Firmin Debrabander’s April 1 article in The Atlantic online, How Gun Rights Harm the Rule of Law, oddly contradicts reality. It seems fitting for April Fools Day but is really unself-conscious parody, tying itself in knots to justify nonsensical conclusions. Debrabander is a philosopher with a string of anti-gun writing, but there are more than enough examples just here:
“Thanks to Stand Your Ground [laws], citizens must now fear their armed neighbors”. I hadn’t heard of neighborhood fears growing due to recognition of a right to defend oneself without being obliged to retreat when attacked. Cases cited include George Zimmerman and Curtis Reeves. Zimmerman’s acquittal was based entirely on self-defense without any reference to Florida’s Stand Your Ground law. Reeves was charged with murder by authorities who rebuffed his claim of a Stand Your Ground shooting.
Common liberal discomfort with Wayne LaPierre’s NRA rhetoric is on display. Yet it is true that in a crisis “only you can protect you”, not the government, and that “the only thing that can stop a bad guy with a gun is a good guy with a gun.” This is not “a state of anarchy”. This is about facing down crime anywhere, anytime in a world that’s not the secure utopia of idealists.
Similarly, disrespect is clear for gun owners who understand how gun registration enables later confiscation. So is the lack of understanding about what a natural, Constitutional right entails. So is discounting the fact that “it’s better to have a gun on you, or an armed ‘good guy’ in the midst of a shooting, when police cannot arrive soon enough.” Jared Loughner at a strip mall, James Holmes in a movie theater, Adam Lanza in an elementary school—these were violent misfits whom background checks and gun-free locations didn’t keep from mass murder.
Debrabander is attempting to portray people who see the danger in the world, who want to be prepared should it present, as undercutting the “rule of law” that civil society depends on. He argues that “individual gun owners are free to enforce the law if and when they deem it necessary … that an armed and potentially violent public only goads the government into action and force. [That l]aw enforcement knows that gun owners may use their weapons recklessly, and prepares itself accordingly. [Thus] an over-armed society makes government bigger, more intrusive, and more aggressive in … maintaining order. It goads government, and the law enforcement … towards arbitrary shows of power and force.” “Over-armed”, “recklessly”…?
The people of the United States don’t “goad” government into action, except by ballot. Very few gun owners want a “libertarian paradise” where they “are free to enforce the law if and when they deem it necessary.” True, “police now assume their suspects to be armed … [but not due to] the state of affairs the NRA has fostered.” No, cautious police have always assumed that suspects may be armed as a matter of self-preservation, not on account of the NRA.
Legal gun owners, especially concealed carriers, are far less likely to commit crimes than the general population, shoot more accurately and commit fewer murders compared to police, and as gun ownership increases, violent crime decreases, making for a more civil society. Gun rights support the rule of law in American society. Preserving that rule of law depends on respecting our unalienable civil rights, like the right to keep and bear arms.
— DRGO editor Robert B. Young, MD is a psychiatrist practicing in Pittsford, NY, an associate clinical professor at the University of Rochester School of Medicine, and a Distinguished Life Fellow of the American Psychiatric Association.
All DRGO articles by Robert B. Young, MD.