I write all sorts of crazy things and no one seems to care. I write a boring editorial about how people ought to be able to defend themselves, and I start getting letters from crazy people.

Jerry Destremps writes:

I was severely psychologically violated when I was held up at gunpoint in L.A. in 1991. This would not have happened in Australia because alomost NO ONE there has guns. Why? Strict gun control laws.

I know martial arts, and I’m a fast runner, but I can’t out-kick or out-run bullets. That makes me a slave in my own country. I’m not going to carry a gun around, BECAUSE I DON”T WANT TO FUCKING HAVE TO!

If we got rid of all the handguns, and idiots like you, this would be a better world.

Oh my lord. “I don’t want to live like a slave in my own fucking country.” That’s the whole point, isn’t it? You want everyone who is weaker than you to live like your slaves. Half of my friends live in mortal fear of going out at night. Are they afraid of guns? No, they’re afraid of criminals, and for them the presence or absence of guns doesn’t matter: women who fear rape don’t fear it less when it comes at the point of a knife... or the hands of a martial artist’s skill.

There are, after all, people who can’t run faster, people who don’t know martial arts, or have the free time to learn. What you’re advocating is the return of rule by the strong. Rule by you. Rule by professional mercenaries who in any sane age would be called criminals. But you probably already knew that.

If we got rid of all the handguns, this would revert to a world where the strong arm and the longest blade rule. We would revert to a world where those who are weaker than you, or slower than you, or with less time than you to study martial arts live in fear for their lives. If you live in fear today, that is your choice. Others today do not live in fear. They currently have that choice. Why do you wish to take it away?

Is it that you’re afraid of victims with handguns? When it comes right down to it, the only people who support gun confiscation are people who don’t know what they’re talking about, or people who want to prey on the unarmed. Which are you?

Oh, in case you didn’t hear, it does happen in Australia. For all their gun control, they haven’t seen reduced crime. Of course, their politicians used that as an excuse to enact even stronger gun control. Good luck to them, but I think they’re in for a bloodbath when the next Port Arthur murderer realises he can do whatever he wants without any fear of an armed victim fighting back.

And slavery? You “live like a slave” because you’re afraid? I think you have no conception of what slavery really is. You have the freedom to leave Los Angeles if you desire it. You have the freedom to vote for changes if that’s what you want. You are thoughtless if you think your living in Los Angeles is anything like real slavery. Now, if you want to talk about slavery, or impending slavery, let’s take a look at Hong Kong. In What can we do about Hong Kong?, I wrote “Soon-to-be dissidents in Hong Kong should be armed with better than axes, hammers, pokers, or a useless piece of paper inscribed with forgotten rights.”

Michael Meinhold, a landlord in St. Louis, wrote back:

Jerry, are you really suggesting that we arm the people of Hong Kong and ask them to take on the Beijing government?

Of course not: neither was Solzhenitsyn suggesting that they should have armed themselves and taken on the Russian government. What he was suggesting then, and what I am suggesting now, is that they arm to defend themselves against the individuals in that government who make the choice to carry out--or not carry out--orders to round up dissidents.

A journalist who dies from a bullet to the head in a Hong Kong jail dies no less than if she had died from resisting arrest.

Can we conscript some nearby young fellows and ladies to also join in the crusade? How about the Japanese? They probably would find a China under their influence desirable. Then again, there’s also Russia and other sundry nearby conglomerates. They might find it interesting to watch a house afire in Greater Asia. India, Viet Nam and the NRA. Maybe they would all like to go and take a bite. No, tomorrow will come soon enough. I think it would be easier just to move Hong Kong...say, to Taiwan perhaps.

You’re talking about setting governments against governments. I’m talking about people. You’re talking about attack. I’m talking about defense. The students in Tianamen Square, the Jews in Germany, the dissidents in Russia; all would be no more dead had they resisted with arms. But for Solzhenitsyn’s dream of an end to the police state to come true requires large scale peaceful firearms ownership. It also requires the psychological ability to take responsibility for one’s own defense.

We are already asking the Hong Kong people to take on the Beijing government. We’re simply asking them to do it unarmed and unprepared. I’m asking that we face up to that. Or do you truly believe that Beijing will allow the Hong Kong people to continue their lives unmolested?

Michael replied with:

Armed insurrection in 1997 Hong Kong will only lead to the deaths of those participating

As opposed to unarmed insurrection in Tienanmen Square? You keep confusing defense with attack. I, along with Solzhenitsyn, was talking about defense. They are not the same thing, as any crime victim can tell you. When Solzhenitsyn said:

And how we burned in the camps later, thinking: What would things have been like if every Security operative, when he went out at night to make an arrest, had been uncertain whether he would return alive and had to say good-bye to his family? Or if, during periods of mass arrests, as for example in Leningrad, when they arrested a quarter of the entire city, people had not simply sat there in their lairs, paling in terror at every bang of the downstairs door and at every step on the staircase, but had understood they had nothing left to lose and had boldly set up in the downstairs hall an ambush of half a dozen people with axes, hammers, pokers, or whatever else was at hand?

The Organs would very quickly have suffered a shortage of officers and transport and, notwithstanding all of Stalin’s thirst, the cursed machine would have ground to a halt!

He wasn’t talking about an attack of armies against armies either. He was talking about individuals taking responsibility for their own safety. What if they had? Would the “organs of Stalin’s thirst” have ground to a halt? I think the mass graves tell you what happened when they merely “paled in terror”.

We already know that that doesn’t work.

Solzhenitsyn’s Gulag was not one of his better works in my opinion, although it cronicles a period of time in Russian history and will contribute to the knowledge of that era.

There will always be oppressor and oppressed to one degree or another, and it can take many forms. Where does freedom start and stop? Many times, people don’t want freedom as much as they want peace. Whether Hutu or Palestinian, Amazon Indian or Watts resident, I suspect they would all welcome a little more peace!

“There will always be oppressor and oppressed”... That’s very easy for one of the unoppressed to say. You might want to ask the dead and oppressed if they agree. If you want to know where freedom starts and stops, ask those who are already oppressed. Offer to trade places with them. I suspect that they could tell you where it stops, and accept your offer immediately. This isn’t a mere semantic question to those who die at the dictator’s whim.

And your argument is that The Gulag Archipelago is not a great literary work? This is a man who was dragged from his home by the legal authorities. That his story isn’t War and Peace hardly invalidates what Solzhenitsyn was saying. He was talking about loss of freedom, he wasn’t trying to wow you with flowery prose.

The last paragraph I wrote was:

If China is honest in its claims that it will not infringe Hong Kong rights, these firearms will gather dust beneath the floorboards and behind the walls of Hong Kong apartments.

Hardly a call for insurrection, is it? I’m not arguing that we force the Hong Kong people to go armed against the Chinese government. I’m merely saying that we should make sure that they can make that choice for themselves. What is there to disagree with in that?

Anything else is asking them to be slaves in their own fucking country.