Carrying a weapon: let’s go against prejudice

The views expressed in opinion pieces are strictly those of the author and do not necessarily reflect those of the editorial staff.Published February 19, 2018-A+

By Gabriel Delauney.

Given current events, I am more than ever in favor of the right to bear arms as citizens, both for Americans and for us, civilians across the Atlantic.

Hoplophobes – anti-gun people – will tell me I'm a fool and throw numbers on TV and radio in my face.

If France Info has fun playing the outraged with an article that counts the number of tragedies caused in one day by armed people at Uncle Sam's, and if BFMTV counts more Americans killed by firearms between 1968 and 2015 that during all the wars in which the United States took part, journalists hardly bother to think about it in a calm way.

I therefore have no fear in communicating them in turn, before saying how these figures mean nothing by themselves.

Gun deaths by the numbers

On average, the United States suffers nearly 30,000 annual firearm deaths.

First, nearly two-thirds of these deaths are suicides (21,386 in 2014 according to Gun Policy, Centers for Disease Control and Prevention), so blaming gun carrying is silly, suicidal n Anyone not allowed to own a firearm will pull a rope, slit his wrist or throw himself under a vehicle, but of course he can use a gun if he wants to end his life.

Next, nearly 11,000 people – 11,008 according to the same source in the same year – died by homicide. Again, you have to know how to separate things.

Indeed, how many of these people were shot by the authorities or by citizens in self-defense? They are several thousand each year. It seems to me necessary to remove them from official accounts because they are responsible for their fate.

How many of those killed were gunned down in gang wars or other non-honest armed citizenry pranks?

How many of them were shot in a purely intimate setting – marital disputes, for example – murders that could just as well have taken place with bladed weapons and whose setting excludes any exactions in the open street against the other citizens? For the year 2015, the NGO Mass Shooting Trackers accounted for 68% of the 355 shootings it recorded in the shooter's home.

Finally, how many of these homicides – killing honest people, let’s insist – are carried out with legally acquired weapons?

Finally, nearly 1000 people die by accident with a firearm. Here we think of unlucky children or minors and adults who have not taken all the necessary precautions. If it is necessary at all costs to protect children and more generally individuals, blame irresponsible parents for their negligence and push the prohibitionist vice to the point of prohibiting the possession of drugs at home because they too have a lethal potential on children or on adults not respecting the dosage.

Whatever answer we accept, 30,000, 11,000, or even much less, we must recognize that this is not much for a country of 320 million inhabitants where 270 million legal weapons circulate .

How does one become a victim?

Then, another important fact: it concerns the conditions in which these murders are carried out, especially the most publicized ones, those which take place during shootings, in particular in school settings.

It turns out that murderers usually target public places where civilians are not allowed to carry weapons, whether concealed or not; the gun free zones.

Federal law restricts the carrying of firearms within 300 yards of the property line of any public or private school. In addition to these "firearms-free" zones, there are others concerning official buildings and other types of public places according to local laws, such as university campuses, which may thus refuse the carrying of firearms. weapon, including to license holders.

Many of the massacres supposed to horrify us about the right to bear arms took place in gun free zones, as was the case at Virginia Tech.

How many people saved?

Far from a macabre accounting or a just contextualization of the murders, let us know how to keep reason and estimate the number of goods and lives saved by the right to civilian port of arms 1.

First, let's look at assets.

A weapon is obviously – and fortunately – used to enforce one's property much more often than to protect one's life.

A textbook case that demonstrates the usefulness of carrying a gun in this regard is that of the town of Kennesaw, in the suburbs of Atlanta. This city passed a law in 1982 that required heads of households to have at least one firearm in the house. The residential burglary rate dropped by 89%2.

Now let's move on to protecting people.

According to the study Armed Resistance to Crime, firearms are used 2.5 million times a year by American citizens in a state of self-defense, for the protection of property and people.

Don't imagine, however, that the country is a huge shooting park where stray bullets fly in the wind: citizens only have to resort to shooting their opponents in 2% of cases, show off their weapons or fire a shot of warning being in general sufficient to have peace.

Carrying Weapons: Let's Fight Against prejudices

Peace presupposes preparing for war, and as in the depths of the ages when our ancestors would never have set out to conquer continents without weapons, today carrying weapons is beneficial for populations far from the forces of order, and offers beneficial technical and moral support for our contemporaries who step out of their comfort zone3.

While carrying a weapon serves to defend oneself against theft and to apprehend the unknown with more serenity, it also serves to ward off physical violence, and even more so sexual violence. We have seen that the number of attacks prevented by the presence of a weapon is in the millions.

As you know, the reality of rape cannot be assimilated to a disparate succession of miscellaneous events. When we talk about rape, we are talking about an epidemiological reality; there would thus be 75,000 rapes a year in France and 198,000 attempts. One in ten women will be raped in her lifetime.

This is unfortunately universal and once again we are going to go to the USA. According to the study by Kleck and Gertz, 200,000 women defend themselves there each year with a firearm.

In 1979 a study carried out in 26 cities of the country – Rape Vicitimization in 26 americans cities – by the Carter Justice Department found that out of 32,000 rape attempts, 32% were successful, but that when the victims were armed, this rate dropped to 3%.

I will be told that an attacker with lewd intentions possessing a weapon will be all the more dangerous for a woman. I do not deny the validity of this argument.

However, allow me to state that a woman who is 1.60 m tall, weighs 60 kg and has a weapon in her belt will be much less likely to be raped by an armed man built like Hercules.

Similarly, an unarmed woman who is assaulted by an armed or unarmed man will be much more likely to receive help – regardless of where and when – in a nation where honest people can s 'arm, that in a nation where only law enforcement can carry a weapon, in the latter case a crowded subway train can be a haven for a satyr...

Personally, I prefer a country where women have a gun in their belt to protect themselves rather than a bunch of keys.

The only useful defense is the armed citizen

I will be told that everyone can acquire non-lethal defense weapons, such as Tasers or sprays. However, it turns out that a person equipped with a spray has, in addition to a ridiculous range, only a limited number of blows to send to the face of an attacker and that tasers are sometimes not enough to neutralize attacker, especially if the attacker is wearing a thick layer of clothing.

Tasers have the same flaws as sprays: a range that does not compare to a firearm. These are weapons that do not have the same rate of fire as a pistol, which therefore cannot protect a person against a group. In short, the taser is to the pistol what the crossbow is to the bow. The choice of means of defense is quickly made.

Some would say that the most vulnerable can learn to defend themselves not with lethal or non-lethal weapons but with their bare hands, as the renewed interest in combat sports seems to confirm.

Alas, again for the hoplophobes, bare hands do not always save, not even the champions of the contact disciplines. Thus in 2004 Kuba Tokarz, 22, Polish judo champion in the 81 kg category, fifth in Europe, was paralyzed in 2004 after being stabbed in a bar brawl. If he had had a gun in his belt, would anyone have come to blows against him?

What solution is left to an attacked person, apart from carrying a weapon? The escape ? No, we do not doubt it with disabled people in wheelchairs, flight is not always an option.

Closer to the common condition, a mother encumbered by her offspring cannot think of running away at full speed. But faced with danger, she can think of freeing one of her hands to show off her weapon, or even use it.

The third reason for wanting a right to bear arms is to ensure equality among citizens, to counter inequalities between individuals. As a famous slogan said:

And since we are all vulnerable to cheats, let's talk about terrorism.

By terrorism, I mean all acts of violence directed against civilians or soldiers, whether they are acts of madness or militant acts. As you can imagine, here again armed citizens are essential, they save lives4.

I can already hear the remonstrances: leaving people to defend themselves in action is to run the risk of multiplying innocent victims, citizens being less competent and prepared than the authorities in the face of the stress of action.

Besides the fact that skeptics will have forgotten that gun bearers only open fire in 2% of cases, this is forgetting that in a state authorizing the carrying of guns, citizens take advantage of this right prepare themselves psychologically for a sad eventuality – don't they buy weapons to defend their families? – and train regularly, it turns out once again that skepticism has no reason to be.

Also remember that the police take time to intervene, which is normal, since it is impossible to place a police officer behind each citizen. For example, the US Department of Justice reported that in 1991, for all violent crimes, only 28% of calls to the police were answered within five minutes. We bet that it is the same today in France.

Thus it turns out that in the United States criminals kill fewer people when they are stopped in their action by armed civilians rather than by those in authority.

Indeed, when a killing is stopped by civilians already on the spot, the number of victims rises to 2.33 on average, while when it is necessary to wait for the police the toll is good heaviest: 14.295.

With regard to collateral damage, criminologist and constitutional legislator Don Kates highlighted the fact that the police kill more innocent people than civilians: 11% of innocent civilians lost during the action of the forces of law. order against only 2% when it is the civilians who intervene.

The hoplophobic position is becoming less and less defensible.

We could also imagine a land of plenty of 10 million peaceful souls, staffed by 10,000 police officers with only non-lethal weapons, sufficient at first glance to manage an unarmed nation. It would be to forget that there are always black sheep, who arm themselves on the black market, or, in the absence of available weapons, can manufacture them. No matter how effective a prohibition of legal weapons and surveillance of the scum of society, criminals will always manage to arm themselves.

A weapon indeed that is in a kitchen – knives are weapons – or it is made, and any fool can do it. If you look carefully you will find how to make a handmade 12 gauge on the internet, you will even see people doing demonstrations on Youtube.

In short, the whole issue of the possession and carrying of weapons comes down to two questions: the question of its usefulness, which is undeniable given the ease with which people with bad intentions have weapons; and the question of the cultural bath in which this right applies.

But since we were talking about violence, theft, inequality and terrorism, let's talk about the dictatorial context that generates these phenomena.

The founders of Human Rights were staunch supporters of an armed nation.

A human right

Thus on August 18, the Drafting Committee of the Declaration of the Rights of Man and of the Citizen wrote this famous sentence:

It must be understood that in the minds of the revolutionaries preventing the nation from arming itself was tantamount to establishing privileges again. Thus the session of the National Assembly of the same day gives us to understand this:

Moreover, Mirabeau wanted to include this right in the Declaration of the Rights of Man and of the Citizen, proposing it as Article 10, worded as follows:

Alas, the members of the Committee of Five Editors took this right for granted, and did not write it down…. “the right declared in article 10 not withheld was evident in its nature, and one of the main guarantors of political and civil liberty that no other institution can supply it”6.

It is therefore understandable, firearms are therefore useful, not only to protect one's person or others, but also to protect the whole nation from itself and from its servile tendencies, or from slavery tendencies other populations and states.

Weapons were perceived from the dawn of humanity as an excellent way to free themselves from tyranny and, conversely, the fact that populations are armed has always been considered a threat by despots7 .

In France itself, the carrying of a weapon was authorized until April 18, 1939, when the government prohibited it by decree, in order to avoid a possible insurrection during the increasingly imminent conflict against the Reich. After the invasion, which would undoubtedly have been much more costly for the enemy if the French population had benefited from weapons allowing it to multiply the pockets of resistance, the Vichy regime prohibited, by law no. 2181 of June 1, 1941 , possession, purchase and sale of arms and ammunition by Jews.

Genocides and democides always target civilian populations who can no longer defend themselves against States that decide to attack them.

Let's continue with the French case. After the anti-Jewish measures, it was the law of August 7, 1942 which punished with death any person holding a deposit of weapons, murderous or incendiary devices. Finally, the law of December 3, 1942 will prohibit the possession and transport of any firearm and ammunition, including hunting ones.

In short, Orwell was right in his "Don't Let Colonel Blimp Ruin the Home Guard", published on January 8, 1941 in the Evening Standard:

  1. For this we will use – among others – the study of Gary Kleck and Marc Gertz, both criminologists at the Florida State University College of Criminology and Criminal Justice; “Armed Resistance to Crime: The Prevalence and Nature of Self-Defense With a Gun”. ↩
  2. Gary Kleck, “Crime Control Through the Private Use of Armed Force”. ↩
  3. H.P Lovecraft perfectly transcribes what the mind of a disarmed person can undergo in a place where insecurity reigns:

    “After a while, I thought I heard the crack The stairway and hallways seemed to be underfoot, and I assumed the other rooms were beginning to fill. Yet there were no sounds of voices, and I was struck by the fleeting nature of these creaks. I didn't like that, and I wondered if I had better not sleep at all. This town was home to some weird people, and there had undoubtedly been several disappearances. Was this one of those inns where travelers were killed to steal their money? I certainly didn't look very fortunate. Or did the locals have so much hatred for curious visitors? My obvious tourist interest, the frequent consultation of the map had they made a bad impression? In what nervous state was I therefore to build hypotheses on a few fortuitous cracks? But I still regretted being unarmed. » ↩

  4. In 2008 in Winnemucca a man entered a bar filled with 300 people, he killed 3 and injured others before being shot by a man with a concealed weapon permit. On April 20, 2015 in Chicago, an Uber driver prevented a mass shooting with the weapon he was carrying thanks to a concealed weapon permit. to hostile individuals, whether bandits or terrorists. ↩
  5. Source: Davi Barker's work on 28 events. ↩
  6. Le Courrier de Provence, n°XXIX, By Honoré-Gabriel de Riquetti de Mirabeau, page 17). ↩
  7. Herodotus thus tells us in paragraph 155 of the first book of his Inquiry, the stratagem that Croesus inspired in the Persian sovereign Cyrus in order to subjugate the people of the Lydians, then in full insurrection, a stratagem which begins with a disarmament of the population.

    “CLV. On this news, which Cyrus heard on the way, this prince said to Croesus: “When shall I see the end of these troubles? The Lydians will not cease, according to all appearances, to cause me business, and to make some with themselves. What do I know if it would not be more advantageous to reduce them to servitude? I acted, at least so it seems to me, like someone who would have spared the children of the one he would have killed. You were something more than a father to the Lydians, I take you prisoner; I handed over their city to them, and then I am surprised that they revolt!” This speech expressed the way of thinking of this prince: also Croesus, who feared that he would entirely destroy the city of Sardis, and that he would transplant the inhabitants elsewhere, spoke again: "What you have just said , my lord, is specious; but do not abandon yourself entirely to the movements of your anger, and do not destroy an ancient city, which is not guilty either of the previous disturbances, or of those which are happening today. I was the cause of the first, and I bear the pain. Pactyas has offended the one to whom you have entrusted the government of Sardis: let him be punished. Forgive the Lydians; but, lest in future they rise up, and make themselves formidable, forbid them to have arms at home, and order them to wear tunics under their cloaks. , to put on boots, to teach their children to play the zither, to sing, and the arts to make them effeminate. By this means, lord, you will soon see men changed into women, and there will be no more fear of revolt on their part.

    Unsurprisingly, we find the same cold logic throughout history. ↩