A Doctor Gets it Wrong on Guns

Retired physician William D. Bezdek gets it wrong.  In a letter to the editor of the Bakersfield Californian, he gets the reason for the existence and use of guns in general, and concealed carry in particular, all wrong. In his article entitled The NRA needs to radically change in order to pass sane gun laws, he states several times that the only purpose of a gun is to kill.

Guns are machines designed for the sole purpose to kill. Target practice is an exercise to improve the efficiency of killing and is not a primary function of design. Hunting is killing.

This leads me to my second consideration. There are about 36,000 auto deaths per year and about 34,000 gun deaths each year, so why not ban autos? Autos are designed to provide transportation. Deaths from autos are a consequence of their faulty use. Guns are designed to kill. Faulty use of guns just makes them more efficient killers. Logically, if you ban autos because they kill, you lose their primary design feature — i.e. transportation. If you ban guns because they kill, you also ban their primary design feature — i.e. killing. The symmetry of the argument completely breaks down when you reason that because people die in crashes cars should be banned, but holds when you reason that because guns kill people, they should be banned.

Of course, he gets his statistics wrong, but we will set that aside. We have seen automobiles used as weapons, killing many people deliberately. Yes, their true purpose is transportation, and to carry large amounts of material from place to place in the case of trucks, but when they are used to deliberately kill as many people as possible, it is fair to wonder why if the government proposes gun control, they do not also propose car control. But that society makes the calculation that the intended use of an automobile, transportation, out weighs the negative uses and abuses of automobiles is entirely rational.  When people make these arguments, they know they are absurd but make absurdities to mock absurd gun control arguments.  Dr. Bezdek here makes absurd arguments for gun control, and deserves to be mocked.

He notes that since the design purpose of a hunting weapons is to kill,and that therefore this is not a legitimate use. I disagree, however. The purpose of hunting is nominally to put food on the table. That you have to kill to do so does not take away from the fact that the actual purpose is to keep body and soul together. He may argue that meat can be placed on the table by farming the animals, but they are still killed.  He just shops out the killing to others.  Of course, since he has not personally killed any creature, I guess he is entitled to pat himself on the back, but morally he is as guilty as a hunter nonetheless.  And morally, eating only vegetables still requires the killing of plant life, and countless worms and other creatures living in the soil.    That such creatures are small, and relatively defenseless only makes the moral argument that much stronger.

 So now we turn to the true topic on which he writes.  The idea that guns are for killing people.  As far as defensive uses of the gun, the purpose is not to kill, but to deter others from attacking and possibly killing oneself. The gun is a tool, and is used by the person who wields it to do a job.  In self defense courses, we talk about using the gun as a means to stop the threat, not to kill. Stopping the threat can be merely letting the assailant know you have a gun, and if he persists will use it.  If the situation escalates, you may be forced to  display the gun or to draw it to the ready position, again warning the assailant away.  Further escalation may mean you  actually have to point the gun at the assailant while shouting at him to back off, or drop his weapon.  Finally, if all else fails, you may be required to shoot the gun. Of course shooting the gun may involve the assailant's death, but that was not intended.

The NRA began circulating the idea that the Second Amendment guaranteed an individual’s right to own guns in the mid-1950s. In an increasing crescendo of propaganda, this idea became so successful that the Supreme Court in District of Columbia v. Heller, and in McDonald v. Chicago established the right for individuals to bear arms. But there was a proviso that laws could be passed to control the use of arms.

Here he is rewriting history to agree with his notions of what gun laws should be. The Second Amendment has said what it says since the Constitution was ratified in 1788 and the first 10 amendments were added in 1791. The meaning of the Second Amendment was not seriously questioned until the early 20th century, when people began to propose that the amendment only applied to the military, or specifically to the National Guard. But the National Guard did not exist as such before 1903. Before that time, the National Guard existed as the various State and territory militias. Of course, at that time the full time Army was a token force, and relied upon the militias of the States for men trained to war. And who made up the militias? Every able bodied many between the ages of 16 and 60. Before the modern era, the only real question anyone had was whether a specific weapon was of use in a war. The Miller court didn't think a short barreled shotgun was of much use, but then a panel of nine judges is hardly expert on what is or is not useful militarily.

Dr, Bezdek consistently gets everything wrong on guns.  Putting the best spin on it, one can suppose that he naively believes that guns can be confiscated from upward of 100 million legal gun owners.  Of course HE won't be doing it, but as many as 3-9 million will have to be killed in the process, and one assumes he believes that is necessary.  Breaking a few eggs, eh?  Does he also believe that even though drugs are routinely smuggled into the country and onto the streets of every American city, that somehow guns will not be?  If so, why?  His own state of California is over run with illegal aliens, any number of which could also bring in a gun or two.  Nobody seems to be stopping them.

The fact of the matter is that the problem has always been people, not the tools they use.  More people are killed every year with fists and feet.  I won't suggest that therefore fists and feet should be banned, another absurdity.  Rather, we need to find ways to deal with people who commit crimes.  If we are not going to execute them, then we should ensure that if someone can not be trusted with a gun, (or fists, feet, cars, etc) that they can not get out of prison, or the insane asylum.  David Codrea's dictum still holds that if a man can not be trusted with a gun, he should not be allowed in public without a custodian.  Why?  Because such a man, or woman, will always have a gun.  That's just how things are.