Ask Me Why I Think I Need A Gun

I first wrote about gun control in 2012, unfortunately things only seem to have gotten worse. There have been more mass shootings and calls for outright gun confiscation have commensurately grown louder.

There are a few main arguments for and against gun control. The pro-gun control crowd talks about "common sense" solutions and questions why anyone would "need" a "weapon of war". The pro-Second Amendment folks also hold a very diverse range of views with some supporting universal background checks and a tiny minority of others genuinely believing that the right to defend one's self is unlimited to the point that tanks should be sold at gun shows. And while it's true that most Americans fall into the middle of the extremes, popular opinion doesn't really matter much if you're talking about something that's a fundamental right.

Humans have always made weapons for hunting and defense, and they've also made them to conquer, rape, and pillage. The technology has decidedly changed over the years but that doesn't mean basic human rights change. In the past a trained archer might have been able to fire a bow at a rate of 10 arrows a minute. Can you imagine when the crossbow was invented and any regular guy (or woman or even child) could accurately knock out a bad guy with bolt after bolt after bolt? I can hear the calls for regulation even now. 
The gun, simply defined, has been around for a thousand years. It took the place of the crossbow, the arrow, and the sword because it is immeasurably more efficient. But like the old days of arrows and bolts, a gun that can fire 5 rounds a minute verses multiple rounds in a second doesn't change the ultimate fact: a person's ability to provide for their families and to protect is inviolable.

The Bill of Rights is called that because it lists well understood rights. Not privileges. Rights. The founding documents of the country and the countless letters and articles written at the time all go on at length about how humans are endowed with inalienable rights, that those rights don't become unnecessary when opinions change, that they can only be denied on an individual bases because that person did something wrong, and that the purpose of the Constitution is to limit the power of government, not the person.

While it is certainly true that America has never been able to fully live up to that promise of life, liberty, and happiness for all, the entire purpose of the country is that never-ending struggle to create a more perfect union. To that end, slavery was abolished and a woman's inherent right to vote was recognized. The whole course of the nation's history has been one of expanding liberty, not taking it away.

Sadly, when bad things happen people have a natural tendency to attack everything associated with the tragedy. After Pearl Harbor, we threw Japanese-Americans into prison. After 9/11, we eviscerated privacy rights, and many wanted to actually ban an entire religion. And after each senseless mass shooting, many want to restrict fundamental liberties for a false sense of security - regardless of the fact that this inherent right to personal, individual gun ownership is something the Supreme Court has validated.

The right to self-defense is both an individual right and a collective right. The individual has every right to defend themselves from a home invader and, collectively, we have the right to defend the nation from hostile forces. Neither the individual nor collective right can firmly be protected if the other isn't also protected. A country with a well-regulated military can still be invaded and overcome. But a country with millions of citizens who can all exercise their own right to defense is a whole lot harder to subdue, as history has shown many times over.

Mass grave of victims of the Srebrenica massacre.

My early childhood coincided with the end of the Cold War, and in that relatively short time countless tragedies have been visited upon the world by governments, criminal cartels, and terrorist groups. I don't consider these things merely distant and foreign warnings, nor do I think of them as some truism of the world that doesn't really mean that much. These are real events affecting real lives, and I think it's important to keep them in mind. There's little need to search the far-off past for examples of unarmed people being dragged off in cattle cars, a quick review of some of the things that have happened in my lifetime should be more than sufficient warning.

In my lifetime a terrorist group managed to take over one of the oldest societies in the world in Afghanistan, which also enabled the events of 9/11 a decade later.
I've seen the Chinese government engage in cultural genocide against millions of Uyghurs. It has imprisoned upwards of a million of them with no due process, broken up thousands of families, and created a biometric database to track the entire population.
I've seen civil war in the Balkans. And wars where the government turned completely against its own people in Libya and Syria.
I've seen genocides in Rwanda, Sudan, and against the Rohingya of Myanmar.
I watched as ISIS nearly overran two countries, killing thousands in the process.
I've seen the governments of Poland, Russia, and others take draconian actions against peaceful LGBT citizens, and the establishment of concentration camps for them in Chechnya.
I've seen drug cartels take over entire swaths of Central America.
I've watched Venezuela go from one of the richest countries to hell on earth.
As a North Korea analyst, I can see each and every day prison camps operating that hold upwards of 200,000 people.
I saw human rights abuses in Chile and throughout South America that resulted in the torture and deaths of tens of thousands. All with the backing of our own government.
And, yes, I also learned about Nazi Germany where six million died in the Holocaust. I learned about the Soviet government-sponsored famine in Ukraine that resulted in over three million deaths - and that even today evil men are prolonging a war in Ukraine with the backing of Russia. I learned about the killing fields in Cambodia, the mass purges in the Soviet Union, and the extensive crack downs on speech and religion that has never stopped in China.


Yet, despite the countless examples of international repression it is still hard to ever consider such tyranny happening in the United States. But the fact is most Americans actually think the federal government is a threat to liberty instead of the protector of liberty it was meant to be. And in 2017 only 23% felt the government had the consent of the governed - something that is the very cornerstone of the concept of government itself. Sadly, you don't need to look at polls or even consider the horrors foreign governments have visited on their own citizens. The concern about tyranny, government oppression, and state-sponsored violence can be dramatically justified by looking at our own history.

The US is no stranger to the creation of a surveillance state. The government has shown it doesn't care about your right to privacy and is more than willing to violate it owns laws. It engaged in domestic genocidal activities all the way into the 20th century. Even the much-loved Lincoln ordered the largest mass lynching of Native Americans in history. And speaking of Lincoln, the causes of secession may have been slavery, but the war itself was ignited by the government's willingness to send soldiers to kill other Americans. Regardless of the historical debates, the Civil War resulted in over 600,000 deaths and the US was the only country in history to end slavery in the context of a war.
Later, you have Texas Rangers murdering innocent Mexican Americans by the hundreds during La Matanza.
In the aftermath of 9/11, it even became dangerous to openly support the Constitution or to belong to 3rd parties. Various training manuals and reports from military, police, and other law enforcement agencies have listed potential "extremists" as those who promote judicial reforms, supporters of Ron Paul, holding pro-2nd Amendment views, and even disparage against homeschooling.
The government maintains kill lists and "no fly" list (which are notoriously inaccurate), all compiled in secret and without giving citizens the benefit of due process. Incidentally, gun control advocates have wanted to use the no-fly list as part of a plan to prevent people from owning guns.

And all of this adds to the current background where millions of Americans believe the Trump administration is setting up concentration camps. Where people see the vast abuses of government and law enforcement, but still insist that the only people who should have guns are those very people keeping kids in cages. The cognitive dissonance is stunning.

Calls for "common sense" gun control or banning "assault weapon" sound benign, but the history of gun control in this country has a long a dangerous history. Just like many other things, governments used Jim Crow laws to deny blacks the ability to own guns (or even certain knives in the case of Florida). What seems like common sense is only valid if it doesn't infringe on the rights of other people. 
Something like a universal background check comes with very real questions. A true universal background check law would mean that a dad couldn't give his daughter an heirloom rifle for her 18th birthday or that two friends couldn't exchange guns without first seeking the permission of the government. Then you add in something like Red Flag laws. These laws deny due process, violate privacy, and would begin to infringe on the rights of everyone who has ever been to a therapist, anyone who is a veteran, and anyone who smokes weed.

What about common sense bans of "assault weapons"? First you have to define what an assault weapon is. Many guns used legitimately in hunting have the same general characteristics of guns people have called "assault" or "military style." There is no unified, clear-cut definition of what those phrases mean. Often, they simply mean a gun that looks scary. Additionally, the only way such a ban would work is if you take the guns off the streets. In other words, go house to house and confiscate them. Otherwise you'd still have millions of "bad" guns in circulation, able to be stolen or end up on the black market where only criminals will have access to them.
Gun confiscation is the only way to make bans work. But even in a country like New Zealand, where gun laws have traditionally been strict, after the Christchurch shootings the gun buyback rate was only around 1%. Put another way, 99% of the owners of the now illegal guns have refused to voluntarily surrender them. Should New Zealand police start busting down the doors of these otherwise innocent and peaceful citizens?

When all is said and done, these "common sense" reforms end up looking extremely complicated and would require vast amounts of new government power to enforce, all while not addressing the root causes or affecting many other shootings. A 2014 study looked at 142 mass shootings and found that semi-automatic rifles were used in only 25% of the cases, meaning that 75% were committed with things like pistols, revolvers, and regular rifles. Context is also very important when discussing gun violence overall. The US doesn't have the highest rate of gun violence in the world and the bulk of gun deaths in America come from suicides. Of course that's not a good thing, but these proposed changes to gun laws wouldn't have much of an affect at all. Not to mention that plenty of shooters got their guns either illegally or because law enforcement systems failed and allowed people who already shouldn't be able to purchase a firearm to acquire one. 

I also feel it's important to note that crime rates have fallen sharply since the 1990s.

Of the recent shootings in El Paso and Dayton, one was a Trump supporter while the other was a socialist. Clearly violence isn't the sole domain of any one political ideology. What every mass shooter has in common (or anyone who murders others for that matter) is the ideology of hate. They view Hispanics as invaders, they view Democrats as anti-American, they view gays as abominations, they view all conservatives as warmongers, they view a cheating spouse or rude boss as subhuman. They see other human beings as less valuable and less worthy of life. This points to a cultural problem we must look directly in the face. 

Japan has far higher consumption rates of video games than we do, but little violent crime (or any other type). The former countries of the USSR have much lower rates of religious adherence, but also have managed to not have the issues the United States does. Blaming violent games or a lack of God is just a way to try to oversimplify reality and skirt the very real problems driving violence.  
Just as systemic racism or police violence are uncomfortable things to confront (or to even acknowledge), we must look at what's fueling hate and "otherism," and why so many seem to be unable to find belonging within society as a whole, as well as their inability to find healthy ways to discuss and resolve their frustrations (real or imagined).

The reply to that by gun-control advocates is "why not at least stop them from being able to use those weapons?" Again, "those weapons" require definitions and preventing their use means a major growth of the very same government that abused its power countless times. Thus, while giving a government with an undisputed history of racism, discrimination, abuse, and murder even more power, we get to ignore the real problems indefinitely - just as with laying the blame at the feet of games. 

So, yes, I very much want mass shootings to end, but I am absolutely not willing take the word of our government that it won't do bad things. I am absolutely not willing to give up my right to defend myself. And more importantly, I recognize that just as I have no right to demand that you give up your rights to speech, a fair trial, or to not be a slave, I also have no right to demand you limit or give up your right to own a gun. And if I don't have that right, you certainly don't have the right to demand others do.


--Jacob Bogle, 8/9/2019
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Gun Control

(Originally published on Dec. 19, 2012. Updated on Oct. 3, 2015 with new information)

On Dec. 14, 2012, a young gunman went to a school and killed 26 people, mostly children under the age of 8. And on Oct. 1, 2015, a man entered a community college and shot 19. Since 1776 there have been over 200 school shootings (including individual suicides at school); in 2013 there were 26, in 2014 there were 43, and by October 2015 there had been 19. Since 2013, 44% of those shootings involved more than one person. There have also been mass shootings at businesses, clubs, and elsewhere.

In times of crisis, people often look to government to fix the problem. They assume there was a failure in the law or that perhaps we have too much freedom and for our own sake we should pass further legislation to protect us from ourselves.

There is no doubt that evil and unhinged people exist in the world and that guns, particularly modern guns, allow those people to harm and kill greater numbers of innocent people than ever possible before. The anti-gun/pro-gun control lobbies point to countries with strict gun-control laws and even total bans on arms outright and then compares their crime rates with those in the United States as “proof” that gun-control is the only answer.


Guns, simply defined as a barrel that uses gunpowder to propel a projectile, have existed for over 1,000 years and like so many other inventions of man, have become a part of everyday life, at least until recently. A gun can be used for hunting, self-defense, war, target practice, to commit crimes, as collector items, and at times as the last defense of a people against a tyrannical government; a final guarantee of freedom.

Many say that guns generally have no place in modern society and that, for the West at least, the notion of needing them to fend off an evil government is…quaint, if not insane. Of course modern world history is replete with examples of a population needing arms to ward off and overthrow a repressive regime (Germany, Soviet Russia, China, North Korea, Cambodia, etc.) Clearly, the issue is complicated and emotionally charged.

For a moment, let us set aside the argument for guns as a last defense and focus on gun crimes as they relate to gun control.

It is true that strict gun control or bans, can limit the number of gun related crimes. However, if you look at the logic of criminality you will find that the law in and of itself means very little to criminals, after all, to commit a crime is by definition to ignore the law.

The UK has passed a number of laws, beginning in 1903, which have led to the near extinction of the modern firearm in the country, the main exceptions being antiques and incredibly strict hunting licenses. However, the people of the UK still maintain over 4 million firearms. In 2009 the number of gun deaths was 138. The number of homicides (by any method) was 724. So it’s easy to see that having a gun alone does not make for a violent populace and that non-gun related homicides far outweigh those committed with a gun. If we look at the broader trend in the UK, particularly in cities, gun crime is on the rise. In 2010 gun crimes in London were up 48%. And while the total number of gun crimes is down compared to when gun ownership was less restricted, it is evident that laws and restrictions largely apply to law abiding citizens --to those who wouldn't have committed any crime to begin with.

Criminals will always find ways around the law, they will find ways to commit their crimes and will fuel a black market. And unlike the US, the United Kingdom lacks a central constitution and there are no inherent rights to begin with, only things which, through law, have been deemed “not illegal.” Remember, the UK comes form a history of authoritarian monarchy, whose genocidal policies against the Scots and Irish still impact the region to this day.

Let’s take a look at another European country, Switzerland, which has the 3rd highest rate of gun ownership on the planet. In Switzerland they rely on a trained militia rather than a standing army to defend their borders and civilian gun ownership stands at 45.7%, which translates into 3.4 million guns. In 2010 there were 40 gun related homicides and 53 homicides in total, which is down approx. 40% since 1998. How is it that so many guns can exist and yet have so few gun related crimes? In fact, Switzerland has one of the lowest crimes rates in the world, all the while having the 3rd highest gun ownership rate and a relaxed drug policy.

The cry for greater government control is always greatest when there has been a tragedy. It is very unfortunate that people choose times of heartbreak to push for less liberty and ignore incredibly important factors: personal responsibility and morality, mental health, and broken communities.

I’d like to give you a comparison. Cars and roads are among the more highly regulated and controlled aspects of our society and yet more people die from car accidents than from guns. In fact, since 1980, there have been over 1.3 million deaths on government regulated roads, in government regulated cars, all operated by government regulated drivers. Where is the outcry in this? Where are the calls to ban mass murdering automobiles which can speedily careen into crowded places? As silly as that may sound, the analogy stands. For bit more context, more people die from poisoning each year (48,545) or drug overdoses (43,785) than they do from gun related deaths (of all sorts), which according to the CDC was 10.6 people per 100,000.

From the Pew Research Center, "Gun Homicide Rate Down 49% Since 1993 Peak"

And while the overall trend since 1981 has been fewer homicides as a result of gun violence, even after President Clinton signed the Federal Assault Weapons Ban in 1994 there were still dozens of school shootings resulting in 122 deaths and many other injuries before the law expired in 2004.

You see, gun ownership is not the problem, it never has been. The problem lies with a population disarmed, a population so afraid they would rather give up all control to a government then take the necessary steps to learn self-defense, and the problem lies with a country that has an appalling track record when it comes to helping those citizens with mental illness (those with diagnosed mental illnesses rarely go out killing people, but killing out of hatred or because the shooter feels discarded by society does intersect with mental health and the need for intervention is real).

There is an interesting meme on-line that states “Why are women taught how to prevent a rape instead of men being taught not to rape?” The same concept can be applied to guns and crimes in general. We live in a culture that glorifies death and violence. It is codified by our government with the killing of literally thousands of innocent civilians overseas, all as a matter of "foreign policy." It is blessed by popular media. It is encouraged by parents allowing 12 and 13 year olds to play games and watch movies filled with it. It is often over-looked and poorly punished. We see time and time again people convicted of killing and other horrible crimes getting only a handful of years in prison (or less).

Why not force government to end the double standard in their own actions? Why not force the courts to offer up severe and lasting punishment to those engaging in violent crimes? Why not recognize that many citizens suffer from mental illness and not be afraid to reach out and help them, instead of ignoring them until one out of a million explodes?

There is no single cause or reason among the perpetrators and no panacea to solve it all, but the major cause of it continuing is society's and our government's failure to understand that it's usually a combination of factors and that we must take a comprehensive look at it in order to help solve it. Jumping onto guns is nothing but a cop-out, an emotional reaction that does little to address the situation.

Looking at the legal issue

The 2nd Amendment to the US Constitution states “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.”

One segment of the gun-control lobby asserts that the 2nd Amendment applies only to militias (the military) and that private gun ownership is not covered. Even if we ignore the context in which the 2nd was written, there have been multiple court cases which emphatically refute that claim.
In District of Columbia v. Heller (2008) the Supreme Court ruled:

(A)The Second Amendment protects an individual right to possess a firearm unconnected with service in a militia, and to use that arm for traditionally lawful purposes, such as self-defense within the home.
(B)The “militia” comprised all males physically capable of acting in concert for the common defense.
(C) The response [of writing the 2nd] was to deny Congress power to abridge the ancient right of individuals to keep and bear arms.
And further, (D) does not limit the right to keep and bear arms to militia purposes.

The term “militia” means “It is undoubtedly true that all citizens capable of bearing arms constitute the reserved military force or reserve militia of the United States as well as of the States, and in view of this prerogative of the general government, as well as of its general powers, the States cannot, even laying the constitutional provision in question out of view, prohibit the people from keeping and bearing arms, so as to deprive the United States of their rightful resource for maintaining the public security, and disable the people from performing their duty to the general government.” This comes from the Supreme Court case Presser v. Illinois (1886).

Another argument is that the Founders could never have conceived of an automatic assault rifle and that the 2nd only applies to “muskets”, in other words, very basic, single shot weapons. One must then extend the logic to all parts of the Constitution, to wit, the First Amendment only applies to verbal speech and press using a printing press, the Fourth only protects from searches of a person’s physical home (making the NSA domestic spying program totally acceptable), and so on. That notion is, in a word, absurd. There is no doubt people use guns to commit crimes, however, if we look at all the numbers, around 50% of all gun deaths in the US are suicides (which is a crime). Outlawing suicide has had little effect it seems.

Gun ownership is not only an “ancient right” but also the final protection of an individual and of the general population against all crimes, be they a robber or a tyrannical government. War is perhaps the most visible but oft ignored crime. It is estimated that wars have led to the deaths of upwards of 1 billion people over the course of human history. Wars are approved, funded and usually sought by governments. That is the great tragedy. Self-defense against crime is also often overlooked. In 1994 a Dept. of Justice study found that guns are involved in 1.5 million cases of self-defense each year. That is 1.5 million thefts, rapes, murders and other crimes prevented as a result of gun ownership.

We all look for answers and closure, but, when it comes to wanton violence the answer is, there are no satisfactory answers. And we should not be so quick to abandon or wish to curtail one of our most important and fundamental rights. Government has always used tragedy to grab power, it has used fear to usurp the Constitution, and all too often we have let them in the vain search for security. Let us look to ourselves and our culture first.

The peoples of industrialized Germany, Russia, Poland, and France, just to name a few, never thought that one day they would endure the full brunt of Nazi oppression. They never thought there would be the deaths of 40 million people, the loss of religious freedom, or the loss of all freedoms, at the hands of their own governments. They trusted their government for things which government is not meant to do. They handed up responsibility that they were imbued with from God - rights by the very nature of their existence - and in the end they paid dearly. The right to bear arms is the only reason why America exists, without which we would still be a colony.

I don’t have all the answers and I don’t pretend to think that we could have a perfect world if everyone owned a gun, but I do think we would be better prepared to handle these situations. Mass shootings often happen in gun-free zones where even the “security” guards are unarmed. And while I don’t have all the answers, I know the answer is not more control simply from looking at places like Detroit and Chicago which have tight gun regulations and also have an enormous amount of gun violence. Our ancestors took for themselves their inherent rights, which include the responsibilities that go with them, and our Founders wrote them into law, a law that can only be changed via new amendments.

Just like the Jews of Germany and the whole population of North Korea never thought they would endure what has transpired, we didn’t think the ultimate assault on our freedoms would ever occur. Government rarely grasps for total power in a single sweep, it happens (usually as a result of public outcry and a revocation of personal responsibility) bit by bit. In the past 12 years alone we have seen the near erasure of the 14th Amendment via the PATRIOT Act, military drones prowling the skies over America, attempts to control and censor the Internet with things like SOPA and CISPA, allowing the indefinite detention of citizens via the NDAA 2012, provide for the permanent and warrantless surveillance of every citizen through regulations involving the National Counterterrorism Center and much more.

Perhaps not today, maybe 20 or 30 years from now, we could easily be sitting and watching our government turn into something absolutely horrible. Why give them a willing public? Why be those silent dissenters of 1933? At first they asked for control of the press, then guns, then the mentally handicapped, then the disabled, then gays, then Jews and before it was over 60 million died as a result of Germany and Japan with over 40 million European refugees. How can we trust them with the power to regulate, so strongly, one of our most basic rights when the federal government has consistently shown itself to be untrustworthy, corrupt and power hungry? The folks in Washington DC are no more equipped, or wise, to govern us than any other citizen. If you yourself haven’t the wisdom to control the nation, then why give it to them?

This isn't an argument against any and all gun laws. Clearly those with violent criminal histories or documented severe mental disturbances should not have the ability to purchase or legally carry a gun. This is simply an attempt to show that when it comes to these types of tragedies, more control isn't an answer. Demanding that a class filled with children be left undefended or that thousands of university students shouldn't be allowed to exercise their inherent rights, this only results in millions being even more vulnerable to mass shootings. At the Oct. 1, 2015 shooting at Umpqua Community College in Oregon, where thousands of students attend, there was only one security guard who was unarmed.

When we allow a government or some committee (federal, state, local) to make choices for all of us, if that choice is a bad one we all suffer. In this case the choice is literally between life and death. I trust myself to defend my rights and life far more than I trust a bloated and inept government. Why should I, why should we, allow them to force us into a position of relying on them for our own safety?

--Jacob Bogle, Originally published on Dec. 19, 2012. Updated on Oct. 3, 2015 and June 13, 2016.
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