar Republic, the German government that immediately preceded Hitler’s, actually had tougher gun laws than the Nazi regime. After its defeat in World War I, and agreeing to the harsh surrender terms laid out in the Treaty of Versailles, the German legislature in 1. In 1. 92. 8, the Reichstag relaxed the regulation a bit, but put in place a strict registration regime that required citizens to acquire separate permits to own guns, sell them or carry them. The 1. 93. 8 law signed by Hitler that La. Pierre mentions in his book basically does the opposite of what he says it did. The 1. 93. 8 revisions completely deregulated the acquisition and transfer of rifles and shotguns, as well as ammunition,” Harcourt wrote. Meanwhile, many more categories of people, including Nazi party members, were exempted from gun ownership regulations altogether, while the legal age of purchase was lowered from 2. The law did prohibit Jews and other persecuted classes from owning guns, but this should not be an indictment of gun control in general. Does the fact that Nazis forced Jews into horrendous ghettos indict urban planning? Should we eliminate all police officers because the Nazis used police officers to oppress and kill the Jews? What about public works — Hitler loved public works projects? Of course not. These are merely implements that can be used for good or ill, much as gun advocates like to argue about guns themselves. If guns don’t kill people, then neither does gun control cause genocide (genocidal regimes cause genocide). Besides, Omer Bartov, a historian at Brown University who studies the Third Reich, notes that the Jews probably wouldn’t have had much success fighting back. Just imagine the Jews of Germany exercising the right to bear arms and fighting the SA, SS and the Wehrmacht. The [Russian] Red Army lost 7 million men fighting the Wehrmacht, despite its tanks and planes and artillery. The Jews with pistols and shotguns would have done better?” he told Salon. Proponents of the theory sometimes point to the 1. Warsaw Ghetto Uprising as evidence that, as Fox News’ Judge Andrew Napolitano put it, “those able to hold onto their arms and their basic right to self- defense were much more successful in resisting the Nazi genocide.” But as the Tablet’s Michael Moynihan points out, Napolitano’s history (curiously based on a citation of work by French Holocaust denier Robert Faurisson) is a bit off. In reality, only about 2. Germans were killed, while some 1. Jews were massacred. The remaining 5. 0,0. Robert Spitzer, a political scientist who studies gun politics and chairs the political science department at SUNY Cortland, told Mother Jones’ Gavin Aronsen that the prohibition on Jewish gun ownership was merely a symptom, not the problem itself. It] wasn’t the defining moment that marked the beginning of the end for Jewish people in Germany. It was because they were persecuted, were deprived of all of their rights, and they were a minority group,” he explained. Meanwhile, much of the Hitler myth is based on an infamous quote falsely attributed to the Fuhrer, which extols the virtue of gun control: This year will go down in history! For the first time, a civilized nation has full gun registration! Our streets will be safer, our police more efficient, and the world will follow our lead into the future! The quote has been widely reproduced in blog posts and opinion columns about gun control, but it’s “probably a fraud and was likely never uttered,” according to Harcourt. This quotation, often seen without any date or citation at all, suffers from several credibility problems, the most significant of which is that the date often given [1. Nazis for gun registration, nor would there have been any need for the Nazis to pass such a law, since gun registration laws passed by the Weimar government were already in effect,” researchers at the useful website Gun. Cite note.“As for Stalin,” Bartov continued, “the very idea of either gun control or the freedom to bear arms would have been absurd to him. His regime used violence on a vast scale, provided arms to thugs of all descriptions, and stripped not guns but any human image from those it declared to be its enemies. And then, when it needed them, as in WWII, it took millions of men out of the Gulags, trained and armed them and sent them to fight Hitler, only to send back the few survivors into the camps if they uttered any criticism of the regime.”Bartov added that this misreading of history is not only intellectually dishonest, but also dangerous. I happen to have been a combat soldier and officer in the Israeli Defense Forces and I know what these assault rifles can do,” he said in an email. He continued: “Their assertion that they need these guns to protect themselves from the government — as supposedly the Jews would have done against the Hitler regime — means not only that they are innocent of any knowledge and understanding of the past, but also that they are consciously or not imbued with the type of fascist or Bolshevik thinking that they can turn against a democratically elected government, indeed turn their guns on it, just because they don’t like its policies, its ideology, or the color, race and origin of its leaders.”.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. Archives
December 2016
Categories |