"A well-regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed." --United States Constitution, Second Amendment
When the Constitution was drafted, the Bill of Rights was understood to be a restatement of the fundamental rights and liberties enjoyed by free men everywhere. By owning weapons, a citizen could protect himself against all forms of enemies, whether these were savages and wild animals that posed a threat to his life, tyrannical rulers who threatened his liberty, marauding bandits after his hard-earned property, or any combination of the above. With the advent of democratic elections, a full-time national military, and a professional police force, it has been argued that the right to keep and bear arms has become an anachronism, and one whose continuation poses a threat to the maintenance of public safety and order. It is argued that this right causes many of our social ills, and that a whole host of restrictions are needed on the right to keep and bear arms in order to keep us safe in society today. Nothing could be farther from the truth, particularly where the rights and safety of minorities in a society, including gays and lesbians, are concerned.
The right to keep and bear arms in society today is, quite simply, the right to be safe and secure. Municipal police forces, inventions of the early-mid nineteenth century, are under no legal obligation to provide protection to any particular individual or group, and are generally incapable of doing so even if they desired to. At any given time, there is around one police officer on the streets for every 3,000 residents. With this size of a ratio, it is usually impossible for police to do much about crime other than show up after the fact and take a report. The problem of the lack of adequate police protection is especially acute in the large urban areas of our country, where a disproportionately large percentage of the gay population resides. Outside of the large population centers of this country, gays and lesbians often face the double difficulty of a culture that is much less tolerant and accepting of the subject of homosexuality coupled with a police force that is at best indifferent to our need for protection and that at worst is overtly hostile to us. Personal safety and protection against crime is still the responsibility of the individual.
In addition to the normal crime problems that we must deal with as inhabitants of a modern society, gays and lesbians also have the added fear of attack by bashers. Since these attacks are motivated either partly or wholly by a hatred of the victim, they tend to be particularly violent, and thus even more important to prevent. To this end, guns, and particularly handguns, are effective tools available for personal protection. Of all the personal protection devices available to the general public today, guns are without a doubt the most effective at stopping an attack. Studies consistently show that guns are successfully used for personal protection of at least 645,000, and perhaps as often as 2 million, times a year. In the vast majority of these cases, no shots are ever fired.
Because of a fear of rising crime, much of it involving the illegal usage of handguns, many proposals for restricting access to firearms are being discussed and, in some cases, enacted. Society in general, and gays and lesbians in particular, would be well advised to look skeptically on these proposals for a number of reasons. Gun control laws have historically been used in our society to disarm unpopular minorities, leaving them at the mercy of the better armed (or simply numerically superior) masses. The first gun control measures in the United States were passed in the South after the Civil War, and were aimed at keeping newly-freed blacks disarmed and in conditions of servitude. Without the means to resist, they were at the mercy of white terrorist organizations like the Ku Klux Klan. Xenophobia was the driving force behind the enactment of gun control laws in a number of northern cities around the turn of the century, where fear of newly arrived immigrants from eastern and southern Europe led to the enactment of handgun licensing laws. Even relatively recently, the city of St. Louis routinely denied gun permits to, among others, known homosexuals and wives who lacked their husbands' permission to have a permit.
Stricter gun control laws are but one example of our society's movement away from personal liberty and self-reliance, and toward an assumption that the best agent to handle all of our problems is the government. Governmental police forces were created to prevent and break up riots, and to keep a general sense of public order. They were never designed to stop criminal acts against individuals and, accordingly, they do this job poorly. When confronted with a threat to their personal safety or property, many people will choose to simply submit and hope for justice later. This is most definitely a personal decision, and entirely their right. However, for those who choose to exercise their rights to self protection it is immoral to deny them the most effective means to do so. As minorities, and oftentimes unpopular minorities, in this society, it is of critical importance that we have access to the most effective tools to protect ourselves when an overburdened and frequently unconcerned legal system fails to do so. Our very lives could depend on it.
Mr. Fulk works for the National Rifle Association's Institute for Legislative Action. He is also an NRA-certified pistol instructor.