June 05, 2006

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I've finally been convinced by Goldie and Michael and Oprah and Whoopie - we have evolved beyond the need for or desire for guns, and we must turn our backs on our atavistic tendencies to solve everything with a rock (which is, after all, what guns are about: throwing very small rocks very, very fast, while not smashing our fingers). It is time to bite the... no, that isn't a very good metaphor - time to grit our teeth and admit that EVERY home should be a gun-free home. After all, even animals are getting smarter, so surely, isn’t it time that humans did, too. People don’t want to hurt you if you don’t want to hurt them, after all. And owning a gun is just one way of saying “I hate you and I want to kill you and will take any opportunity to do so.” …STOP… ENDIT… -30- WHOA… WAIT.

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Sorry, Mama Liberty, it just isn’t working. I’ve tried a dozen times, but it just isn’t working. Ever since you sent me that cute little “Gun-Free Home” logo, I’ve been trying to write a cute, satirical column to show how supremely foolish so many households are. I recalled a series of adverts that Carl Bussjaeger (Click here to see posters by Carl) wrote years ago about Summer Concentration Camps and was hoping for something like that. I looked at your little logo and the one I have on my wall (see below) together with a “Free Speech Permit” and a “Newspaper Printing Permit” and tried to write a sarcastic, satirical commentary.

TRANSLATION: We would rather see you dead than capable of defending yourself. You are NOT a valued customer. We only want your money. You are NOT a valued employee. Your life means less to us than our insurance premiums. The Management

I can’t. Even going to the web and reading all the hateful things posted about “gun nuts” and the stupidity of concealed carry laws and the stupidity of open carry laws just can’t get me into this mood. It is just too hard, too emotional, for me to write that way about this.

Every week in my Libertarian Commentary on the News, Ihave a half-dozen or so stories about how people saved their lives or the lives of others, or protected their property or their employer’s property, using a gun. Many of these involve shooting someone - but not all even include the discharge of a firearm. Some involve someone dying - often proving Heinlein’s Dictum: “The only true capital crime is stupidity.” What I don’t report is the hundreds of cases each week where a victim is NOT armed, and has their property, their health, their lives, or the property, health or lives of loved ones or friends taken away because THEY DIDN’T have a gun.

You see, a gun-free home is a foolish home. As soon banish fire extinguishers “because they encourage people to be sloppy about not controlling fires.” Or forbidding home backyard swimming pools “because almost 800 children die from accidental drowning in the US each year.” A gun-free home is a home where parents don’t care about protecting their children, or each other, from the dangers of home invaders, rapists, kidnappers, or a whole host of other dangers. A gun-free home is an invitation to be an invaded home. It is no accident that home-invasion is far less common in the US than it is in Australia or the United Kingdom, where the presence of firearms in residences is vanishingly small, and where the homeowner who uses a firearm to defend themselves against an invader is far more likely to endure a far longer prison sentence than the thief, robber, stalker, or mugger is.

For more than a decade, I refused to do business with the southwestern chain of convenience stores named “Love’s” because they had “No Guns Allowed” signs on their stores. If they didn’t want my business, that was fine. It sometimes cost me five or even ten cents a gallon, but that was well worth it. About five years ago, they dropped the signs - I started doing business with them.

Yes, private property owners have the right to ban weapons from their properties, just as they have the right to ban anything else from their properties: unmarried couples shacking up, black people, homosexuals, students, coaches (both sports coaches and those big buses), eighteen-wheelers, and anything else. They have the moral right to - that is what “private property” means. Unfortunately, most of the time they don’t have the “legal” right to: the government has (with the tacit approval and authority of voters, at least) taken away the right of property owners to deny service to people on account of race, marital status, sex, sexual orientation, and a bunch of other criteria, even while encouraging their right to deny service to people who are exercising their right to carry the tools necessary for their own self-defense. That’s fine - but don’t expect me to patronize them, don’t expect me to support them in any way, and don’t expect me to quickly and enthusiastically rush to their defense.

I figure that they will, like Love’s and other stores in places like Florida, Ohio, yes, and even Minnesota, eventually disappear. Like Love’s, they may get wise and stop their destructive behavior. Or they may just lose the economic battle. Or they may discover that survival of the fittest is sometimes determined using a firearm.

Economic battle? I suspect that one reason that Love’s dropped their ban is because they were expanding into areas like Wyoming where carrying a weapon in a pick-up, or even on your belt, is a lot more common than it was back in the ‘70s and ‘80s in Texas, New Mexico, or Arizona. When it is a choice between the Love’s that doesn’t like you wearing a gun - requiring that you take it off and put it away, or the Trailside across the street that doesn’t care, and they both sell gasoline for $2.95 a gallon, where is the smart person on his way home after a long day going to go?

But I suspect that as society continues to deteriorate, the chains that try and prohibit guns will increasingly be targeted for armed robbery or even unarmed robbery, and will find it harder and harder to hire employees who are willing to work without the defense of a firearm.

People might as well put up signs like this one, which doesn’t need the translation of the first one:

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Nothing but an invitation to criminals, who are NOT, of course, going to worry about getting charged with “trespassing” because they ignored the sign.

And most people, if they really think about it, realize that this is what such signs do. Only “risk managers” and legislators are stupid enough to think that a prohibitive sign (especially one not backed up by armed security guards and metal detectors and a secure perimeter) will cause a single moment of hesitation on the part of any criminal, whether they are “only” shoplifting or stealing - or going all out for murder, rape, and armed robbery or hijacking.

Try it for yourself - go to your most hoploclastic (gun-hating) or hoplophobic (gun-fearing) acquaintance and give them the sign at the start of this article to put up on their house. Even better, offer to get it printed free (or buy one - there are at least three companies on-line that sell these horrible things) and mount it yourself. Or even offer to pay them $100 to put it on their house and leave it up for a year. Encourage them to stand up for their principles, set an example for businesses and other homeowners, strike a blow for “freedom from fear.”

I don’t think you’ll have to pay out any money - even a dollar to print a color copy. Because while people are stupid, they usually aren’t THAT stupid.

But you know, what I’d like to see is one of these signs: (Click here for larger image)

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