From: [h--s] at [unity.ncsu.edu] (HENRY E SCHAFFER)
Newsgroups: rec.guns
Subject: The Samuri, The Mountie, and The Cowboy - A Book Review
Date: 24 May 1994 23:19:32 -0400
The Samuri, The Mountie, and The Cowboy
Should America Adopt the Gun Controls of Other Democracies?
David B. Kopel
"A Cato Institute Book"
Prometheus Books, Buffalo, NY 1992 ISBN 0-87975-756-6
6 1/4" x 9 1/4" 470 pp cloth
I'd heard a lot about this book - from both its admirers and its
detractors, and I finally decided that I had to read it. It is a long
book, and a densely written and thought provoking book. It has many
'footnotes' (placed in sections at the end of each chapter - taking up
multiple pages of fine print each time) and it gives citations to the
literature, to the popular press and newspapers, and often adds
additional quotes. Even the introduction has 'footnotes'!
It is this careful approach which provides the detractors most of
their arguments - they pore over the book until they find one of the
thousands of footnotes which has an error, or perhaps which refers to a
newspaper or other article which has an error - and then they run around
screaming about that one point, and the screaming does continue over and
over. They completely miss the point - which is a general comparison of
the gun control history and policies of a number of democracies - more
than the title hints at (see chapter list below.) I'm impressed by the
scope of the book, and by the general perspective that it provides.
Also note that Kopel doesn't take an uncritical pro-rkba stance. He
seems to feel that controls are reasonable as long as they take into
consideration the history, culture and needs of a country.
Nevertheless, he is very strongly pro-rkba.
If you want to view the historical and cultural background of gun
control in the countries covered, then this book is a must-read.
However it is also a thorough and slow-going treatment, so I only
recommend it to people who can benefit from this type of detail.
Contents [my comments in square brackets] [each chapter is divided into
about 8 - 10 subsections - they are included after each chapter,
separated by semi-colons - and give some flavor of the topics included -
each chapter ends with a "Conclusion" which I've not typed below] [the
page counts include the 'footnotes']
1. Introduction [7 p.]
2. Japan: No Guns, No Gun Crime [39 p.]
Gun Possession; gun-Related Crime; A Police State; History; The
preference for Paternalism; An Unarmed Government; A Homogeneous
Society; Economics; Suicide. [An opening quote is a Japanese proverb,
"The nail that sticks out will be pounded down.", which is contrasted
with the American proverb, "The squeaky wheel gets the grease." This is
an introduction to a discussion of a rather homogeneous and quite
regimented society. By U.S. standards the Japanese police have very
great authority in a great variety of situations including what we would
consider private activities or protected civil liberties. The closing
section discusses Japan's high overall rate, which occurs in a
non-firearms owning environment and yet is nearly twice as high as in
the U.S.]
3. Great Britain: The Queen's Peace [77 p.]
The Government Disarms Some of the People Some of the Time; Modern
Gun control; A Toy of the Landed Gentry; The Gun Lobby Resists: The
Hungerford Massacre; The Momentum of Gun Control; Effects of British Gun
Controls and Social Controls; Could British-Style Gun Laws Be Enforced
in the United States?; The Pearl of Great Price: Civil Liberties. [This
is a long treatment, as befits the close historical relationship, and
the common legal grounding. The British waverings between arming and
disarming subjects of various religions and classes is discussed, and
then the modern situation is treated more thoroughly. Kopel's favorite
point about the importance of the culture in determining crime rates is
shown in "Culture matters more than statutes about guns. After New York
City enacted strict gun controls in 1911, it suffered a much higher
firearms crime rate than did London, where significant controls had not
yet been enacted."
4. Canada: Love of Government [57 p.]
History; New Restrictions in 1977; Restricted Weapons; Prohibited
Weapons; Civil Liberties; Has Canadian Gun Control Reduced Gun Misuse?;
Would Canadian-Style Laws Work in America?. [Early Canadian history is
contrasted with U.S. history with respect to their need to create their
own law, and the impact on attitudes regarding self-defense. The 1977
imposition of the FAC and other gun control additions is discussed. The
1988 Seattle/Vancouver homicide rate study is discussed in detail.
Attitudes of Canadians towards gun control and governmental powers is
discussed. Canadians may have fewer civil liberties than are found in
the U.S., but also have a society in which people are more orderly on
their own account.]
5. Australia: No One is Happy [40 p.]
The Battle over Conflicting State Laws; "Rednecks, Reactionaries,
and Rambos"; The Anti-Gun Lobby; More and More Guns; Crime Control;
social Controls; Registrations: "An Elaborate Concept of Arithmetic with
No Tangible Aim". [Australia had a turbulent frontier, but less so than
the U.S. However it shares with the U.S. serious disputes between the
population and the government with respect to the imposition and
enforcement of gun control regulations. It also shares with the U.S. a
confusing pattern of homicide rates not following the stringency of gun
controls - e.g. (1985 data) the homicide rate in NSW was 2/100,000 while
in the Northern Territory which had stricter regulations the rate was
11.8/100,000 which is even higher than the U.S.]
6. New Zealand: Everyone is Happy [24 p.]
Subduing the Maori and Controlling the Workers; The Police Relax
gun Control; The New Zealand Mountain Safety Council; New Zealand by the
Numbers; Police Powers; The Aramoana Massacre and the Breakdown of
Consensus. [NZ has a substantially different situation than Australia,
and has adopted quite a difference approach to gun control.]
7. Jamaica: War on Guns [21 p.]
The Violence Begins; Social Controls Collapse; "Radical Surgery for
a Grave Disease"; Political Violence Worsens; The People Betrayed; The
Gun Court's Bankruptcy; New Government, Old Repression.
[what went on in Jamaica should give pause to us in the US - in his
Conclusion, Kopel says - "Gun control costs no money yet it offers
legislatures a quick and easy way to 'do something.' But as Jamaica
illustrates, a government and nation that decide to 'do something' about
gun control may be distracted from the real work of social control.
Indeed, the diversion of society from the real fight against crime by
the offering of a gun-control panacea may be one of the most
destructive, criminogenic effects of efforts to control guns." I like
that word "criminogenic"!]
8. Switzerland: The Armed Society [25 p.]
Arms for Independence; Modern Military Service; "Switzerland Does
Not Have an Army; It is an Army."; Gun Control and Gun-Related Crime;
Sober Attitudes toward Firearms; Everyone is His Own Policeman; Why the
Swiss System Cannot Work in America. [This chapter concludes with a
discussion of why the typical anti-gun and pro-gun arguments about
Switzerland fail.]
9. Civilization and Savagery: America's Half-Remembered Violent
Past [71 p.]
Guns and Their Owners - Enemies of Civilization; Conquering the
Continent; The Militia; Private Law Enforcement; The "Wild West" and the
Vigilante Tradition; Feuds; Race Relations; Urbanization, Immigration,
and Ethnic Relations. ["The Soviet empire having collapsed, America
faces a choice. America could demobilize much of its worldwide standing
army, under the theory that large standing armies are made for war, and
the cold war is over. Or America could conclude that the drug war is
the next mission for the standing army. Deployment of the army in
border interdiction may lead to the use of the army in purely domestic
law enforcement. To James Harrington or James Madison, the sight of
uniformed national army troops, armed with rapid-fire guns, and
conducting commodity raids (most likely without probable cause) would be
quite alarming." then later "The American experience offers little
reason to trust that government will reduce violence against victimized
groups. Too often, the government and its police and army ally with and
help to arm an already dominant and oppressive group, such as company
bosses or the Ku Klux Klan. The Canadian people trust a strong
government to mediate conflicts between different interests. In
America, the people have been unwilling to surrender their own right to
use force, and skeptical that the government would use a monopoly on
force to ensure justice. Too often, American governments have turned
disarmament into racial or ethnic oppression." This chapter also
attempts to cast a new light on what 'vigilante' means. This usually is
a derogatory term, yet it is discussed in terms of the many times that
a community organized to protect itself against outlaw gangs. Gun
control laws after the Civil War are discussed, and the way they were
used to disarm the free Negroes, but were carefully enacted in
non-racial language. These discriminatory efforts continue. "The point
of banning 'cheap' guns is that people who can only afford cheap guns
should not have guns. The prohibitively high price that some firearms
licenses carry ($500 in Miami until recently) suggests a contemporary
intent to keep guns away from lower socioeconomic groups."]
10. Taking the Law into One's Hands: Firearms in Modern America [32 p.]
The Modern Frontier; Guns and Violence in American Cultural Life;
Citizens and the Law: America and Europe; The "Symbolic Crusade" against
the Demon Gun; Transplanting Foreign Gun Controls to American Soil.
[there has been much misunderstanding about the 'vigilantes', and this
chapter continues to discuss the vigilante tradition, and points out
that "It should also be noted that while there are 600,000 police
officers in the United States (dedicated to protecting the whole
population), there are 1,400,000 private security guards dedicated to
protecting those who can pay them. 'Private security guards are simply
vigilantes for the rich,' writes West Virginia Supreme Court Chief
Justice Richard Neely. If society allows rich people to hire vigilante
security guards (most of whom are vary poorly trained), is it just for
society to forbid less wealthy citizens to protect themselves?"
In a foreshadowing of recent 4th Amendment violations in Chicago, Kopel
reports "It is true that America protects the right to bear arms far
more vigorously than other nations do. America protects most other
rights better as well. The United States is the only nation with a
meaningful exclusionary rule to prevent the courtroom use of illegally
seized evidence - much to the consternation of former federal Judge
Malcolm Wilkey, who maintains that we cannot enforce current or future
gun control unless we imitate 'other civilized countries,' such as
Britain, Canada, and Japan by scrapping the exclusionary rule and the
probable cause requirement of the Fourth Amendment." It sounds as if
our President read this section and has decided that he's willing to
scrap the Fourth Amendment, and perhaps many others as well.]
11. Guns, Crime, and Virtue [37 p.]
Gun Control and Self-Control; Social Controls; What could Gun
Control Accomplish in America?; The Permanence of Guns in American
Culture; America's Only Realistic Option: Promoting Responsible Gun
Ownership. [This is Kopel's conclusion and he ends "The encouragement of
mature, responsible gun use is the policy best suited to the United
States."]
Index [28 p.]
--henry schaffer