Mindset

Mindset:

Professor Glenn Reynolds, known of course as InstaPundit, has a piece in the New York Times. It is on the subject of communities passing laws requiring gun ownership.

Professor Reynolds was just this weekend advocating the late Colonel Cooper's work. Jeff Cooper was the sort of man I expect to see 'get' this: a fighting man who happened also to be a careful thinker, and student of history. InstaPundit is, of course, a law professor, who came to his views by studying Second Amendment issues in the law.

I've always liked InstaPundit, which hits on a number of interesting issues every day. Reynolds largely stays out of the way of those issues -- although you know what he thinks about them, he usually provides more of an invitation to think about the matter for yourself than an answer to digest. I like that approach (and so do a lot of others, apparently), though I don't often use it myself.

Still, one gets a sense for the guy by reading his posts. He is a happily married, decent, peaceful guy who likes to make fairly intricate meals (that he thinks of as easy and simple), brew his own beer, and talk to attractive or interesting ladies. In other words, a normal, decent guy whose tastes are those one expects of the upper-middle class.

It's good to see a man like that write something like this:

Last month, Greenleaf, Idaho, adopted Ordinance 208, calling for its citizens to own guns and keep them ready in their homes in case of emergency. It’s not a response to high crime rates. As The Associated Press reported, “Greenleaf doesn’t really have crime ... the most violent offense reported in the past two years was a fist fight.” Rather, it’s a statement about preparedness in the event of an emergency, and an effort to promote a culture of self-reliance.

And it may not be a bad idea. While pro-gun laws like the one in Greenleaf are mostly symbolic, to the extent that they actually make a difference, it is likely to be a positive one.

Greenleaf is following in the footsteps of Kennesaw, Ga., which in 1982 passed a mandatory gun ownership law in response to a handgun ban passed in Morton Grove, Ill. Kennesaw’s crime dropped sharply, while Morton Grove’s did not.

A practical point, which is linked to this analysis:

Precisely because an armed populace can serve as an effective backup for law enforcement, the ownership of firearms was widely mandated during Colonial times, and the second Congress passed a statute in 1792 requiring adult male citizens to own guns.

The twin purposes of self and community defense may very well lie behind the Second Amendment’s language encompassing both the importance of a well-regulated militia and the right of citizens to keep and bear arms. As the constitutional and criminal law scholar Don Kates has noted in the journal Constitutional Commentary, thinkers at the time when the Constitution was written drew no real distinction between resisting burglars, foreign invaders or domestic tyrants[.]

I'm sure you've grown tired of reading me write that "a citizen has a duty to uphold the common peace and lawful order," to perform which duty he has a right to the appropriate tools. Colonel Cooper likewise wrote on the topic, persuasively to those who read it through, for decades. And there are others in the blogosphere who do so: Kim du Toit and Geek with a .45 being two of my favorites.

I suspect that the average American would admire Colonel Cooper if they knew anything about him, but would consider him 'out of the mainstream.' He surely was, for entirely positive reasons: but for whatever reason, the American public puts an odd amount of weight on the notion of 'mainstream.' An idea needs a legitimizer to become widely accepted, someone who can say, "Yes, this is normal and OK to believe."

I'd like to thank InstaPundit for bringing these ideas before a larger audience, in a form that they will consider. Some will reject him as "mainstream" simply because he holds this view. Otherwise, however, there is no reason to do so. He's doing good work talking about these issues in that forum, and I appreciate his doing so.