15 October 2015
The Right to Bear Arms
by J.R.Thomas
Sometimes one just says things without thought or pause which cause sharp intakes of breath and sideways glances among your audience. And you think “What? What? Why has that caused such surprise?”. That must be slightly how Ben Carson, GOP Presidential contender and current second runner to Donald Trump, was feeling last week when he was interviewed by Wolf Blitzer on CNN.
The background to the conversation was the latest set of appalling and heart rending shootings in American schools; a massacre in Oregon at the beginning of October, and two shootings last week in West Texas and Arizona. Carson was defending the right to bear arms and referencing the rights granted to American citizens in the Second Amendment to the Constitution. He mentioned, in a more or less casual aside, that the Holocaust might have been avoided or “greatly diminished” if Jewish households in 1930’s Nazi controlled Germany had held guns. “I’m telling you” the former paediatric neurosurgeon went on: “There is a reason these dictatorial people take guns first.”
Leaving aside such esoteric details as whether, even if the Jewish community in Hitler’s Germany had held guns, there might have been any circumstances as to whether they would have used them; and as what use they might have been against an SS and army units armed with machine guns and grenades, it appeared at first chop to have been an extraordinarily naïve remark from a highly intelligent man. But in fact the apparent slip was far from it – Carson made exactly the same point in his new book, A More Perfect Union, published the same day and written by Dr Carson as a sort of campaign manifesto. Indeed, he was making a serious constitutional point in the current debate over ordinary citizen’s right to bear arms under the powers reserved to them in the Second Amendment, not an easy defence to run after the terrible and seemingly endless series of copycat shootings in schools across the nation. The idea of misfit school students mowing down their classmates using guns which they legally held or were casually available from family or friends has caused horror, and calls from the President downwards for gun reform.
But a core element of many Americans’ understanding of themselves as free citizens of a democratic nation is that very right to bear arms, that the only defence of a free citizen against a tyrannical government is their ability to take up weaponry. It is right up there with separation of powers, the right to recall, and local votes on all manner of things, including tax. No matter that the modern government is so far superior in arms and firepower and technology as to ensure that the fate of any citizen taking up arms for any cause is early and certain death, the emotional belief in the right set out in that Amendment is widely supported. There are indeed also practical reasons for this – there is a widespread enthusiasm for hunting in the USA which is mostly with guns; target and competitive shooting with all types of firearms is a popular hobby; and many Americans believe that home security is best addressed by the nifty loaded hand gun kept in the convenient bedside drawer. There are plenty of tales of how lives and property were saved by the deployment of the householder’s steel friend. (And also, it should be said, plenty of tales of arguments at home, at work, and on the road, that ended with a life changing, or terminating, shoot-out.)
“Guns don’t kill people, people do” is the great mantra of the anti-control lobby, who also point to other nations where gun possession is widely spread and crime is low – the usual example cited being Switzerland, where it is estimated that 31% of households have guns, though gun related crime is at one of the lowest levels in the world. The gun lobby is very powerful indeed, especially on the GOP side of politics, but perhaps surprisingly so even among the Democrats, and although individual states have been able to introduce restrictions on gun ownership (California and New York, for instance) they have focussed on licensing and fitness to carry, rather than outright bans. Efforts to produce any federal reduction in the right to carry firearms have always failed at a very preliminary stage. Which is why President Obama has frequently expressed anger and frustration that one thing he has utterly failed to do in his two periods of office is to bring in any measure of gun control for American households.
Carson does not look on the face of it much like an enthusiast for the gun lobby. He was a very distinguished surgeon, an inhabitant of suburban Chicago, a man who has spent his life saving the lives of others, a polished and sophisticated urban citizen. His views were much attacked after he expressed them to Mr Blitzer, especially in the media, but he repeated them when being interviewed by John Dickerson on Face The Nation, a widely watched interview show, and again referred to the abilities of citizens to defend themselves against a government seeking to take away their rights. He has been heavily defended by various friends who know him well as a humane and deeply thoughtful man, though they seem a little puzzled by what he is saying; some saying that he was been ironic, others that he has a passion for the historic rights of American citizens.
Whatever Dr Carson’s reasons, and however historians might argue the case, past and present, for arming citizens, the immediate effect does seem to have been a leap in the good doctor’s opinion poll ratings, which following his remarks seemed to be fairly uniform nationally at around 21%, after he had slipped back to the mid teens a few weeks ago. Mr Trump is still well out in front with 28% nationally, but in Iowa and New Hampshire, the two vital first selecting states, the Donald is starting to show the first signs of losing ground – to Ben Carson in Iowa and to Carly Fiorina in New Hampshire. Both those states might well be thought to be against gun control, and New Hampshire perhaps more than most given its proud links to the original thirteen founding states, and its history of originality and independence, so how the Carson controversy plays out there in the next few days could be very interesting.
Maybe Carson is taking a leaf out of the Trump book on how to generate publicity and build populist support. It seems unlikely, given the man and his nature, but it seems to have worked, whether he intended it or no. But he may also want to consider that Trump, who can see the glimmer of the nomination on the horizon, has toned down some of his amusingly (or not) outrageous rhetoric and is starting to position himself as more mainstream. There comes a point when you have to stop frightening the horses if you want to get elected.
