Wayne Allyn Root: More Guns in Hands of Law Abiding Citizens

Former Libertarian Vice Presidential nominee, famed sports handicapper and regular contributor to the Gambling911.com website, Wayne Allyn Root, wants more guns in the hands of law abiding citizens following the Gabrielle Giffords tragedy of last week.  His opinions do not necessarily reflect those of Gambling911.com or its Management.

“Laws that forbid the carrying of arms...disarm only those who are neither inclined nor determined to commit crimes...Such laws make things worse for the assaulted and better for the assailants; they serve rather to encourage than to prevent homicides, for an unarmed man may be attacked with greater confidence than an armed man.”

--Thomas Jefferson

(Editorial) The key to success in life is often what lessons you learn from failure, tragedy and challenge. Back in 1996, I wrote a book about it called, “The Joy of Failure.” Unfortunately, I’ve found in life that many (if not most) people learn the wrong lessons. I’ve found liberals/progressives almost always learn the wrong lesson. It is happening again. The Gabrielle Giffords tragedy of last weekend in Tucson, Arizona is Exhibit A.

Let me get this straight. A mentally ill madman goes on a shooting spree to assassinate a United States Congressperson… and the lesson learned by liberals is that guns must be taken away from law-abiding citizens? Really? What’s the connection between a mentally ill nutcase and perfectly sane, responsible people? There is none. It’s no different than reacting to a drunk driver killing an entire family in a car accident and Congress proposing to ban driving for everyone. Or reacting by banning alcohol for all of us. Absurd, right? Except that was the reaction by liberal politicians across America to the Giffords tragedy.

This reminds me of being an elementary school student at the age of seven. One bad kid in school would do something wrong, and the teacher or principal would punish the whole class, or the whole school. Why? The rest of us were good kids. Why would we be punished for something a bad (or mentally unstable) kid chose to do? We did nothing wrong. What kind of message does it send when you punish good, responsible people for the acts of someone else? Does it motivate people to do good, or does it leave the rest of us angry, bitter and feeling persecuted for something we didn’t do?

There are so many reasons to keep guns legal for law abiding citizens, I can’t fit them all in this one commentary. But here are just a few:

First, banning or drastically limiting access to guns never stops criminals from obtaining guns. Drugs are banned in this country, yet they are everywhere. We can’t even keep drugs out of prison. If you ban guns, it doesn’t stop a single criminal or madman from getting them on the black market. It only prevents law-abiding citizens and business owners from defending themselves. Honest law-abiding Americans will be disarmed and at the mercy of thieves, home invaders, rapists, murderers, and madmen just like Congressman Giffords’ assassin.

Second, gun control makes totalitarian regimes possible.  I am a Jew. I will never forget that the first thing Adolf Hitler did to imprison, enslave and murder 6 million of my people is pass a law that banned Jews from owning guns. Never again.  The lesson of Hitler is that when you lose the right to bear arms and defend yourself, your family and your property, you are at the mercy of tyrants and madmen. Our Founding Fathers understood that clearly. That is precisely why they built the right to own guns into the Constitution. It had far less to do with citizen militias, than it did to allow citizens to defend themselves against a brutal government intent to violate their rights, or steal their property. The right to defend yourself is what insures freedom.

It is important to note that the Holocaust was not an exception. Name a country where a brutal dictator/tyrant killed millions of his own citizens -- Stalin in Russia, Mao in China, Hitler in Germany, Pol Pot in Cambodia -- in every case their first act was to disarm their citizens, thereby leaving them powerless and defenseless. If you want ruthless big government to control your life, by all means willingly give up your right to bear arms. But I will not.

Third, gun control is often racist as well. Here in America the urban areas populated by the highest percentage of minorities also happen to all have the strictest gun control laws. Has it worked? Name the city -- Detroit, Chicago, Washington DC, Newark, Baltimore. All the cities with the strictest gun control laws have the highest murder and violent crime rates. Why? Because you have left the citizens of those cities defenseless. Anyone who is a good person and the backbone of society -- homeowners, business owners, taxpayers with good jobs -- has too much to lose to risk breaking the law by buying a gun (if it’s illegal). But criminals have nothing to lose. When you ban guns, or make them difficult for law-abiding citizens to own them, it is open season on the good people in society. Criminals do just fine, the rest of us are left at the mercy of evil. Strict gun control is racist because it makes honest law-abiding African Americans and Hispanics living in crime-infested urban ghettos powerless to defend themselves or their families. Gun control gives the criminals the upper hand. 

Now let’s look at the polar opposite. Look at suburbs and rural towns across the heartland (Midwest), South and Mountain West, where hunting is prevalent, and guns are legal and plentiful. What do you see in places where law-abiding citizens have easy access to guns? Low or no crime rates. The number of police is no higher, yet crime is far lower. The only difference is that the citizenry is armed. Criminals want no part of confronting armed homeowners or business owners.

Liberals often point to Europe’s strict gun laws as the model for America. My response is “NO THANKS.” I have no interest in becoming like the law-abiding homeowner in UK who defended his family and property by shooting a home invader, and was rewarded with a sentence of life in prison. If liberals like Europe so much, I have a simple answer: MOVE THERE.

I still remember when the Los Angeles riots hit in 1992. I was hosting several national TV shows on CNBC and living in the Hollywood Hills. My phone never stopped ringing. On the other end was every bleeding-heart liberal Hollywood actor and producer I knew -- all desperately begging to bring their families to my home because they knew I was armed. 

America has a Constitution. It gives all law-abiding citizens the right to bear arms. That right is central to protecting our homes, families, businesses and property. It has been central to the remarkable success of America for over 200 years. God Bless America.