Edward J. Erler recently spoke at the Allan P. Kirby Center for Constitutional Studies and Citizenship. He is professor of political science at California State University, San Bernardino, and a senior fellow of the Claremont Institute. He earned his Bacheler of Arts from San Jose State University and his master’s and doctorate in government from Claremont Graduate School. He was a member of the California Advisory Commission on Civil Rights from 1988-2006, served on the California Constitutional Revision Commission in 1996, and has testified before the House Judiciary Committee on the issue of birthright citizenship. He is the author of “The American Polity” and co-author of “The Founders on Citizenship and Immigration.”
How critical are first principles to this debate? Will crime and gun ownership statistics ever be enough to win the debate on their own?
It’s about an armed citizenry being a free citizenry. Feinstein and progressive liberals like her will say, “Leave it to the police. We have professional police forces, we have the military, nobody needs a weapon.” But it’s not about that.
It’s about that quote from James Wilson, “An armed people is a free people.” So it’s not just about crime statistics. If it were about that, we know that when gun ownership goes up, crime goes down. Dianne Feinstein knows that, but every time we have one of these shootings, then of course, that’s when they want to get rid of guns.
Why don’t they acknowledge that statistics support gun ownership?
Dianne Feinstein and people like her that don’t like gun owners. Being a gun owner makes you feel independent. You don’t need the government, you don’t need a policeman, and that’s what they hate. You need to be dependent upon the government. Being a gun owner gives you a spirit of independence, and that needs to be killed. That sense of independence, that needs to be stamped out. This is the administrative state.
No individual rights, no individual responsibilities. It’s better to disarm the entire population of their rights, than to deprive one dangerously crazy person of his freedom. The administrators are absolutely frightened of the dangerous students. Not because they feel endangered by them, but that they’re going to violate their privacy rights in some way, and the federal government is going to sue them. They hold us individually responsible. We had student at my campus that threatened a professor. He had a prison record, he had been in prison for assault, and he threatened a female professor, in front of an entire class, and she turned the guy in, and they wouldn’t do anything. They sent it over to the crisis center and the psychology professor said, “that wasn’t a threat, that was a cry for help.” They wouldn’t do anything. They are absolutely afraid of anything like that. When the whole country becomes Chicago, then we’re going to demand to be ruled by military force or something, because any law will be better than no law in the state of nature.
We can’t allow them to get away with saying this is only about hunting or sport shooting.
Almost all weapons used for crime are illegally owned weapons. 99 percent of all weapons in the country will never be used for crime.
Do you have your own thoughts on methods for regulating illegal gun sales?
Everybody knows that a very small number of criminals commit a very large number of crimes. So you take that small population, you lock them up for a very long time, and you’ve taken a big bite out of crime. It’s really a simple thing.
And we know that as it stands now, if you go in to buy a gun and you lie on your application, there’s no punishment for doing that. Gun related crimes are not very heavily prosecuted. Except under federal law, you don’t get enhanced sentences for gun related crimes, and we need to crack down on gun crime: give long sentences to criminals. And those who use guns in the commission of a crime, and those who possess guns illegally, those people need to be prosecuted to the maximum extent of the law. Put them away for a long time, and promote responsible gun ownership. The more people who own guns, the less crime you’re going to have.
Today, we rarely, if ever, hear politicians refer back to first principles. Why is that?
It’s because they don’t know them. Like the principles we spoke about here today, what politician knows them? I don’t think many of them do.
During the Hurricane Katrina crisis, an order went out disarm people, and there were a couple terrible incidents where guns were taken away from people at the exact time when they needed weapons. Some of the police had left their posts and become robbers themselves, when the order went out to disarm everybody. The NRA went to court immediately and got a judge to rescind the order, but by that time, thousands of guns had been taken already. By 2006, the Bush administration passed a law saying no military or law enforcement official can disarm a person who otherwise legally possesses a weapon.
When the government can’t respond, then the people need to be armed, especially when the government can’t protect us.
Notice that all these shootings happen in “gun-free zones”. These guys are smart enough to know that nobody there is going to be armed to shoot back. So the Colorado shooting was in a gun-free zone. And the Arizona shooting.
Hundreds of thousands of times around the country, people will save themselves from being a victim of crime by brandishing a weapon. No shots are fired, no reports are filed with the police, but you just pull a weapon, you save yourself, the guy runs away. This happens hundreds of thousands of times a year.
When there’s no policeman there to protect you, you have the right to protect yourself.
That’s the common law of self-defense.
When the government is unable or even unwilling to protect the individual’s safety, then you have that right yourself. You can never give up that right.
If you want to know what’s fueling mass shootings, it’s movies and games, and all the publicity these guys get. People go out and imitate these guys. Look at all the shootings and car chases in movies. Kids play all these games where you shoot somebody and it’s no big deal, because they get right back up.
Sylvester Stallone came out in favor of gun control, just as his new movie, “A Bullet to the Head” is coming out. Any comment?
Well, you see what the problem is.
Compiled by Spencer Amaral
