Guest
Contributor
Don Kates
Don
Kates is an attorney living in Washington state who routinely
writes about constitutional issues for Independence
Institute.
 Concealed
Guns against Terrorists
Second Amendment and homeland security...
[Don Kates] 11/18/04
Do law abiding, responsible adults need a right to be able to
carry concealed handguns?
Earlier this month, Dutch filmmaker Theo Van Gogh (a great grand-nephew
of the artist Vincent van Gogh) was shot and stabbed to death
after receiving death threats because of a movie he made criticizing
the treatment of women under Islam. The killer, a Moroccan immigrant
described by witnesses as having a long beard and wearing Islamic
garb, was captured after a shoot-out with police.
Ironically the film's writer is an Islamic woman, Ayaan Hirsi
Ali, who is a member of the Dutch Parliament. Ms. Ali herself
is under death threat from the Muslims in the Netherlands, who
due to massive Islamic immigration, may now make up as much as
25% of the Dutch population. Many Dutch Muslims are outraged
at her revelations of the routine beating of Islamic women by
their husbands and other male family members. One of the reasons
women are beaten is because they have been raped by male relatives--something
Islamic culture sees as resulting from the seductiveness of women.
In 2002, Pim Fortuyn, the leader of one of the Netherlands'
largest political parties was assassinated after his criticism
of Muslim refusal to assimilate to Dutch society. Ms. Ali has
not been harmed because she has been under constant police guard
since the film aired. Van Gogh was not because he is not a political
figure. He shrugged off the danger.
In France, Muslims make up over 10% of the current population
up (from less than 1% in 1945). Jews in France have reported
hundreds of physical attacks, synagogues and businesses burned,
and cemeteries desecrated. Nothing is done. Even verbal criticism
from politicians is muted because Muslims represent an important
voting block, but Jews do not.
One factor in the spread of Islamic terrorism in Western Europe
is that the region's famously strict gun laws prevent the victims
from defending themselves--but, of course, do not prevent the
attackers from being armed. Laws in some U.S. states, such as
California, are similar only less stringent. The results are
also similar. For example, in July, 1984 an unemployed security
guard killed 21 people at a McDonalds in San Ysidro, California.
He had several guns, the most devastating being an ordinary hunting
shotgun.
The police arrived far too late to save the victims.
Israel has a different policy. Several weeks before the San
Ysidro massacre three Palestinians from Yassir Arafat's terrorist
organization opened fire with machine guns at a Jerusalem crowd
spot. They managed to kill only one Israeli before being shot
down by civilians with handguns. The next day Israel allowed
the media to question the surviving terrorist, who complained
that his group had not realized Israeli civilians are armed.
They had planned to go to crowd spots, machine-gun the civilians,
and escape before the police or army could respond.
In the early 1990s a demented man on the Long Island Railway
killed nine unarmed people with a handgun before it ran dry and
the survivors were able to jump him. In Israel a few days before
a Palestinian terrorist had tried to machine-gun a bus but was
himself killed by an Israeli civilian. Israel has no law against
carrying a gun either openly or concealed. If you have a license
to own it, you can carry it, and Israel encourages licensed gun
owners to keep their guns with them. Israel's policy is that
in every crowded area there will be civilians armed to defend
the crowd. For instance, on June 2, 2002, a suicide bomber in
a crowded Efret supermarket pulled out a bomb and was trying
to set it off when a woman drew a gun from her purse and shot
him dead.
The anti-gun lobby says civilian shouldn't be allowed to have
guns in public places. But as a practical matter, the terrorists
or criminals still get guns. So what the anti-gun lobby accomplished
is ensuring that the only people with guns in any public place
will be the killers. The anti-gun lobby says we should depend
on the police. But terrorists and criminals have the enormous
advantage of being able to strike when and where there are no
police--as in each of the incidents described above.
Incidentally
three mass public shooting incidents in the U.S. ended because
citizens with guns arrested the shooters. That
was in states that allow law abiding, responsible adults permits
to carry guns. Today, a dozen U.S. states (not including Colorado),
as well as The Netherlands and France, persist in the foolish
policy of forbidding licensed gun owners to carry their guns
in public for lawful protection. The main beneficiaries of this
policy are Muslim terrorists and other psychopathic killers. tRO
Don Kates
is an attorney living in Washington state who routinely writes
about constitutional issues for Independence
Institute.
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