Second Amendment Project Newsletter. Feb. 7, 2000.
The Second Amendment Project is based at the Independence
Institute, a free-market think tank in Golden, Colorado.
http://i2i.org
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Table of Contents for this issue
1. Special Legal Update: Emerson and Waco cases.
2. Notable web publications: New work from legal scholars.
3. Prize-winning student essay on Columbine.
4. Vin Suprynowicz on the Waco murders.
5. H.L. Mencken on gun control.

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1. Legal Update.
a. Emerson case.
All the briefs have now been filed in the case of United States v. Emerson, currently before the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals. Here is a guide to where to find Emerson briefs on the web:

Independence Institute brief, written by Dave Kopel. Uses state constitution texts to argue that the Second Amendment guarantees an individual right
http://www.i2i.org/SuptDocs/Crime/Briefs/IndInstWeb.htm

Second Amendment Foundation's Emerson site. Contains the government Brief and all pro-government amici briefs. (Of these, the Yassky brief is the best.) Also contains public defender's brief for Emerson, and amicus briefs of the Second Amendment Foundation and the Citizens Committee for the Right to Keep and Bear Arms. The site will eventually contain all Emerson briefs.
http://www.saf.org/EmersonViewOptions.html

Heartland Institute and Ethan Allan Institute brief. Written by Southern Illinois University law professor Brannon Denning. Deconstructs the lower federal court cases asserting that the Second Amendment is not an individual right.
www.heartland.org/public/PDF/denning.pdf

Texas Justice Foundation brief. Written by Stephen Halbrook.
Focus on the language of the Second Amendment, and other material from the Early Republic.
www.heartland.org/public/PDF/halbrook.pdf

Gun Owners Foundation. Written by James Jeffries.
Surveys the scholarly literature on the Second Amendment. Very useful as a bibliography, besides being a good brief.
http://www.gunowners.com/amicus3.htm

National Rifle Association. By Nicholas Johnson & Robert Dowlut.
Analysis of Supreme Court and lower court decisions.
http://www.nraila.org From there, browse for the Emerson brief.

Among the briefs that have not yet been posted on the web are those for:
Academics for the Second Amendment, Law Enforcement Alliance of America, Jews for the Preservation of Firearms Ownership/Southern States Police Benevolent Association.
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b. Waco case.
The Supreme Court has granted certiorari in the Waco criminal case!
The case is:
Jaime Castillo, et al., Petitioners v. United States (No. 99-658).
The only issue in the case is interpretation of a federal statute imposing a lengthy sentence enhancement (up to 30 extra years, which the Branch Davidians in fact received), for use of a machine gun during a crime. At trial, the jury acquitted all the Branch Davidians of murder, but convicted several of them of manslaughter. (The jury was allowed to consider self-defense for the murder charge, but not for the manslaughter charge.) The jury found that the Davidians had used firearms, but the jury made no findings about what type of firearm. The maximum federal sentence for manslaughter is 10 years. At sentencing federal district judge Walter Smith gave most of the Branch Davidians the full ten years, plus 30 additional years (consecutive to the 10) for using a machine gun in a violent crime.

The sentence enhancement statute is 18 U.S.C. § 924(c)(1). The Supreme Court will decide whether the sentence enhancement statute requires that the defendant be indicted by a grand jury for violating the statute, and whether the statute requires that the jury find beyond a reasonable doubt that the defendant used a machine gun.

The case comes as an appeal from the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals.

The brief for the petitioner briefs is due on Feb. 20.
The United States brief due on March 29.

Each of the Waco defendants has his or her own attorney. Jamie Castillo, the lead defendant, is represented by Stephen Halbrook. Halbrook has previously won two Supreme Court decisions by a 5-4 vote. The first case, U.S. v. Thompson/Center, was a statutory interpretation case involving the assembly of firearms; the second case, Printz & Mack v. U.S., negated the Brady Act's mandate that local sheriffs perform a federal background check on gun buyers.

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2. Notable items on the web. This week's list focuses on items by legal scholars.

John Lott (Law, Yale), "Creating Hysteria Over Guns." Wash. Times,
Jan. 31, 2000. One of Lott's best op-eds ever.
http://www.washtimes.com/commentary/comment3-01302000.htm

Eugene Volokh (Law, UCLA). "Bans on Guns or Handguns—is it true that "no one is Seriously proposing" them? One of the many fine items on Volokh's Gun Scholars site. Collection of numerous quotes showing that gun prohibition is the ultimate goal of many "gun control" advocates.
http://www.gunscholar.org/data.htm#BANS

J.D. Turcille. "Spotlight on Antigun Lawsuits."
Very good collection of information, at the Free-Market.Net site.
http://www.free-market.net/spotlight/gunlawsuits/

J.D. Turcille. "Pinstiped Gunslingers."
On the About.com site. Good essay, plus lots of useful links.
http://civilliberty.about.com/culture/civilliberty/library/weekly/aa011000.htm

"NFA and other gun law related info and cases." Much more than the title suggests. No graphics, but an outstanding treasure trove of court cases, briefs, articles, regulations, and much more on firearms law. Federal, state, and local materials all available. One of the best gun law resources on the web, and not nearly well-known enough.
http://www.cs.cmu.edu/afs/cs.cmu.edu/user/wbardwel/public/nfalist

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3. "Essay wins trip to D.C. for teen"
This item originally appeared in the Commerce City Beacon in the summer of 1999. (Commerce City is north of Denver.

Rick Ward's short essay will get him a free trip to Washington, D.C. As reported in last week's Beacon, this 19-year-old Lester Arnold High School student will attend a two day conference "Voices Against Violence" to be held October 19-20.

Here is his essay:

I don't think that TV, music, movies and video games cause violence. I think that the parents should take time to teach their children right from wrong, real from fake. Parents should tell their children that if you shoot someone they won't get up afterwards. Take me for example. I watch cartoons but I never wanted to drop an anvil on a duck. I listen to rap but I don't go out and kill people. And it's all because my parents taught me all those things.
The government wants to outlaw guns. Why? Guns don't even know what they're doing. They aren't even alive. Then people say that the kids from Columbine suffered. Alright, it might be sad but that's the only time they'll ever hear gun shots. But kids in my neighborhood hear them every night. Then they wake up to see their mom lighting up a crack pipe. I had two friends murdered- one this summer and the other one a few years ago and I didn't still say that the gun didn't kill him and the knife didn't kill him. It was some fool with a trip.
Violence doesn't even come from outside influences. In my opinion, it comes from the home.

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4. "Video contends Davidians were machine-gunned, crushed by tanks."
Vin Suprynowicz. Jan. 23, 2000.

Is it possible David Koresh didn't lose his confrontation with the Godless state he and his followers identified as "Babylon," at all?

Throughout their 51-day Texas standoff in the spring of 1993, Koresh and his followers repeatedly compared their plight to that of God's people facing the "flaming chariots" of Babylon in the biblical prophesies of Nahum and Habakkuk. A follower says Koresh believed he would be the one to "bring down Babylon" by sacrificing himself and his denomination.

Will it turn out that -- like an earlier group of Texas martyrs who died buying time for Sam Houston at the Alamo -- the Branch Davidians still retain the power to reach out from the grave and smite their oppressors?

After completing the documentary "Waco: The Rules of Engagement' -- nominated for an Academy Award -- researcher Mike McNulty continued to delve into the central mystery of Waco: Why would scores of perfectly sane and decent Christian Americans apparently choose to condemn themselves and their "unusually bright and well-treated" children (per Texas child welfare authorities) to death in the flames, rather than coming out and surrendering to the federal tanks and helicopters that surrounded them?

Mr. McNulty appears to have found some answers -- at least to the extent anyone still can, given the determined after-the-fact efforts to bleach and bulldoze the "crime scene." Those answers are offered in the new video: "Waco: A New Revelation," directed by Jason Van Vleet.

The documentary is not strident. If anything, the new evidence is piled up in such a measured and matter-of-fact way -- superposed with the sneering denials of FBI spokesmen and apologists like U.S. Rep. (now Sen.) Charles Schumer -- that its full impact may not register without a second viewing.

But at that point, any thoughtful viewer of conscience must wonder how willfully the Congress and populace of this country must want to ignore the truth, to be able to close their eyes to facts like the following:

On the evening of Feb. 28, three Branch Davidians who had not been present for the initial BATF raid and shoot-out attempted to get home to their wives and children in the Mount Carmel church. They were intercepted and fired upon by 17 agents "dressed as trees." Two were captured, but Michael Dean Schroeder -- not charged with any crime -- was shot seven times and killed. As the other two Davidians were led away -- after Schroeder was down -- they report hearing two final shots behind them, in quick succession. An autopsy showed Michael Dean Schroeder had two neat bullet holes immediately behind his right ear. His body was left lying in the ravine for five days.

Far from inviting an exodus and surrender, tape recordings reveal that by late March, FBI negotiators told the Davidians: "No one is authorized to come out of there for any reason. The patience of the bosses is no longer what it was. If anyone tries to come out, they will be treated in such a way that they'll be forced to retreat."

Former FBI Director William Sessions wanted to fly to Waco to negotiate with David Koresh face-to-face, but the Justice Department refused to let him board his plane. Sessions' wife, Alice Sessions, explains: "The FBI did not want it negotiated. They wanted to show they could win with military type tactics; it was a paramilitary organization."

When the final government attack with toxic and disabling CS gas finally began early on the morning of April 19, the buried school bus was gassed first, forcing the women and children to retreat to the reinforced concrete records vault, which the FBI referred to as "the bunker." Gas was then pumped into the bunker, which had no ventilation, for two hours. Rep. John Mica, R-Fla., tells Congress: "At the very least that resulted in the babies and children being tortured for at least three to four hours."

Manning sniper post Sierra 1 in the "undercover house," Lon Horiuchi (who eight months earlier had shot the unarmed Vicky Weaver as she stood holding a baby in her kitchen in Ruby Ridge, Idaho), "accompanied by most of the FBI team from Ruby Ridge," swore he did not fire into the church on April 19. But other FBI agents swore they heard fire from his position, and four expended .308 shell casings were later found there.

At 9:02 a.m. on April 19, a Branch Davidian is spotted trying to exit the building across the roof. "Falcon 2," an FBI helicopter, is seen approaching in ground-level footage. It hovers, and muzzle flashes can be seen from its port waist gun. Dr. Edward Allard, formerly of the U.S. government's Night Vision Directorate, says his analysis shows at least three, five-shot machine gun bursts. "It's indicative of a machine gun firing 600 rounds per minute," he says. "It's impossible for these to be solar flashes."

Other close-range video -- not high-altitude footage -- clearly shows full-sized machine guns in cradle mounts in the waist doors of the FBI helicopters, which the government long swore were unarmed.

Branch Davidians Phillip Henry and Jimmy Riddle appear to have been shot behind the building at this time. Neither had soot in their lungs or carbon monoxide in their blood -- both died before the fire. An autopsy showed half of Riddle's body torn away, which the medical examiner said could have been consistent with "an encounter with a tank tread."

However, when the family re-opened Riddle's casket for a follow-up examination of his fatal bullet wounds, the evidentiary portion of his skull was missing. The widow says the local medical examiner was instructed
by Texas authorities and U.S. marshals not to release his autopsy results to the family.

The film's researcher, Mike McNulty, tells me the most likely scenario is that Henry and Riddle were shot behind the building by government agents around 9 a.m. A lull followed, as the FBI pondered what to do. Then, closer to noontime, their bodies were bulldozed back into the church dining room by tanks, and the final government assault -- with machine guns and incendiary grenades -- began in earnest.

Viewing the government's high-altitude infrared footage of the final battle, Dr. Edward Allard, formerly of the U.S. government's Night Vision Directorate, explains: "What we have here is a tank-infantry type of operation. As the tank advances, two men have dropped out of the escape hatch. They then roll over, and as they roll over they open up with automatic gunfire. The shots occur at one-thirtieth of a second. There is absolutely nothing in nature that can cause thermal flashes to occur in a thirtieth of a second."

Dr. Allard reports he stopped counting the gunshots into the dining room -- the last available escape route from the building after the fire broke out -- "after 62 individual shots."

The filmmakers report Maurice Cox, a former analyst with the U.S. intelligence community, determined that for an aircraft circling at 9,000 feet to pick up rhythmic flashes at a rate of 600 per minute from "reflected sunlight" as the government claims, the reflective surfaces would have to be placed in a precise array, and the aircraft would have to be traveling at the absurd speed of Mach 1.8.

FBI officials have refused to respond to Cox's findings, and have dragged their feet in the face of demands that they re-create the footage to see if sunlight reflections can be made to look like the flashes in the Forward-Looking Infrared (FLIR) footage. Absurdly, the FBI claims cameras like the one used in 1993 can no longer be obtained.

Meantime, ground level footage -- not distant aerial shots -- clearly show men in Kevlar army helmets firing projectiles from an M-79 grenade launcher into the church's storm shelter the morning of the final assault. Seconds later, white smoke pours from the shelter.

Although the government has consistently denied the Army's Combat Applications Force -- the "Delta Force" -- was present at Waco, previously classified Army documents reveal that four Delta Force "observers" were deployed to Waco on March 21. Gene Cullen, a senior case officer with the CIA's Special Forces Group, reports on camera he was "initially told they would just be observers. But at (an April 14) CIA briefing, we were told there were more than 10, and that they would be actively participating" in the April 19 attack.

March Bell, who headed the staff of the last congressional investigation into Waco, tells the filmmakers: "They were in the tanks and the sniper posts. They were not giving advice back in some conference room -- they were working shoulder to shoulder with the (FBI's) Hostage Rescue Team."

Rep. Stephen Buyer, R-Ind., explains that it is a federal crime -- a violation of the Posse Comitatus Act -- to use any part of the Army or Air Force "to enforce the law in this country."

But CIA agent Cullen says he met Delta Force operators in Europe who "told me not only were they forward deployed at Waco, Texas, but they were actually involved in a gunfight with the Branch Davidians."

Steven Barry, a retired Special Forces sergeant, concurs: "I did talk to some Combat Applications Group guys, and they did confirm that, yes, portions of B Squadron were there pulling triggers."

Most chilling of all, Sgt. Barry reports: "Their operators had penetrated the building on several occasions, and on one occasion, late April 17 or early on the 18th, they saw Koresh within six feet of them. They radioed back to the Tactical Operations Center for permission to grab him, and within minutes the word came back from the Justice Department, 'No, we already have a plan in place,' that being what happened on April 19."

"People ask why we didn't let the children out," sobs Davidian survivor Clive Doyle. "If they saw all that was happening, and they were there with their children, would they have sent them out to the animals outside that were shooting at them and doing all those terrible things? No. ... When there was shooting going on it's kind of tongue in cheek to then turn and say, 'Well, why didn't you come out?' "

Although the government long denied its agents fired any incendiary projectiles into the church -- which was lined with hay bales against government gunfire, heated with kerosene heaters after the government shut off the electricity, and then flooded with combustible propellant for the CS gas -- photographs taken after the fire clearly show a U.S. military Mark 651 pyrotechnic CS gas projectile lying in the ashes.

When researcher McNulty finally broached the evidence room with the aid of the Freedom of Information Act in 1998, the pyrotechnic devices visible in those photographs were missing from the evidence boxes. But two additional pyrotechnic 40mm devices were found. The film's investigators also found -- mislabeled as gun parts or silencers -- six spent government flash-bang grenades, which were recovered from the dining room, the chapel, and the southwest corner of the building -- "all three points of origin of the fire."

Asked at a press conference whether she is embarrassed that independent filmmakers could find this evidence, when the FBI had been unable to turn it up in six years, Attorney General Janet Reno responds: "I'm not embarrassed. I'm very, very upset."

At 12:10 p.m. on April 19 the overhead FLIR footage shows at least two automatic weapons being fired into the rear of the dining room, the only remaining undamaged exit from the now-burning building. According to a
Justice Department report, at least 15 people were found shot to death at this location. The FBI conducted ballistic tests which the DOJ later termed "inconclusive and rudimentary at best."

"I cannot remember anything more sickening" than watching that gunfire into the building's last exit, comments Dr. Allard.

Asked whether the Davidian gunshot victims appeared to have committed suicide, a former FBI forensic crime scene analyst who preferred to be filmed only in silhouette responds: "The majority of people, the bodies that I saw, were clear-cut homicide victims. ...I don't know who fired the bullets into their bodies. So in fact what we have here is an open homicide."

Congressional investigator March Bell says the treatment of those bodies was "very troubling. The bodies were preserved in a semi-frozen state in two trailers for the purposes of investigation. For some reason those trailers under the control of the FBI were allowed to not have any electricity running to them and the bodies deteriorated beyond the point where any sort of forensic evidence could be gathered. We were very disturbed by that."

Indeed, the scene of the massacre was declared a "bio-hazard," and since the FBI had predetermined this was a mass suicide, "The FBI investigators were instructed to sift, wash, and bleach the evidence associated with the bodies, destroying much of its evidentiary value."

The large hole in the roof of the concrete records vault where the women and children were sheltering -- the rebar bent downwards as though from an external blast -- has never been explained. Military explosives expert Brig. Gen. Benton Partin, USAF retired, says "What it tells me is that you had a demolition charge that went off on the roof."

The FBI bulldozed the "bunker" to rubble. Six years later, in 1999, when Davidian attorneys were granted permission to recover the portion that might bear traces of the explosive used, that portion of the bunker ceiling was found to be missing. Gen. Partin concludes the rudimentary gunpowder possessed by the Branch Davidians would not have been capable of blowing that hole through six inches of reinforced concrete. Special Forces Sgt. Steven Barry reports the damage inside the records vault was "consistent with a shaped charge," as does retired USAF ordnance engineer Col. Jack Frost.

"In military operations, it's standard procedure to do this," Barry explains, in order to reduce casualties among the attacking forces.

The FBI's White House contact during the Waco operation was presidential aide Vince Foster, who committed suicide 90 days later. His widow told the FBI that the Waco tragedy was "very high on his list of concerns." She says he told the FBI he "believed everything was his fault," though Foster also commented: "The FBI lied to me."

After his suicide, the White House kept the Department of Justice and the Parks Police from reviewing Foster's files. Witnesses saw Maggie Williams -- Hillary Clinton's chief of staff -- removing Waco files from Foster's office. The staff was told "The contents of the box needed to be reviewed by the First Lady."

Sgt. Barry of the Special Forces: "If the Special Combat Applications Group were on the ground that day actually pulling triggers, the origin of that operation would have come from the White House. It would have come from the president. Because the Special Combat Applications Group is, for all intents and purposes, the president's private army."

So: The ATF, the FBI, and the Army Combat Applications Group (the "Delta Force" -- which can only have been dispatched to the scene by the special authorization of William Jefferson Clinton) stand accused of murder at Waco.

Why are there still no trials?

"Waco: A New Revelation" is $30.90 postpaid. Dial 1-877-GET-WACO; or go to web site http://www.waco-anewrevelation.com

Vin Suprynowicz is assistant editorial page editor of the Las Vegas Review-Journal. His new book, "Send in the Waco Killers: Essays on the Freedom Movement, 1993-1998," is available at $24.95 postpaid from Mountain Media, P.O. Box 271122, Las Vegas, Nev. 89127; by dialing 1-800-244-2224; or via web site http://www.thespiritof76.com/wacokillers.html

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5. "The Uplifters Try It Again." by H. L. Mencken
THE EVENING SUN, Baltimore, 1925.

I.
The eminent Nation [note: Mencken is referring to the leftist magazine, "The Nation"] announces with relish "the organization of a national committee of 100 to induce Congress to prohibit the inter-State traffic in revolvers," and offers the pious judgement that it is "a step forward." "Crime statistics," it appears, "show that 90% of the murders that take place are committed by the use of the pistol, and every year there are hundreds of cases of accidental homicides because someone did not know that his revolver was loaded." The new law or is it to be a constitutional amendment? We'll do away with all that. "It will not be easy," of course, "to draw a law that will permit exceptions for public officers and bank guards" to say nothing of Prohibition agents and other such legalized murderers. "But soon even these officials may get on without revolvers."

More than once in this place, I have lavished high praise upon the Nation. All that praise has been deserved, and I am by no means disposed to go back on it. The Nation is one of the few honest and intelligent periodicals published in the United States. It stands clear of official buncombe; it prints every week a great mass of news that the newspapers seem to miss; it interprets that news with a freedom and a sagacity that few newspaper editors can even so much as imagine. If it shut up shop then the country would plunge almost unchallenged into the lowest depths of Coolidgism, Rotarianism, Stantaquaism and other such bilge. It has been for a decade past, the chief consolation of the small and forlorn minority of civilized Americans.

But the Nation, in its days, has been a Liberal organ, and its old follies die hard. Ever and anon, in the midst of its most eloquent and effective pleas for Liberty, its eye wanders weakly toward Law. At such moments the old lust to lift 'em up overcomes it, and it makes a brilliant and melodramatic ass of itself. Such a moment was upon it when it printed the paragraph that I have quoted. Into that paragraph of not over 200 words it packed as much maudlin and nonsensical blather, as much idiotic reasoning and banal moralizing, as Dr. Coolidge gets into a speech of two hours' length.

II.

The new law that it advocated, indeed, is one of the most absurd specimens of jackass legislation ever heard of, even in this paradise of legislative donkeyism. Its single and sole effect would be to exaggerate enormously all of the evils it proposes to put down. It would not take pistols out of the hands of rogues and fools; it would simply take them out of the hands of honest men. The gunman today has great advantages everywhere. He has artillery in his pocket, and he may assume that, in the large cities, at least two-thirds of his prospective victims are unarmed. But if the Nation's proposed law (or amendment) were passed and enforced, he could assume safely that all of them were unarmed.

Here I do not indulge in theory. The hard facts are publicly on display in New York State, where a law of exactly the same tenor is already on the books the so-called Sullivan Law. In order to get it there, of course, the Second Amendment had to be severely strained, but the uplifters advocated the straining unanimously, and to the tune of loud hosannas, and the courts, as usual, were willing to sign on the dotted line. It is now a dreadful felony in New York to "have or possess" a pistol. Even if one keeps it locked in a bureau drawer at home, one may be sent to the hoosegow for ten years. More, men who have done no more are frequently bumped off. The cops, suspecting a man, say, of political heresy, raid his house and look for copies of the Nation. They find none, and are thus baffled but at the bottom of a trunk they do find a rusted and battered revolver. So he goes to trial for violating the Sullivan Law, and is presently being psycho- analyzed by the uplifters at Sing Sing.

With what result? With the general result that New York, even more than Chicago, is the heaven of footpads, hijackers, gunmen and all other such armed thugs. Their hands upon their pistols, they know they are safe. Not one citizen out of a hundred that they tackle is armed for getting a license to keep a revolver is a difficult business, and carrying one without it is more dangerous than submitting to robbery. So the gunmen flourish and give humble thanks to God. Like the bootleggers, they are hot and unanimous for Law Enforcement.

III.

To all this, of course, the uplifters have a ready answer. (At having ready answers, indeed, they always shine!) The New York thugs, they say, are armed to the teeth because New Jersey and Connecticut lack Sullivan Laws. When one of them wants a revolver all he has to do is to cross the river or take a short trolley trip. Or, to quote the Nation, he may "simply remit to one of the large firms which advertise the sale of their weapons by mail." The remedy is the usual dose: More law. Congress is besought to "prohibit the inter-State traffic in revolvers, especially to bar them from the mails."

It is all very familiar, and very depressing. Find me a man so vast an imbecile that he seriously believes that this prohibition would work. What would become of the millions of revolvers already in the hands of the American people if not in New York, then at least everywhere else? (I own two and my brother owns at least a dozen, though neither of us has fired one since the close of the Liberty Loan drives.) Would the cops at once confiscate this immense stock, or would it tend to concentrate in the hands of the criminal classes? If they attempted confiscation, how would they get my two revolvers lawfully acquired and possessed without breaking into my house? Would I wait for them docilely or would I sell out, in anticipation, to the nearest pistol bootlegger?

The first effect of the enactment of such a law, obviously, would be to make the market price of all small arms rise sharply. A pistol which is now worth, second-hand, perhaps $2, would quickly reach a value of $10 or even $20. This is not theorizing; we have had plenty of experience with gin. Well, imagining such prices to prevail, would the generality of men surrender to the Polizei, or would they sell them to the bootleggers? And if they sold them to the bootleggers, what would become of them in the end: would they fall into the hands of honest men or into the hands of rogues?

IV.

But the gunmen, I take it, would not suffer from the high cost of artillery for long. The moment the price got really attractive, the cops themselves would begin to sell their pistols, and with them the whole corps of Prohibition blacklegs, private detectives, deputy sheriffs, and other such scoundrels. And smuggling, as in the case of alcoholic beverages, would become an organized industry, large in scale and lordly in profits. Imagine the supplies that would pour over the long Canadian and Mexican borders! And into every port on every incoming ship!

Certainly, the history of the attempt to enforce Prohibition should give even uplifters pause. A case of whisky is a bulky object. It must be transported on a truck. It can not be disguised. Yet in every American city today a case of whisky may be bought almost as readily as a pair of shoes despite all the armed guards along the Canadian border, and all the guard ships off the ports, and all the raiding, snooping and murdering everywhere else. Thus the camel gets in and yet the proponents of the new anti-pistol law tell us that they will catch the gnat! Go tell it to the Marines!

Such a law, indeed, would simply make gun-toting swagger and fashionable, as Prohibition has made guzzling swagger and fashionable. When I was a youngster there were no Prohibition agents; hence I never so much as drank a glass of beer until I was nearly 19. Today, Law Enforcement is the eighth sacrament and the Methodist Board of Temperance, Prohibition and Public Morals is itself the authority for the sad news that the young of the land are full of gin. I remember, in my youth, a time when the cops tried to prohibit the game of catty. At once every boy in Baltimore consecrated his whole time and energy to it. Finally, the cops gave up their crusade. Almost instantly catty disappeared.

V.

The real victim of moral legislation is almost always the honest, law-abiding, well-meaning citizen what the late William Graham Summer called the Forgotten Man. Prohibition makes it impossible for him to take a harmless drink, cheaply and in a decent manner. In the same way the Harrison Act puts heavy burdens upon the physician who has need of prescribing narcotic drugs for a patient, honestly and for good ends. But the drunkard still gets all the alcohol that he can hold, and the drug addict is still full of morphine and cocaine. By precisely the same route the Nation's new law would deprive the reputable citizen of the arms he needs for protection, and hand them over to the rogues that he needs protection against.

Ten or fifteen years ago there was an epidemic of suicide by bichloride of mercury tablets. At once the uplifters proposed laws forbidding their sale, and such laws are now in force in many States, including New York. The consequences are classical. A New Yorker, desiring to lay in an antiseptic for household use, is deprived of the cheapest, most convenient and most effective. And the suicide rate in New York, as elsewhere, is still steadily rising.

(Copyright, 1925, by The Evening Sun. Republication without credit not permitted.)

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As always, the Independence Institute website contains extensive information on:

Criminal Justice and the Second Amendment: http://i2i.org/crimjust.htm
The Columbine High School murders: http://i2i.org/suptdocs/crime/columbine.htm and
The Waco murders: http://i2i.org/Waco.htm
The Independence Institute's on-line bookstore. Start your browsing at the Second Amendment section:
http://i2i.org/book.htm#Second

 That's all folks!