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I can't believe Notre Dame would let someone propose the sort of "don't worry about the government" arguments you offer in their alumni magazine. The fact that our experiment in democracy has succeeded thus far with a strong right to bear arms seems to be only a coincidence to you. The fact that violent crimes are decreasing while the number of gun owners soars was conveniently glossed over also.

What will the editors of ND Mag allow as their cover article next? "A Return to Prohibition"? "Let's Ban Cigarettes!" "The Time has Come to Outlaw Red Meat!" Well at least the political correctness that reigns supreme even at ND will make sure we never see an article as "extreme" as "Let's Ban Abortion". Maybe that would just be too Catholic.

If were only as simple as Ed Cohen would have it. Eliminate guns and we can all relax. Or should we? Morris Bishop in his book The Middle Ages presented information on the English town of Lincoln, for the year 1202, where "…about 430 cases of crime, including 114 cases of homicide, 89 of robbery (often with violence), 65 of wounding and 49 of rape…" were reported – and the gun had yet to be invented.

Cohen also implies that the Second Amendment is really about militia groups and not about individuals. The Constitution begins "We, the people…" and the Second Amendment addresses "…the right of the people…." Is there more than one definition for "people" in the Constitution? Further, it is known that 145 amendments were proposed to James Madison to be included in the Bill of Rights to be ratified with the original Constitution document. Only ten amendments were accepted and ratified. If only 14 percent of estates contained guns at that time as Cohen alludes, why would the founding fathers have even bothered with the Second Amendment?

As Cohen notes, in Switzerland every male, after mandatory full-time military service, is issued an automatic assault weapon and bullets to be kept in his home as a requirement for their national defense force. The bullets are "…in a sealed tin. If [when you report for service] the seal is broken, you’re thrown in jail." So I assume we are to believe, with no reports of assault weapon crimes in Switzerland, it is a law and a sealed tin that keeps those weapons from inflicting harm, for Cohen states "Every well-adjusted citizen is at some time mentally disturbed…" and Everybody hates somebody sometime." Yet the killers at Columbine violated numerous state and federal laws.

I read your article in the latest Notre Dame Magazine and would like to congratulate you for articulating a position on gun control that I've been screaming about for years, that is, the need to disarm America. I have never, repeat never, heard a persuasive argument on the need to allow our citizenry to bear arms. the second amendment issue is a bogus one. Our founding fathers never envisioned a society that included automatic, semi-automatic, and concealed hand guns. they lived at a time when weapons were used for hunting to provide food, not kill neighbors.

Actually, when the Constitution was written almost no one still used guns to acquire food. They bought domestically produced beef or bought game from professional hunters/trappers. Another great myth concerns gun fights in Old West towns. These were extremely rare. Did you know that carrying a gun was actually banned in famous cowboy haunts like Dodge City and Abilene?

The argument that gun control should be aimed atb keeping guns out of the hands of criminals and illegal gun dealers is a bunch of donkey dust. it's not criminals and dealers that are shooting up and killing in our schools and business places. it's disoriented youngsters and fringe lunatics that get their guns at home or from other legal channels. for the good of us all we have got to make the ownership of all weapons a crime. if we don’t have the courage to go that far, then I suggest that a fair compromise would be to allow properly screened citizens to own single action rifles and shotguns for hunting and other recreational activities.

I agree. Let's start with handguns, which have no practical use other than shooting people at close range.

I thought after the Columbine massacre that that was a great opening for Clinton to have risen to the occasion and pushed hard for total disarmament, but I should have known better. He has no courage, and simply doesn’t know what it is to be a statesman.

Actually, no elected official I'm aware of has had the nerve to propose a flat ban on guns, not even handguns.

If I were 35 years old I would stump full time for disarmament. that's what it's going to take to get it done. i really believe that most sensible americans back this position, but lack the imagination or means to accomplish it. same as tax reform. we all know it's broke, but don't know how to fix it. it will take persistence on the part of people like you and the backing of people like me. keep up the good work.

At a time when legal scholars are giving increasing attention to the Second Amendment to the Constitution, the debate over the meaning and desirability of the amendment has seen many well reasoned and useful arguments presented by both sides. Unfortunately, Ed Cohen’s article in the Winter 1999-2000 issue of Notre Dame Magazine is not one of them. Mr. Cohen begins his article by suggesting that, had there been a gun in his childhood home, he very possibly would have shot a kindergarten bully, and ends by suggesting that were handguns outlawed, public disapproval would ensure that murderers-in-waiting would comply with the new law. In between we are treated to a glimpse of an elementary layer of anti-gun arguments.

Mr. Cohen’s most telling argument comes early in the article, before he even begins to attack several pro-gun arguments. He informs us that "every criminal was at one time a law abiding citizen. Every well-adjusted citizen is at some time mentally disturbed…," and "Everybody hates somebody sometime." This is meant to suggest that everyone is "a potential ‘gunman.’" If I follow the reasoning, if everyone is a potential ‘gunman,’ no one should have a gun. Since at this point, Mr. Cohen has not tried to argue that the Second Amendment is not an individual right, he is saying that if I once thought about shouting "Fire!" in a crowded theater, I should now be deprived of my First Amendment rights. After all, I am clearly a potential abuser of those rights. He seems to see no difference between those of us who occasionally think reprehensible thoughts ("I hate him!") and those who act on those thoughts. Thank goodness the law does! Yes, Mr. Cohen, every criminal was at one time a law abiding citizen, but he is no longer. And that makes all the difference.

Mr. Cohen continues his article by addressing six "typical" arguments against a gun ban. The first of these argues that a ban would be unconstitutional. Here he discusses what is broadly recognized as the most difficult obstacle to a ban, without any serious treatment of the reasoning behind the individual rights argument. This argument is so widely accepted that it has come to be known as the "Standard Model." In fact, all other amendments in the original Bill of Rights that mention "the people," as the Second Amendment does, have been interpreted as protecting individual rights. The February 2000 issue of Lingua Franca, which devotes its cover story to this question, notes that "legal scholars have turned en masse to the … individual rights view." Even Mr. Cohen’s use of a study done by Michael Bellesiles proves problematic. This study purports to show, through a survey of probate records, that few Americans owned guns at the time the Constitution was written. If, in fact, the purpose of the Second Amendment is to provide citizens with a means of last resort against a tyrannical government, the last thing they would do is announce their existence in a will. Even today, common sense would dictate that guns and cash are never listed as part of an estate.

Next Mr. Cohen addresses the self-defense argument. Here, two sets of data are bandied about – one set relates to defensive uses of guns and the other to the likelihood of gun owners to be killed in their own homes. Mr. Cohen brackets the number of defensive gun uses between 108,000 (Bureau of Justice Statistics’ National Crime Victimization Survey) and 23,000,000 (Justice Department survey of firearms owners). Just as Mr. Cohen expects the high to be the result of self serving exaggerations by gun owners, we can also expect the low number to be the result of self serving exaggerations by the government, members of which would, after all, be the only individuals allowed to own a gun in the event of a gun ban. The truth, therefore, must lie somewhere in between. Gary Kleck’s 2,500,000 uses is on the low end of that in between. Perhaps Mr. Cohen’s most laughable statement comes when he discusses the New England Journal of Medicine study which found that "people who keep a gun in the house are three times more likely to be killed in the homes than those who don’t." After presenting evidence which shows that this study suffered from poor design, that its results were misrepresented, and that only four percent of the gun deaths in the study could be attributed to the homeowner’s gun, he concludes by saying, in effect, "Whatever, they were stilled killed by a gun." Now, this may be a point Mr. Cohen feels needs to be made, unfortunately it has nothing whatsoever to do with the argument he was trying to construct.

The Guns Deter Crime argument is next up. Here, in the face of evidence he himself presents to the contrary, Mr. Cohen suggests that guns do not deter crime because no one wears a lapel button announcing that they are carrying a weapon, and that gun ownership is irrelevant in the case of burglaries because most occur when no one is home. In the case of robbery, Mr. Cohen should be especially thankful that lapel buttons are not worn since their absence allows him to take advantage of what economists call the "free rider effect." Upon seeing Mr. Cohen walking down a dark alley, a robber plying his trade in a concealed carry jurisdiction does not know if Mr. Cohen is a "gun banner" or a "gun nut," and therefore is less likely to rob him. Although he does not carry a gun, Mr. Cohen gets a free ride on the backs of those who do. In the case of a burglary, one of the main reasons cited by burglars when discussing why they do not enter occupied homes is fear of being shot. The very thing Mr. Cohen uses to show gun ownership’s irrelevance, proves its relevance.

Worth mentioning because it is so representative of this article, is the quote from Don Griffin of the National Association of Independent Insurers. Commenting on the deterrent effect of a home gun, Mr. Griffin says "First, I don’t think we’ve ever looked at it specifically and, second, we don’t believe it’s the case that it reduces crime." Please, Mr. Griffin, do not let a lack of knowledge stop you from giving an opinion. This is the verbal equivalent of the Mission Impossible tape – an opinion that self-destructs.

In his next section, Mr. Cohen presents evidence that shows the ineffectiveness and lax enforcement of current gun control measures. While gun rights advocates would use the same evidence to show that gun control only controls law abiding owners, Mr. Cohen uses it to show that the only effective alternative is a ban. Along the way he discusses the "gun show loophole," without noting that most gun rights advocates would like to see it closed. Mr. Cohen closes this section with a quote from the Violence Policy Center lamenting the inability of gun legislation to differentiate between "good" and "bad" guns. Unfortunately, neither the Center nor Mr. Cohen sees the truth staring them in the face – there are no "good" guns and "bad" guns, only good people and bad people.

Mr. Cohen then treads on dangerous ground by discussing the impact of culture on gun violence. This is ground is dangerous because it is a subject on which few are reluctant to offer opinions, although the true impact is little understood. At the risk of playing Mr. Cohen’s game, I’ll suggest that empirical evidence would seem to show that culture clearly has some impact, but I do not know how or why. Oddly enough, after spending the previous section explaining that gun controls do not work, Mr. Cohen states that part of the reason countries with high rates of gun ownership may have low homicide rates is – gun control! When he tells us that in Switzerland, known for requiring its citizen-soldiers to own guns, individuals are given bullets in a sealed tin which is inventoried upon reporting, he leaves a key question unanswered. What about ammunition that is not government issue, but purchased by the citizen? It would also be logical to expect that a likely reason to not allow the issued ammunition to be used is so a citizen-soldier always has an inventory of ammunition should he ever be called upon to serve. Furthermore, in the U.S armed forces issued ammunition is strictly controlled, as are issued weapons. A Marine or soldier caught taking so much as one live round home with him would find himself court martialed. The fact that these explanations did not occur to Mr. Cohen should not be a surprise, given the elitism he displays throughout his article. "Surely," he must assume the people of Switzerland think, "if I am able to use my own ammunition, the government will issue me some for that purpose."

Finally, Mr. Cohen pulls together all the arguments he has not yet made in his last section. Here he suggests that recent mass murderers would simply be grumpy young men if they were unable to get their hands on a gun. This sounds a lot like the thought that if we just ban alcohol we will have no more drunks or lewd behavior and if we just ban non-medicinal drugs we will have no more addicts. Unfortunately, in neither case was the desired behavior changed, rather we only created more crime and more killing. Mr. Cohen commits the most common error of short-term thinkers – he fails to consider secondary and tertiary effects. Rarely, if ever, are laws passed that do not create unintended consequences, Prohibition and the drug war being perfect examples. Suggesting that a gun ban would simply reduce homicide, accidental death, and suicide rates by the amount of deaths caused by guns is not simply myopic, it is ridiculous.

Most disappointing of all, however, is the fact that Mr. Cohen’s treatment of the most compelling reason for the existence of the Second amendment consists simply of a flip comment about the success of our constitutional government. Yes, I am talking about guns as the last line of defense against tyranny. Does the thought of having to rise up against a United States government in rebellion sound ridiculous? I hope so! Although Thomas Jefferson may have expected revolutions to occur with some frequency in this country, I doubt many other Founding Fathers did. In some corners of our society, to even speak of this reason for the Second Amendment brands one as a militiaman or an extremist. One does not have to believe, however, that revolution is imminent to understand why gun ownership is a right. This certainly puts the lawn darts as guns analogy in perspective doesn’t it, Mr. Cohen? No, I do not expect to see in my lifetime, or my children’s lifetime, or my grandchildren’s lifetime, an American government so tyrannical as to require a rebellion. Conspiracy theorists and militias have made a mockery of this final protection of democracy. No, Mr. Cohen, I do not want to put my faith in the high commander of the Michigan Militia, I want to put my faith in myself. I want a government that puts its faith in its citizens. Elitists like Mr. Cohen believe that government must tell individuals what is best for themselves, while I trust my fellow citizens. Unfortunately, as more and more information comes to light about our government’s activities at Waco, it seems clear that the Second Amendment serves a purpose. It is of no small note that the standoff at Waco began when BATF officers decided to serve a search warrant related to illegal guns with a massive show of force.

As this year we celebrate the continued success of our constitutional government with another peaceful, lawful presidential election, we should not forget the role the Second Amendment has played, and continues to play, in that success. It would do well for Mr. Cohen to remember the words of Benjamin Franklin when he said, "Those who would sacrifice essential liberties for a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety."

Mark J. Davis ’81
West Chester, Pennsylvania

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