By Doug Pennington
Assistant Director, Communications

I know that Megan McArdle is done talking about the issue of taking guns to town hall protests and Presidential events.  Not that she needs props from me, but she should get kudos on general principles for even bringing up her view of this, as wading into the gun issue on the “interwebs” can be an exhausting experience.

I’ve read through her series of posts, here, here, here and here, and unfortunately find her argument essentially a series of straw men.  She shoots them down (with a bit of moral equivalency thrown in) only to arrive at what seems to be her conclusion that taking guns to protests doesn’t really matter after all. As she says, “law-abiding gun owners almost never turn criminal,” right?

Maybe, but only if you believe the egg never comes before the chicken.

Let’s start at the beginning.

Taking guns to protests is bad.  McArdle agrees with that.  In fact, it seems almost everyone – except Gun Owners of America, and the weakly silent NRA – makes noises in agreement with this principle.  Even Alan Gottlieb makes these noises.  That’s pretty much where the agreement ends, however, with the rest of the debate about whether anything should be done about it.

On the one hand, there are those who subscribe to the “guns are paperweights” model of firearms regulation.  They recite some version of the gun lobby bumper sticker slogan that “guns don’t kill people, people kill people” and conclude that anyone concerned about folks taking guns to Presidential events must be suffering from “hysteria.”

On the other hand, there are those of us who adhere to the “guns are the best tools for killing people” model of firearm regulation.  We point out that guns make it a lot easier to kill people than, say, bananas do, and so allowing folks to take guns to heated political protests – especially Presidential events – makes it easier to, well, kill or injure someone who disagrees with you.  Including the possibility of accidents, intent doesn’t even necessarily enter into it.

Carrying a gun also makes killing easier for a protester who may want to carry out what they’re told is God’s will – which, let’s face it, is scary.  (Seriously, listen to as much of the sermon linked inside as you can stand and not be freaked out by the fact that Chris “Forcefully Resist” Broughton is part of that congregation.)

Contrary to McArdle’s framework, the issue here isn’t whether firearms have a magical, mesmerizing power to make good people do bad things.  The issue is whether fallible human beings carrying the best tool for killing people to a heated protest increases the possibility of a lethally violent outcome – something of particular concern at a Presidential venue.  Other issues include whether adding guns to Presidential events – outside of trained law enforcement – makes the Secret Service’s job unnecessarily harder, and whether being confronted with a gun-carrying protester can be intimidating and stifle debate.

Of course, the answer to all of these is yes.  This isn’t rocket science.  It doesn’t mean that any or all of these outcomes absolutely will happen.  Only that the possibility of lethal violence without guns – greater than zero but relatively low – is measurably higher with guns present.

For these reasons, of course people should leave their guns at home before protesting.  And, of course, we shouldn’t have to wait until someone gets shot before our elected officials – Republican and Democrat – make simple, declarative statements along the lines of, “Don’t bring your guns to town hall protests, and especially not to Presidential events.  It’s dangerous and stupid.”

Apparently, Sen. Charles Grassley is finding this difficult to do, even after one of his Iowa constituents mused aloud in a town meeting that he’d “take a gun to Washington” after saying President Obama is “a little Hitler.”  Sen. Grassley still hasn’t denounced his constituent’s remarks and the sentiment behind them.

Moreover, surely we shouldn’t have to wait until a gun carrier has a “sight line” on the President of the United States to denounce gun carrying at protests, and back it up with action.  Excepting trained law enforcement, gun carriers shouldn’t be within a country mile of the President.  This really ought not be controversial.

Unfortunately, however, McArdle characterizes the views of people who believe this in different ways – unfairly, I think – that makes this more complicated than it really is:

• She asks facetiously whether gun carrying protesters are “a terrifying threat to democracy.”

• She says that “Numerous people claim to believe that [carrying guns to Presidential events] makes it likely, even certain, that someone will shoot at the president.”

• She quickly assures us that, “This is very silly, because the president is not anywhere [near] most of the gun-toting protesters, who have showed up at all sorts of events.”

• McArdle says that opponents are “claiming that people openly carrying guns have a significant probability of hauling off and shooting someone for no good reason.”

• She continues, “[C]onfident predictions of impending violence do not, to me, seem to rest on much more than the belief that people who openly carry weapons near a rally must be gun-crazed lunatics who want to intimidate Democrats with threats of violence.”

• We are also told that “…law-abiding gun owners almost never turn criminal….”

None of these characterizations is useful to this discussion – unless, that is, you want to conclude that carrying guns to protests doesn’t really matter in the first place.

To the contrary, espousing extreme characterizations of gun-carrying protesters isn’t necessary to the belief that carrying guns to Presidential events is a dangerous and stupid thing to do, and should be unconditionally discouraged.  At bottom, McArdle’s view and others’ seem to be based on their circular belief that “…law-abiding gun owners almost never turn criminal….”

Except that the mantra of the “law-abiding gun owner” is an empty concept.  Most people “almost never turn criminal,” otherwise we’d be living in a state of nature.  The whole notion of criminal justice assumes that once an act is forbidden by law, someone is “law-abiding” before they commit the act and is no longer “law-abiding” afterward.  That’s the point of enacting a legal prohibition in the first place.  It’s always the minority of law-breakers from whom society at-large tries to protect itself.

In short, everyone is “law-abiding” until they aren’t anymore, and that goes for gun owners too.

The difference with guns, however, is that the costs of illicit gun use – the point at which a gun owner no longer abides by the law – skyrocket relative to, say, an attacker armed with a piece of fresh fruit.  The primary cost of illicit gun use is death or serious injury.

The problem with McArdle’s view, and the gun libertarian position generally, is the assumption of a damaged analogy between unregulated speech and unregulated gun carrying.  The assumption is that since prior restraint against speech is bad by definition, prior restraint against unrestricted gun carrying must be equally bad, or at least deeply suspect.  Except that it’s not, because they are radically different things when put into practice in the world real human beings live in.

If the cure for speech you don’t like is more speech, it can’t be the case that the cure for gun carrying you don’t like is… carrying more guns.  By extension, it can’t be that the only point at which society can do something about the high cost of illicit gun use in America – thousands of deaths and injuries – is after someone gets shot dead or wounded.

At that point, all that’s left is to clean up the mess.

We can do things to prevent gun violence before it happens.  There are about 30,000 gun deaths and another 70,000 gun injuries every year in this country.  Surely we can reduce that number if we at least try in a meaningful way – something we haven’t done yet in America.

(Notice I didn’t say “erase gun violence completely,” cuing the magic rainbows and happy songs.  I said “reduce.”  This would be contrary to the current decision in Congress and elsewhere to toss up our collective hands and say that nothing can be done at all.)

We can take steps to keep guns out of high-pressure situations – certainly to keep people from carrying firearms anywhere near the President of the United States.  Former Secret Service officer Joseph Petro suggested expanding the perimeter around the President at public events where no guns would be allowed.

We can also take steps to make it harder for dangerous people to get guns as a general matter – for example, criminal background checks for all gun sales (a policy McArdle agrees with), limiting bulk purchases of firearms to cut the illegal gun market; and restricting access to military-style assault weapons.

At the end of the day, reducing gun violence isn’t about any one law, but is about a collection of policies that work together as a safety net to prevent as many needless gun deaths and injuries as we can in this country.  We can do these things while respecting the Second Amendment, and the First.

But we shouldn’t have to keep waiting while people get shot – at a clip of 100,000 Americans a year – to do it.

Doug Pennington
Assistant Director, Communications
The Brady Campaign to Prevent Gun Violence