The complete text of "Nation of Cowards" can be found in item 81 in
the fall '93 agora.

This is George Will's commentary on Nation..., which was published in
Newsweek.  Mr. Will has been a proponent for repeal of the 2nd amendment.

----------------------------------------------------------

From Usenet:

From: palmer@chmsr.gatech.edu (Michael T. Palmer)
Subject: George Will essay on "Nation of Cowards"
Date: 28 Dec 1993 15:52:05 GMT

I ran across this, and thought the net may be interested.  It's not
mine, so I don't know *who* to blame for any typos.


THE LAST WORD, GEORGE F. WILL
Newsweek, November 15, 1993, pp. 93-94

Are We 'a Nation of Cowards'?

   Jeffrey Snyder's timing is either perfect or perfectly awful.  Just 
as there seems to be a coalescing consensus that the keys to controlling 
violent crime are more police and fewer guns, along comes Snyder to 
trouble the conscience of anyone who thinks so.  In his essay "A Nation 
of Cowards" in The Public Interest quarterly, he argues, with a potent 
blend of philosophy and fact, as follows:

   "Crime is rampant because the law-abiding, each of us, condone it, 
excuse it, permit it, submit to it.  We permit and encourage it because 
we do not fight back immediately, then and there, where it happens ... 
The defect is there, in our character.  We are a nation of cowards and 
shirkers."

   Strong words, those, but not stronger than his argument, the gravamen 
of which is that the crime problem cannot be addressed without 
confronting the moral responsibility of the intended victim.  Taking 
responsibility for one's life, family and community requires fighting 
back when threatened with violence.  How?  By possessing and mastering 
the means of resistance.  He means an "equalizer" - a handgun.  A 
responsible citizen, he says, will be trained in the use of his weapon, 
and will defend himself when faced with lethal violence.

   Before examining his argument for an armed citizenry, consider the 
freshest evidence of the nation's quickened concern about crime.

   On Election Day voters in liberal Washington state gave emphatic (76 
percent) approval to the "three strikes and you^Rre out" initiative which 
mandates life imprisonment without parole for people convicted of three 
major felonies.  California, although taxaphobic, nevertheless voted to 
make permanent an existing tax to provide $1.5 billion for public safety 
- more police and firemen.  (Arson has made fire a facet of California's 
anxiety about crime.)  Fiscally conservative Texas endorsed a $1 billion 
bond issue to build more prisons and mental health facilities.

   The day after the elections the House of Representatives, with a 
familiar mixture of posturing and false advertising, passed yet another 
crime bill, this one purporting to subsidize the hiring of 50,000 police 
officers.  It probably would fund fewer.  The Senate promptly pumped up 
the money.  For 40 years Congress has passed a crime bill in every two-
year session, except the last one.  The criminal class has not been 
impressed.

   The day after the elections the president held a ceremony to push the 
bill that would require a five-day waiting period for the purchase of a 
gun.  The attention given to this "Brady bill" seems disproportionate, 
given that 93 percent of the guns obtained by violent criminals are not 
obtained through lawful transactions that are the focus of most gun 
control legislation.

   More interesting, the day after the elections Sen. Pat Moynihan 
proposed whopping tax increases on various kinds of handgun ammunition.  
He even favors a 10,000 percent tax on the Winchester 9mm hollow-tipped 
Black Talon cartridge.  ("Penetrates soft tissue like a throwing star - 
very nasty," boasts an advertisement.)  That tax would make 20 
cartridges cost about $1,500.  In large portions of Moynihan's New York 
City people are slain by stray - that's right, stray - bullets.  
Moynihan says: Guns do not kill people, bullets do.  We have a 200-year 
supply of guns and a four-year supply of ammunition, so concentrate on 
the latter.

   Snyder, an attorney in Washington, where the mayor begs for military 
help against crime, demurs, comprehensively.  America, he says, is 
wrongly called an "armed society."  He thinks we would be better off if 
it were.  Most of the guns owned by law-abiding citizens are kept at 
home, but 87 percent of violent crimes occur outside the home.  The 
constantly armed portion of the community consists primarily of the 
police and violent criminals.  Multiplying the former cannot make us 
safe from the latter.

Self-respect:  It is, says Snyder, foolish and craven to expect police 
to perform as personal bodyguards.  The existence of police does not 
relieve individuals of all responsibility for self-protection.  That 
judgment has both prudential and moral dimensions.  Gun owners like to 
say, "Call for a cop, call for an ambulance and call for a pizza.  See 
which comes first."  The Department of Justice reports that in 1991, for 
all crimes of violence, only 23 percent of calls to the police were 
responded to within five minutes.  And it is now more likely that an 
American will be injured by violent crime than that he will be injured 
in an auto accident.

   Feminists, says Snyder, rightly insist that rape is not about sex but 
about domination.  What is at issue in crime is not just property but 
dignity.  Crime, he says, always violates the victim's dignity, which 
can hardly be said to exist if the victim does not deem it worth 
fighting for.  Crime is "an act of enslavement" and a personal readiness 
to resist it should be regarded as a prerequisite of self-respect, 
properly understood.  He notes that "self-respect," which implies 
standards by which one judges oneself, has been supplanted in public 
discourse by the locution "self-esteem," which simply means having warm 
feelings about oneself.  Repeating the shibboleths of the gun control 
movement makes many people feel good about themselves.  Snyder's 
argument should disturb their peace.

   Much gun control advocacy is directed against normal citizens, who 
are depicted as at best benighted and at worst barbaric.  Gun owners are 
routinely characterized as uneducated, intolerant, possibly paranoid 
rednecks - people urgently in need of re-education and 'consciousness-
raising' from the liberal agenda.  In Mario Cuomo's depiction, gun 
owners are "hunters who drink beer, don't vote and lie to their wives 
about where they were all weekend."  (Cuomo quickly recanted this.  Gun 
owners do vote.)  Actually, the gun-owning population is pretty much 
like the general population because approximately one of every two 
households has a gun.

   Now, Snyder is right that the gun control movement often radiates 
distrust of average citizens, whose supposed mental and moral 
deficiencies are such that "only lack of immediate access to guns 
prevents the blood from flowing in the streets."  Nevertheless, it is 
reasonable to wonder whether a nation whose citizens cannot program 
their VCRs and who increasingly will not respect stop-lights (surely you 
have noticed the increasing lawlessness of drivers) is a nation whose 
citizens are insufficiently dexterous and too aggressive to be safely 
armed.

   Snyder says the idea that only the police are qualified to use 
firearms is akin to saying that "only concert pianists may play the 
piano and only professional athletes may play sports."  The flaw in 
Snyder's analogy is that if you play the piano unskillfully, you neither 
kill nor wound anyone.  However, Snyder has evidence more powerful than 
his analogy.

   In 13 states citizens who wish to carry arms may do so, having met 
certain requirements.  Consider Florida, which in 1987 enacted a 
concealed-carry law guaranteeing a gun permit to any resident who is at 
least 21, has no record of crime, mental illness or drug or alcohol 
abuse, and who has completed a firearms safety course.  Florida's 
homicide rate fell following the enactment of this law, as did the rate 
in Oregon after the enactment of a similar law.  Through June 1993, 
there had been 160,823 permits issued in Florida.  Only 530, or 0.33 
percent, of the applicants have been denied permits.  This indicates 
that the law is serving the law-abiding.  Only 16 permits, less than 
1/1OOth of 1 percent have been rescinded because of the commission, 
after issuance, of a crime involving a firearm.

   Ninety percent of violent crimes are committed by persons not 
carrying handguns.  This is one reason why the mere brandishing of a gun 
by a potential victim of violence often is a sufficient response to a 
would-be attacker.  In most cases where a gun is used in self-defense, 
it is not fired.  Can the average citizen be trusted to judge accurately 
when he or she is in jeopardy?  Snyder answers that "rape, robbery and 
attempted murder are not typically actions rife with ambiguity or 
subtlety."  Furthermore:

   "Florida State University criminologist Gary Kleck, using surveys and 
other data, has determined that armed citizens defend their lives or 
property with firearms against criminals approximately 1 million times a 
year.  In 98 percent of these instances, the citizen merely brandishes 
the weapon or fires a warning shot.  Only in 2 percent of the cases do 
citizens actually shoot their assailants.  In defending themselves with 
their firearms, armed citizens kill 2,000 to 3,000 criminals each year, 
three times the number killed by the police.  A nationwide study by Don 
Kates, the constitutional lawyer and criminologist, found that only 2 
percent of civilian shootings involved an innocent person mistakenly 
identified as a criminal.  'The 'error rate' for the police, however, 
was 11 percent, more than five times as high."

   Concerning what we may call "the running of red lights syndrome" in 
contemporary America, I put the point to Snyder and he fired back a fax:

   "Regarding your observation about our society's general level of 
aggressiveness and disregard for rules, you may wish to consider Robert 
Heinlein's famous dictum that 'An armed society is a polite society.'  
Knowing that one's fellow citizens are armed, greater care is naturally 
taken not to give offense.  The proposition is, of course, difficult to 
prove, but you can find some support for it in English literature.  
Observe the polite formality with which strangers address each other in 
inns in, for example, Fielding's 'Tom Jones' or (with comedic 
exaggeration) in Dickens's 'Pickwick Papers.'  While no doubt 
attributable in part to England's class structure and the education 
received by the aristocracy, I would hesitate to say that it has nothing 
to do with the fact that gentlemen generally were armed."

   Or as is famously said in American literature, by the hero of Owen 
Wister's "The Virginian," "When you call me that, smile!"  Such was 
politeness in the armed society of 19th-century Wyoming.

   Finally, there is the matter of the Second Amendment.  This 
Republic's Founders constitutionalized, which means they made 
fundamental, the right to possess firearms, and they did not do so 
unreflectively.  They placed that right second in the Bill of Rights, 
yielding precedence only to rights pertaining to speech. worship and 
association, and they did that for philosophically serious reasons. The 
philosophy of classical republicanism recognizes a crucial relationship 
between personal liberty and possession of arms by a people prepared to 
use them.  Snyder believes that the Second Amendment is as much a 
product of this philosophy as of the Revolutionary War experience or the 
exigencies of frontier life:  "To own firearms is to affirm that freedom 
is not a gift from government... As the founding fathers knew well, a 
government that does not trust its honest, law-abiding, taxpaying 
citizens with the means of self-defense is not itself worthy of trust."

   Yes, and yet... no society can be called successful where violence is 
so prevalent and random that lawful citizens must go about prepared to 
dispense violence in self-defense.  No one wants to live, raise children 
and grow old in such a society.  But government is constituted to 
provide, first and foremost, tranquillity sufficient to make unnecessary 
the sort of personal measures that Snyder recommends.  If such measures 
are becoming necessary, do not blame Snyder.

   Snyder writes that "the association of personal disarmament with 
civilized behavior is one of the great unexamined beliefs of our time."  
Not anymore it isn't.  His searching examination of it may not compel 
your assent - I remain unpersuaded - but it must shake some soothing 
assumptions regarding crime and civic responsibilities.  I am among 
those whom Snyder faults, civilly but firmly, for insufficient rigor in 
reasoning about these matters.  I find being reproved by him a bracing 
experience because it enlarges my understanding while subtracting from 
my certainties.  I salute him and thank him.




--Mike

Michael T. Palmer (palmer@chmsr.gatech.edu)
Center for Human-Machine Systems Research, Dept of Industrial & Systems Eng
Georgia Institute of Technology, Atlanta, Georgia 30332-0205

4 responses total.

Um....  Anybody who cites Gary Kleck as an authority really needs to do
some research into Kleck's methodology....  His initial "study" involved
the reinterpretation of somebody else's work (a non-scientific survey of
people, asking if they had at any time used a firearm defensively, without
regard to whether the threat was actual or merely perceived) and presented
a statistic on defensive uses of firearms in any given year.  The author
of the original study is still rather flabbergasted, and insists that his
would could not support Kleck's extrapolations.  Kleck also uses the
statistic that 1% of all firearms are used for criminal activity in a given
year to conclude that 99% of firearms are never used for criminal activity.
(If you can't see through that one, I can't help you.)

The notion that having an armed populace will result in peace is quite
ludicrous.  If anything, it will ensure that the 90% figure of violent
crimes not involving handguns drops alarmingly.  Or are we assuming that the
only reason people commit violent crimes is because they see it as
enjoyable.

The notion that an armed populace could (or even would try to) fight off
a trained military is quite ludicrous.  (See, e.g., Bosnia's Muslims, who
fight the Serb military -- a rather poor army by our standards -- and who
use rifles and pistols in their losing battle.  See, e.g., Iraq's army
versus the U.S.)  If people wish to adhere to the romantic notion that
having a handgun will hold off all oppressors, they are free to do so.
Reality, though, clearly holds that if the U.S. government wishes to be
oppressive and has the U.S. military on its side, an "armed" populace
won't be able to stop it.  (Maybe make it uncomfortable, like trying to
sleep in a tent full of mosquitos, but that's about it.)  And one has to
wonder what circumstances would cause the military to prop up a U.S.
dictatorship....

And the comical notion that people will be polite (presumably out of fear)
if everybody is armed....  Well, last I heard, people were already shooting
each other from time to time over unmannerly driving, or accidental contact.
Reality says, many towns in the old west confiscated guns at the border,
and not because they were worried about people being too polite to each
other.  Reality says, romantic notions from literature aside, an armed
society is a dangerous society.

As for an armed populace reducing crime?  Come on.  There are *plenty* of
instances where criminals have taken a "shoot first" policy due to fear
that somebody in their target store might be armed -- or simply that they
might trigger an alarm.  And, given the average person's accuracy with
small arms, the odds of a criminal's being hit are substantially less than
the chances of collateral damage to other people and to property.  Is this
supposed to frighten criminals so they don't commit crimes, so we don't
need jails, so we don't have to spend money on law enforcement?  A nice
notion -- but the facts are that the crime rates are highest in areas
where lots of people are already armed, legally or no.  (Detroit, Los
Angeles, Washington D.C., Miami -- part of "ccw permits for everbody"
Florida, etc.)  Why no magic reductions in crime in those cities?
Especially in Miami, which should fall directly under Snyder's thesis?
Everybody in Miami should be polite, no?

It is always nice to see how much thought George Will puts into his
columns.

I appreciate the chance to read =anything= George Will has 
written, no matter on what topic.  I don't have a fully formed
opinion about gun control, partly because there is so much
heat and so little light on each side.  But I have wondered
whether it's too late for gun control to be effective.  The
depressed urban areas of the U.S. look a little too much like
the wild west for my comfort.  I sure wouldn't want to hazard a
guess about whether I'd want to be armed in L.A. where the police
decided not to intervene in the riots because it was too dangerous.
It's a tough one.

They look like the Wild West?  Heck no.  The Wild West was downright
tame by comparison -- and they would hang you for many "Detroit
misdemeanors."

<insert Georgia Tech plug here>

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