On The Right - gun control; Confederate flag in South Carolina; Sen. Jesse Helms addresses U.N. Security Council

National Review, Feb 21, 2000

Were Fort Sumter's Guns Registered?

NEW YORK, JANUARY 14

THE quarrel over a Confederate flag flying over the statehouse of Columbia, South Carolina, continues to engage the public. Why? Those who feel that, emanating from that flag, is nostalgia for slavery can't make their case persuasively. Nobody in South Carolina believes in a return to slavery. What else is signified? The southern heritage, some answer: but heritage of what? The swastika is unmistakably the symbol of Hitler and Hitlerism. The heritage felt so strongly by defenders of the Stars and Bars has to do with the sense of a reserved right of the citizen to secede from the government. And that is profoundly relevant to current political controversy, specifically the quarrel over gun control.

The partisans are extraordinarily, not to say disgustingly, polarized. The Citizens of America is circulating a petition asking Congress to ordain a one-year limitation on the ownership of guns of any kind. During that year, the government would repay the citizen the value of his forfeited gun(s). After that, ownership would be criminal.

Now that proposal, even though it isn't going to fly in America, is an arguable position. But what is interesting in the literature of the Citizens of America is less the proposal than the accompanying rhetoric. "We're a single-issue organization," writes its director. "This campaign will not be apologetic, it will not play fair, it will hit below the belt whenever the opportunity presents itself, it will not take prisoners."

The other side too can express itself with abandon. One anti-gun-control organization's newsletter informs its readers: "I signed the petition three times, once as Adolf Hitler, once as Benito Mussolini, and once as Pol Pot." That organization goes on to publish a letter addressed to this columnist by John McClaughry, who is the president of the Ethan Allen Institute in Vermont, a libertarian, pro-gun organization named after the revolutionary hero who founded the Green Mountain Boys.

He wrote: "Am I correct that you are in favor of the government keeping a record of guns sold, and to whom? How reassuring to know that the next Craig Livingstone and Janet Reno will know what firearms are in my possession. In 1685 James II promulgated a ban on firearms ownership by the Irish. Is that where you are heading? Have you no memory, man?"

I pleaded that the government's primary responsibility is to protect the lives of its citizens. Therefore, the police need such aids as are useful in tracking down aggressors. These include fingerprints, Social Security numbers, passport numbers, and yes, gun-registration numbers. The balance between privacy and protection is always changing; see, e.g., airport procedures. I concluded: "The time to start shooting at the policeman is not when he is engaged in enforcing the law, but when he is engaged in tyrannical practices."

Mr. McClaughry's reply is that of opponents of proposed measures asking for full-scale gun registration. "Under present law, federal firearms licensees (gun dealers) are required to retain a form, showing to whom a firearm was sold. This form may be accessed by law-enforcement authorities seeking to establish the ownership path of a firearm used in a crime. The government is barred by law from accessing these gun-sale records unless the gun was used in a crime. The purpose of this provision is to prevent the government from being able to identify which citizens are armed."

This is Confederate-flag thinking. The thought behind it is that citizens need to keep their guns in hiding from the government. Why?

Because the day might come when the citizens will want to use those guns. Against whom? Against individual aggressors? But obviously guns are kept, other than by sportsmen, for that contingent reason. What is the objection to the government's knowing that you have such a gun? There is reason to conceal ownership of a gun where it is illegal to own one. On the other hand-and here is where the gun-control people have made an insufficient case for further legislation-what are the motives of government in seeking information on who has a gun and what is its manufacturer's registration number?

Those who want to make the case for the registration of all weapons should demonstrate, if they can, how such records would have prevented numerable crimes, or identified numerable criminals who got away. Some of us grew up with guns-I myself own, I'd guess, seven or eight. They are a psychological comfort against marauders.

But some people's attitude towards them has got to trace to thinking of them as weapons against government tyranny. There is no other way to account for the high temperature of the principals.

Pull Down That Flag

NEW YORK, JANUARY 18

Q: Shouldn't your candidate have just said it out straight-that the Confederate flag should be pulled down in Columbia? After all, Gov. Bush is a citizen of a state that fought with the South during the Civil War, and there's no flag flying in Austin-