Do Guns Make Us Free: Democracy and the Armed Society by Firmin DeBrabander. 

3/5 rating. 

Book #148 of 2019. Read December 27, 2019.

This was an okay book; it had some interesting takes on more of the gun debate apart from the same tired arguments.

Firmin talks about many different negative aspects of the presence of guns in our lives. As he states “God help anyone who must live by the gun. It is a fearful, miserable existence.” The NRA and other hard-core gun proponents have created an idea of boogeyman all around us and that we are in constant risk of being attacked and that guns are our only savior. Firmin looks through this unrealistic fear and puts it to rest.

The other most salient part of the book is his talk about the effect on other fundamental rights: mainly the Freedom of Speech! “Guns silence – they frustrate free speech, even while the NRA boasts that guns protect and bolster it. Guns by their very presence issue a threat, and to that extent, they cut off communication, or indicate that its end is near.” You probably can skip this book, it had some different views that I thought compelling, but unless you are heavily invested in reading a drawn-out book about the negative aspects of guns, go read something else.

Quotes:

“One year after Sandy Hook, however, the country has loosened more gun regulations than it tightened. The New York Times reported that seventy gun-related measures enacted by statehouses in the year after the massacre expanded gun rights, and only thirty-nine imposed stricter controls.”

“Despite the trend toward gun-friendly legislation, the American public is hardly at one with the gun rights movement and is uncomfortable with its current trajectory. The percentage of households with a gun had fallen since the 1970s. Journalist Dan Baum points out that the number of gun stores is also dwindling, and that hunting, once a popular sport for gun owners – and a primary reason for having a gun – is on the decline.”

“Eminent historians and legal scholars have critiqued the NRA’s reading of the Second Amendment. They claim that it was not written to enshrine an individual right to gun ownership – and certainly not an absolute right. For most of our nation’s history, the Supreme Court was unpersuaded by arguments that the Founding Fathers intended an individual right to bear arms, but in recent years, as the court leaned conservative, it has released this longstandng position and upheld the NRA’s increasingly absolute interpretation.”

“Guns do not liberate us from fear. They are a symptom of fear’s dominion over society. The gun rights movement capitalizes on fear wherever it resides in our culture, and drums it up to amazing heights.”

“Guns are not compatible with free speech and assembly. As the philosopher Hannah Arendt wrote, ‘violence is mute’ and fundamentally antipolitical. Violence and the threat of it – such as the open brandishing of guns in public places – chasten speech and discourage assembly.”

“Psychiatrist Liza Gold writes of Wolf’s efforts that ‘data supporting a causal relationship between video game violence and non-firearm violence is equivocal and unconvincing, as noted by a 2011 Supreme Court ruling when it decided a case against government regulation of violent video games. In short…curtailing First Amendment rights to protect inadequate regulations of Second Amendment rights is a legal non-starter.’”

“If an Australian citizen wishes to buy a gun…he must apply for a permit for each firearm he wants to purchase, and undergo a twenty-eight day waiting period before approval is given. Australia forbids the private, unregulated sale of firearms and restricts the amount of ammunition individuals may buy in a given period. In addition, Australians are required ‘to comply with storage requirements’ for their guns and submit to ‘an inspection by licensing authorities of the licensee’s storage facilities.’”

“According to FBI figures, the violent crime rate for the nation as a whole fell 49 percent between 1992 and 2011. FBI data show declines in all major crime categories, including rape, robbery, aggravated assault, and property crime. ‘Violent victimization by strangers’ – the sort of thing we are urged to be armed for – have declined 77 percent since 1993, according to the Bureau of Justice Statistics.”

“A study from the late 1990’s on crime coverage by the major news outlets in Baltimore found that ‘the typical television news broadcast devotes 38 percent of its “news hole” – which excludes weather, sports, promotions and ads – to crime coverage, and 9 percent…to accidents and natural disasters. Education coverage accounts for about 4.3 percent (37 seconds of a nightly half-hour show) and politics for 4.4 percent (38 seconds).’ Summarizing more recent reports, sociologist Valerie Callanan states that ‘roughly one-third of all television news is comprised of crime-related content, which is overwhelmingly violent and focused on the most atypical crime events.’”

“According to a Bureau of Justice Statistics report, between the years 1976 and 2005, the homicide rate for white Americans was 4.8 per 100,000, but an astounding 36.9 for blacks. The United States Conference of Mayors, one of the loudest voices calling for gun control, noted in 2012 that ‘homicide is the leading cause of death for African American males between the ages of 15 and 24.’ African Americans comprise just 15 percent of the nation’s child population, but ‘made up 45 percent of child gun deaths in 2008 and 2009,’ the Children Defense Fund reports.”

“As one Washington resident put it, ‘[guns] are for wars, and we have a war in the inner city.’ It is hardly conceivable that the rest of America would tolerate all the talk equating gun rights and freedom if middle-class whites were killing one another at similar rates.”

“As of May 2013, the official death toll for U.S. military personnel in Afghanistan stood at 2,085 – 360 of whom were nonhostile casualties (such as victims of friendly fire). For a decade-long war, 1,725 deaths is an astonishingly low figure. While no official figures have been released for the number of Taliban dead, there is a somewhat clearer picture of civilian deaths in Afghanistan: from 2007 through 2011, the United Nations estimates that almost 12,000 Afghan civilians were killed.”

“How does the call to be at the ready to blow people away fit with Jesus’ message of love, charity, and forgiveness?”

“‘At a very basic level [Stand Your Ground laws] change how we view the sanctity of human life. If we’re allowed to shoot somebody for reaching into your car to grab a purse, does it mean that we don’t value human life the way we thought we did?’ Stand Your Ground laws now protect individuals who issue the ultimate penalty for even minor infractions – on the ground that they thought the offender meant to do worse. These laws sanction the escalation of violence in situations where escalation was not necessary. Locke clearly indicates that the whole point of civil society is to do the opposite: haul us back from the brink of chaos to more civil interactions.”

“‘A police officer,’ says [Former Miami police Chief John] Timoney, ‘is held to account for every single bullet he or she discharges, so why should a private citizen be given more rights when it came to using deadly force?’ Stand Your Ground permits the average citizen to use deadly force against perceived threats, but the average citizen, unlike a trained, experienced police officer, is at a disadvantage in evaluating threats.”

“Timoney points out that homicides in Florida ‘categorized as justifiable have nearly tripled since the law went into effect.’ Florida has effectively sanctioned killing as a permissable resolution to altercations between citizens.”

“Civic involvement has become a casualty in our own era, when we suffer from ‘time poverty,’ as sociologist Juliet Schor put it: Americans put in long work days, combined with increasingly long commutes, and have little time or energy to interact with their peers, work for their communities, or even think much about politics. This state of affairs is fueled by personal ambition, but also by plain greed.”

“Why do our representatives perpetuate the exemption of background checks at gun shows, on the premise that criminals will never get background checks – an exemption that gives the criminal class free access to guns?”

“The cynicism of the gun rights crowd may be the greatest danger it poses: mistrust corrodes society and is not consistent with a viable democracy. Democracy requires a basic openness among its citizens; it demands a fundamental faith that those who are not like us are still accessible, intelligible, not malign: we can reach an accommodation with them.”

“God help anyone who must live by the gun. It is a fearful, miserable existence.”

“Horwitz and Anderson complain that the NRA has sponsored legislation whereby the ATF is ‘limited…from sharing certain trace data with local law enforcement, creating hurdles that impede efforts to identify and investigate corrupt gun dealers and illegal traffickers, and most trace data cannot be released to Congress or the general public…Without access to this type of information, the public can no longer learn which dealers are among the 1.2 percent of federal firearms licensees who sell 57 percent of the guns traced in criminal investigations.’”

“Republicans, and their vocal Tea Party cohorts, are not wrong to ring the alarm on growth in government spending – but it is strange that they benefit so greatly from what they would deny others.”

“[Thomas] Jefferson also tells [Samuel] Kercheval that ‘Some men look at constitutions with sanctimonious reverence, and deem them like the arc of the covenant, too sacred to be touched. The ascribe to men of the preceding age a wisdom more than human, and suppose what they did to be beyond amendment…But…laws and institutions must go hand in hand with the progress of the human mind. As that becomes more developed, more enlightened, as new discoveries are made, new truths disclosed, and manners and opinions change with the change of circumstances, institutions must advance also, and keep pace with the times.’”

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