Anybody seen this book?

Restricting Handguns: The Liberal Skeptics Speak Out. Edited by Don B. Kates,
Jr.

Review follows.

Xela

----------review-----------

http://publications.ohiohistory.org/ohstemplate.cfm?action=detail&Page=0089114.h\
tml&StartPage=92&EndPage=115&volume=89&newtitle=Volume%2089%20Page%2092


Volume 89 Back to Volume Contents
114
OHIO HISTORY

Restricting Handguns: The Liberal Skeptics Speak Out. Edited by Don B.

Kates, Jr. (Croton-On-Hudson, New York: North River Press, Inc., 1979.

xiii + 239p.; illustrations, tables, figures, biographies of contributors,

notes. $9.95 cloth; $6.95 paper.)

Restricting Handguns is a solid, scholarly, and masterful contribution to the
history of civil liberties and the Second Amendment. Two earlier major
studies-Kennett and Anderson, The Gun in America (1975) and Newton and Zimring,
Firearms and Violence in American Life (1969)-attempted to show the impact of
firearms in the only western industrialized nation which by
constitutional fiat allows its general citizenry to keep and bear arms. Kennett
and Anderson provided a useful general study, objective and dispassionate in
nature, while Newton and Zimring, less objective and decidedly hostile to
handgun ownership, purported to show negative aspects of firearms
ownership in the USA. In both works the issue of civil liberties was omitted,
and it is here that Kates' superb anthology makes a long-needed contribution.

Significantly, the contributors are all liberals and activists in a variety of
social causes: Amnesty International, women's rights, black and native American
rights, anti-poverty law, and constitutional civil liberties. "Gun control is
the litmus test of liberalism." These open-minded civil libertarians who harken
back to the English libertarian heritage persuasively argue handgun possession
is a positive benefit for Americans.

The section on the history of handgun prohibition breaks pioneer ground in
showing that the rural Southwest rather than the urban Northeast implemented
restrictive handgun legislation. Prior to New York City's 1911 Sullivan Law
which demanded permits for handgun possession on a politically selective basis,
the pre-Civil War Southwest and the post-Reconstruction South developed legal
limitations on handgun possession. Ample documentation is given to show that in
the post-Civil War South statutes were developed to prevent blacks from
defending themselves from the paramilitary Klan.

In the early twentieth century ethnocentrism in the Northeast made its mark by
introducing restrictive handgun laws to prevent Central and Southern Europeans,
branded as "thieves" and "anarchists," from possessing arms.

British Police Superintendent Colin Greenwood and economist Joseph Maggadino
assert with supportive evidence that factors other than possession of firearms
contribute to crime. Their cross-cultural demographic analysis, coupled with
Mark Benenson's debunking of statistical "empirical" anti-gun studies, are
methodologically sound and logically developed with tight coherence.

Throughout the anthology, and especially in the essays by legal scholar David
Hardy, the Founding Fathers' theme of residual militia is developed: the Second
Amendment, in a carefully-developed essay by Hardy, implies individual as well
as collective rights to keep and bear arms, much in the same...

Volume 89 Back to Volume Contents
Book Reviews 115

...way that the First Amendment is applicable to individuals rather than to a
collective society. Using the Fourteenth Amendment, which defines citizenship,
Hardy's cogent essay gives food for thought to those who argue that "militia"
means organized reserves and the National Guard. Nor is the right of individual
self-defense overlooked. John Salter, active in black and native American
causes, asserts that minority groups must have the right to defend themselves
from armed, aggressive reactionary factions which unfortunately exist in our
complex society. While lawful self-defense is encouraged in those instances
where police protection is unavailable, Salter also makes an excellent case for
the deterrent effect of arms possession.

In a similar vein Carol Ruth Silver and Don Kates develop a provocative
pro-feminist argument that the right to bear arms is necessary in a "violent
sexist society." Most contentious, yet unfortunately most correct, is the
feminist argument that the entire criminal justice system, either by default or
design,
has failed to protect women from violent crime. Harkening back to the Common Law
doctrine of resistance to the threat or use of deadly force, the feminist
argument supports the utility of the handgun.

Moreover, the potential for abuse of civil liberties through restrictive gun
measures would destroy more than it would allegedly protect. A draconian police
state, assert Hardy and Kenneth Chotiner of the Southern California ACLU, would
result from the combined effects of massive registration or confiscation.
Invasion of privacy, the increased growth of the bureaucratic state,
centralization of police power, and Fourth Amendment violations regarding
illegal search and seizure merit serious consideration from the authors.

It is apparent that well-meaning "social planning" would destroy more than
build. To "terrify" people into registering their handguns, as some proponents
desire, is to destroy popular sovereignty, faith and trust in one's own
citizenry, and strike a blow at civil liberties. Kates, an activist and a
scholar, reminds us that "In a free country, it is up to those who want to
restrict the liberty of the people to show that the benefits which are likely to
accrue outweigh the ... costs. But that burden of proof is particularly heavy
when the liberty in question is so deeply valued by a large part of the
population that it can be abrogated only by severely punishing many." In a
more positive way, Jefferson, conveying the libertarian tradition, stated: ". .
.And what country can preserve its liberties if its rulers are not warned from
time to time that this people preserve the spirit of resistance. Let them take
arms." For twentieth century anomie and mass society, Jefferson's admonition,
coupled with the civil libertarian views of Restricting Handguns, offers
sobering, prudent insight.

Kenyon College Roy Wortman



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