asks Andrew Sullivan in a post titled "The Gun Closet," "why would anyone feel the need to hide the fact that they own one?"
Am I missing some subtle argument here? Taking the question at face value, the answer is so obvious that it's hard to see what the force of the question might be.
Let's begin with the apparent referent of "The Gun Closet." Andrew Sullivan, I take it, believes that sexual autonomy rights are civil rights, but surely no-one would respond to a newspaper's publishing the names of known homosexuals with "If [sexual autonomy] rights are civil rights, why would anyone feel the need to hide the fact that they [exercise them]?"
The answer is obvious: People who exercise their civil rights sometimes face discrimination or ostracism, at least in certain circles, if the exercise of the rights were to become known. That's why some people feel the need to hide the fact that they are gay. (Maybe they would nonetheless benefit in the long term from coming out of the closet, and maybe society would be better off as a result; but we'd think it strange to ask why they'd feel the need to stay in the closet.)
Likewise as to abortion rights, rights to use contraceptives, rights to speak anonymously, and the like. And likewise as to gun rights: In certain circles, owning a gun, or having a licensed to carry a gun concealed, is frowned on, and may lead to various social and professional repercussions. Perhaps such information should nonetheless be a matter of public record for various reasons, even if information about one's sexual autonomy or abortion history is not. But such an argument would have little to do with whether gun rights are civil rights; one may want to keep private the exercise of one's civil rights at least as much as one wants to keep private other behavior.
Am I missing something? Is there some deep irony -- or deep insight -- to "If gun rights are civil rights, why would anyone feel the need to hide the fact that they own one?" that I'm not grasping?
Thanks to InstaPundit, who has more to say on the subject.
Related Posts (on one page):
- The Dangers of Newspapers Publishing the Names and Addresses of Citizens with Handgun Permits:
- "If Gun Rights Are Civil Rights,"
People are free to buy $250,000 diamond necklaces, but they surely would have valid objections if the jewelers published their names.
This may make sense as an abstract principle. But from the standpoint of the individual gun owner who wants to be safe from crime, it seems silly. Surely I'd rather criminals simply stay away from me because they know I have a gun, rather than keeping them guessing in hope they'd be deterred from crime altogether.
After all, these are concealed-weapons permits, not permits to have a gun in your home for protection. Surely a mugger doesn't have the opportunity to find out my name and consult the list before deciding whether to attack me. And if criminals are really doing detailed analyses based on the published list ("zip code X has 10% more concealed weapons than zip code Y! I'm going to commit my crimes in zip code Y!"), then a public list is a benefit to zip code X and a detriment to zip code Y. It's not at all clear why the residents in zip code X would want to assume extra risk solely for the benefit of zip code Y; they might well want the world to know "yes, we have tons of guns in zip code X, evildoers stay away!"
There are lots of good reasons why people might want to keep their concealed-weapons permit secret, but Instapundit's argument ain't it.
A Florida paper did this as well, and it is documented that a man used this information to steal guns from a house when they knew the owners had a permit and were out.
This seems so obvious to me that, like Prof. Volokh, I don't get Sullivan's point at all.
My guns are an integral part of my personal security system. I do not discuss my personal security system with anyone except my personal security advisers.
And a bunch of strangers on the internet.
Yes, moron, we all now know someone named "anonymous" has a concealed carry permit.
sheesh.
That's the kind of deep thought I expect from Sullivan.
Sullivan's ability to see examples of homophobia where I see none is what threw me. He's obviously just a deeper thinker on the subject than I am or ever hope to be.
No, Steve. Thats not just a list of CCW holders, its a list of gun owners. They aren't at home 24/7 to guard against theft of their firearms or other valuables.
When you draw your concealed firearm, you want the attacker to be mentally stunned into inaction. If the element of surprise works, the likelihood that you'll need to actually shoot him decreases. Surely that is a social good.
AHA! I know that guy! ;-)
Instapundit called it a "list of Tennessee concealed-weapon permit holders." If my description was in error, the error didn't originate with me.
More to the point, I acknowledged that there are good arguments why one might want to keep their name off such a list, and protecting one's weapons from theft might well be one of those good reasons. But that's not the reason Instapundit cited, which is why I still contend his stated reason makes no sense.
I realize that it's a subtle point, but did it occur to you that to a very high coefficient of correlation, "CCW permit holder" will correlate positively to "gun owner"?
The right to keep arms (guns) is not a "Gun Right," and accepting weird labels and terminology makes for a yodeling contest.
There may be rights, such as voting, which derive entirely from the organization of a social order, which can be termed "Civil" rights.
But owning guns is not one of those.
Now, as to individual rights, how may their exercise be constrained or publicized? That may be what should take the place of yodeling. As always, we have to consider the why of any such constraints and then proceed to how.
After all, these are concealed-weapons permits, not permits to have a gun in your home for protection. Surely a mugger doesn't have the opportunity to find out my name and consult the list before deciding whether to attack me.
That is relevant if all crimes are committed by muggers on a random basis. Some people, however, are in a situation where they have real enemies, or are likely to be a non-random target of an attack - a local prosecutor, or the owner of a cash-heavy business, or a pharmacist, just to suggest some examples.
So yes, I can see where a criminal might specifically target such a person, who might prefer to have their weaponry (or lack thereof) a mystery.
Since most gun owners have more than one gun, and since most gun owners (as against CCW permit holders) don't generally carry concealed, a list of either gun owners or CCW permit holders is likely to lead to a house with guns in it. This is the reason why gun owners don't want the fact spread all over the newpapers.
The Boston Globe tried to pull this stunt a number of years back; the Massachusetts Firearms Records Bureau told the Globe to take a flying leap, and the Massachusetts Legislature, as liberal as it is, has manfully resisted calls for a change in the law to allow such publicity.
Chris Byrne was fired once. Joe Huffman lost his, too, and I swear Kim Du Toit did as well. Matt, of Three Panel Soul/MacHall fame was fired for daring to talk about owning a gun in the future. Kids get kicked out of school for daring to have a pendant that looks like a gun, arrested for a violent writing, or suspended for making a bang sound. Community rifle teams are nearly nonexistent, despite being several times safer than football, even in locations with huge demand, as getting a shooting range is increasingly difficult. A New Jersey judge states that, when carrying out a human right, "the citizen acts at his peril".
Imagine being not only fired, but virtually blacklisted, for talking about any other civil or human right. You dare speak against someone for an obscure Muslim ritual or an abortion and you'll have the ACLU down on you in seconds. Own a CCW or a gun permit, and the police will send automatic-wielding SWAT teams after you for speeding.
Can you see why we might be a little paranoid?
The majority of the deterrent effect comes from a burglar not knowing whether a home he is considering burglarizing might contain an armed resident. Or if an armed neighbor might respond. Criminals are generally not very bright, but they're as risk-averse as the next guy. So, if you live in a society like England where you know the resident doesn't have a firearm (but probably put in a very expensive burglar alarm) it's much safer just to ring the doorbell and then deck the resident when he opens the door. This is known as a "hot burglary" rather than what it is - armed robbery.
To flip the question around, would you put a "Gun Free Zone!" sign in your front yard?
Licenses, permits, public charters, and suchlike, are privileges and by tradition and necessity, part of the public record. I'm not suggesting that all regulation is forbidden, but carrying concealed arms doesn't seem to fit into the group of licensable activities to which it's been assigned.
Don't hate me for using legal terms incorrectly.
Many of our fundamental civil liberties were enacted to protect minorities against majority vote, and prevailing public moods.
If gun rights were universally accepted, we wouldn't need their protection in the Constitution.
I don't believe I've seen that thrown around. Statistically, gun owners are probably more likely to be burglarized, since people tend to purchase firearms if they feel threatened (remember, correlation is not causation). The difference is that those who are burglarized with firearms are likely to strongly deter burglars from stealing everything not nailed down or raping/murdering bystanders.
By publishing the names of some gun owners, this reduces that effect and replaces it with a new one. The average gun owner owns 3.4 guns (with many owning much fewer, but most owning more than one). As many CCWs prevent the carrying of more than one gun, many jobs prevent the carrying of any gun, as do visits to many public locations, breaking into the uninhabited home of a known gun owner is suddenly very valuable.
The primary issue is that guns primarily make people safer by discouraging acts likely to put individuals in danger (such as inhabited burglary, which has skyrocketed in the United Kingdom largely because the burglar has no real risk).
But if I'm not one of these people - just an ordinary guy who owns a gun for protection - my primary goal is to avoid becoming a crime victim.
Yet Instapundit believes I would prefer to keep my gun ownership a secret, creating a greater likelihood that a criminal (mistakenly assuming I don't have a gun) will target me, for the reason that keeping things secret will deter people from attacking your hypothetical prosecutor or pharmacist.
If Instapundit had simply said "gun owners don't want to be targeted for gun burglaries" or "gun owners don't want to be discriminated against at work" or any of the other reasonable points that have been advanced, I wouldn't have even bothered commenting. Instead, he makes a ludicrous argument, suggesting that the typical gun owner is so selfless that he risks his personal safety solely to create an air of mystery about who owns a gun in order to deter criminals from attacking other people, complete strangers to him.
about any topic other than homosexuality.Fixed!
This is silly. It's "concealed carry". If everyone knows who's carrying, in what sense is it concealed? "Open carry" is a different matter altogether, with different social dynamics. Both situations have been well explored in the literature - Reynolds didn't just make it all up on the fly.
As for non-carrying (gun ownership but not gun carrying), guns at home are obviously tempting targets for burglars. In that case they're useless for defense, as guns can't defend themselves against burglars.
The situation is worse than, say, publishing the names of owners of expensive jewelry, as in many states guns can't be kept just anywhere - they must be kept at the address of a person with an appropriate license. They can't be deposited in a vault elsewhere.
Actually, I (infrequently) wear a similar T-shirt; it's got the circle-and-slash over a handgun, and says "I'm unarmed. Please don't hurt me." My favorite moment with it was when I was at a friend's restaurant, and took off my jacket, revealing the shirt, and he came very close to snorting Sprite out of his nose.
And it's kind of fun to conduct a carry class, with a gun visible in a holster on my hip, wearing that shirt . . .
In terms of the privacy issue, I think I can speak with some objectivity -- it's not my oxe being gored; ever since I testified in front of the MN State Senate, some years ago, about difficulties in getting and keeping a carry permit, I've been out of the gun closet; being a fairly-well-known MN carry permit instructor, author of the definitive (by process of elimination, if nothing else) book on carrying a handgun in Minnesota; being the subject of a (dramatically unsuccessful) hoax in 2005 in an attempt to delay repassage of the Personal Protection Act, etc. . . .
But there are many permit holders who prefer to have their status as permit holders kept private -- and MN law is very obliging on that: absent being charged (or convicted) of a crime which would result in the permit being yanked, permit data is protected by our Data Practices Act.
Reasons vary: at least a couple of stalking victims would prefer that their stalkers not know in advance that they're eligible to carry; at least two retired cops and current prosecutors really don't want to advertise their status to folks who they've helped put in prison; others feel that their employers might have problems with them having permits, and don't want to take the risks; still others have noticed the kinds of hassles that some of us who are known to carry have gotten, and don't want to volunteer for them; yet others are just private sorts of folks, and don't like sharing personal decisions with the whole world.
In one case I'm aware of, the permit holder is a fairly prominent anti-gun activist, and he or she wouldn't be comfortable having that hypocrisy exposed. (I find the hypocrisy despicable, mind you, but I respect the individual's right to his or her privacy -- you'll note that I'm not publicly naming him or her.)
All in all, it seems to me that, as with other normal sorts of decisions that people make to see to their own personal security or other private matters, it should be up to the individual how public they are about that, and both law and courtesy should respect that.
It's explicitly not an argument from the perspective of the gun owner.
Steve, you don't know what you're talking about.
I have a handgun. The reason I carry it concealed, and the reason I do not advertise that fact, is exactly as Instapundit suggested: I don't want criminals to know I'm armed.
Surprise is a tactical advantage; if I need to defend myself against a violent criminal I want all the advantage I can get.
And for you liberals out there: yes, I would be upset about this as well. But no newspaper would ever do such a thing.
However: by making home addresses visible, newspapers are putting people who have reason to fear for their safety from particular attackers at unnecessary risk. Retired peace officers. Judges. Women with violent ex-spouses. I know someone who lives in fear of her ex-son-in-law (ex because he murdered his wife) who has recently been released from prison. She works very hard to make sure that her name and picture do not ever appear anywhere.
Newspapers that make this information readily available are attempting to shame licensees into not doing so. It does not seem to occur to these clueless morons that you don't carry a concealed handgun because it's cool, but because you are afraid of death, rape, robbery, or great bodily injury. What's the contempt of your liberal neighbors compared to those risks?
Some citizens are more equal than others, and are permitted to turn off their telescreen.
Ask a reporter for the paper would feel about the corresponding information (like names and addresses) about all of their employees. After all, "If a Free Press is a Civil Right, why would anyone feel the need to hide the fact that they work for one?"