Pols, guns and androgyny

These arguments are very compelling. However, what Europeans sometimes fail to fully realize is that the U.S. is enormous -- the size of a continent, with many states bigger than European nations -- and that our population lacks the ethnic and racial homogeneity of Scandinavia. Whatever its internal disputes, Sweden is historically much more of an extended family than is the U.S., with its massive history of immigration and its competitive minorities.

The American frontier is still open here -- a spatial as well as cultural fact. Our people have a thousand forms and faces, and our quarrels and our creativity are in dynamic relation. American guns are the dark side of American genius. Our aggression overflows into violence but also empowers our brilliant entrepreneurship in technology as well as the vitality of our popular culture.

Yes, I must admit, in this country we are more concerned with the restless rights of the individual than with the claims to comfort of the majority. We prefer the adrenaline rush of the random to the consoling drowsiness of cradle-to-grave socialism. I apologize (as a worshipper of Sweden's national treasure, Ingmar Bergman) if this seems too harsh!

Greg Jorgensen is Jukka Hohenthal's ally in this deftly reasoned letter from Portland, Ore.:

I'm not a politically correct whiner, but I do think it's time to abandon the cowboy mentality. With guns and ammunition so easily available, feeding into a culture fascinated by violence -- even the fake violence of professional wrestling -- we are bound to have a lot of crossfire.

Some of the anti-gun-control arguments are bogus. Here's my take on a few of them:

1. "We need an armed population to protect ourselves from the government, and to limit the power of the police and the state." This made sense in 1800, when the government was weak and didn't control the town and state militias. Today, the police and the military have such superior weapons, and a practically unlimited supply of arms and ammo, that only a fanatic imagines winning a fight against even a small force of them. We already live in a police state, and no matter how many Glocks you own, they have lots more. The government has already demonstrated its willingness to use its superior force and weaponry, and it has done so without any serious organized resistance.

2. "The Second Amendment to the Constitution guarantees the right of anyone to keep and bear arms." The bit about "a well regulated militia" is usually forgotten. Even someone with a public school history education should be able to figure out that the founding fathers didn't imagine Uzis and AK-47s in every home. They didn't imagine a police state, the federal income tax, the "war on drugs," intervention in foreign wars, or much of anything else that is American life today. Over time we abandoned slavery and gave women the vote; we can amend the other parts of the Constitution as well.

3. Hunting. People who need to hunt for food, or want to hunt for sport, should have no problem restricting their gun collection to actual hunting weapons. In England, hunters belong to clubs, and the guns are kept at the club.

My reply to your well-honed points, Mr. Jorgensen, is threefold. First, the abolition of slavery and the granting of suffrage to women expanded civil liberties, while the most extreme programs of gun control would take constitutionally guaranteed liberties away.

Second, my reading of world history, ancient to modern, suggests that law and order can collapse virtually overnight in crisis situations, such as a severe climatological disturbance. This column has warned again and again that the financial markets and long-term investments and pensions will vanish in a poof of smoke if Mother Nature, like Atlas, shrugs. We will all be scrambling for survival again -- and those with guns will be able to defend their family and property.

Third, the lessons of Waco are that even a liberal Democratic administration is capable of fascist acts and that a reasonably armed citizenry is the only recourse against government tyranny. I don't own guns, but I feel more secure that others do.

My prior references to Waco have inspired protests from some readers. Jimmy A. Roberts-Miller, for example, declares:

While I agree with you on the scandalous (criminal!) nature of the government's actions at Waco, I do have to take you to some task for your reference to David Koresh's "ranch." Not only were there some less than wholesome things going on there (deserving of investigation, though not immolation) but that was no more a "ranch" than those 10-acre "spreads" fancied by some yuppies where they keep a horse or two. My dad ran 1,500 acres of real ranch in the scrub brush country south of San Antonio; I know whereof I speak. Calling that place a ranch is both being a bit disingenuous and insulting to real ranch people.

A thousand apologies to ranchers everywhere! The 1956 film version of Edna Ferber's "Giant," which I saw when I was 9, burned into my mind forever the image of the heroic dirt-and-steer rancher (Rock Hudson) fighting off the greedy oil barons. In describing Koresh's compound as a "ranch" (which it was before he acquired it), I was trying to convey the property's physical look to Salon's international readership, who haven't seen the constant aerial images on TV.

Next Page: David Koresh was a fruitcake

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