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Opinion & Commentary – Guest Column – Sunday, June 3, 2001
Politicians beating gun control drum
By Miguel A. Faria Jr., M.D.

Georg Hegel, the father of dialectical idealism, which Karl Marx
transmogrified and misappropriated as dialectical materialism, lamented that
what we learn from history is that man does not learn its lessons.

Despite what we have learned about the deleterious effects of draconian gun
control in other countries, particularly during the last bloody century,
politicians with authoritarian leanings continue to beat the drums for more
gun control.

As any student of history knows, gun control figures prominently in the
designs of totalitarian states. These features recur:

* Centralization of the police force with a vast network of surveillance
and informants to spy on citizens.

* National identification cards for all citizens.

* Civilian disarmament via gun registration, and licensing, followed by
banning and confiscation of firearms.

Once this mechanism of oppression is firmly in place, persecution and
elimination of political opponents follow. Then every social, political and
economic policy the Total State desires can be implemented.

This has happened in National Socialist states such as Nazi Germany, fascist
states such as Italy under Mussolini, and communist powers such as the former
Soviet Union (and its satellites behind the Iron Curtain) and Red China.

It is, therefore, astonishing and disturbing that Americans have been
assailed in the last several years by dangerous political proposals that
threaten the individual liberties our Founding Fathers bequeathed to us.

Several bills introduced in Congress last year, all of which could be
reintroduced in the new Congress, would have required that all “qualifying
firearms” in the hands of law-abiding citizens be registered. California
U.S. Sen. Dianne Feinstein’s bill (co-sponsored by Sen. Charles Schumer of
New York, Sen. Barbara Boxer of California and then-Sen. Frank Lautenberg of
New Jersey) also would have required that all persons be fingerprinted,
licensed with passport-size photographs and forced to reveal certain personal
information as conditions for licensure.

As the proposed measure itself elaborates, “It is in the national interest
and within the role of the federal government to ensure that the regulation
of firearms is uniform among the states, that law enforcement can quickly and
effectively trace firearms used in crime and that firearm owners know how to
use and safely store their firearms.”

Another such bill was one proposed by Sen. Jack Reed of Rhode Island, also
mandating gun owners to register their firearms (in essence, establishing a
national gun registry).

It would have treated handguns like machine guns, short-barreled shotguns,
grenades and other specialized weapons.

Gun owners would have one year to register all handguns. This would be
accomplished through a vigorous public campaign funded by the taxpayers, as
is done in Canada today.

The Canadian experience itself is instructive.

Lorne Gunter, in the Edmonton Journal (Oct. 13, 2000), reveals that the
Canadian Outreach program to register all gun owners is falling short. The
campaign not only has failed to register the expected 1.4 million gun owners
(only one-third, 486,000, has been complied), but it also has exceeded the
projected price tag.

“The latest estimates project the cost of the registry from December 1998
through March 2001 at $600 million, seven times the original estimate of $85
million,” Gunter wrote.

Americans, and now Canadians, have pointed out that rather than helping track
criminals and their guns as claimed, registration of firearms is dangerous to
the liberties of law-abiding citizens, and as we shall see, counterproductive
with respect to criminals.

REGISTRATION AND TYRANNY

Unbeknownst to many Americans, who have seen and experienced mostly the
goodness of America, gun registration is the gateway to civilian disarmament,
which often precedes genocide.

In the monumental book “Lethal Laws” we learn that authoritarian
governments that conducted genocide and mass killings of their own
populations first disarmed their citizens. The recipe for accomplishing this
goal was: demonizing of guns, registration, banning and confiscation and
finally total civilian disarmament.

Enslavement of the people then followed with limited resistance, as in Nazi
Germany, the Soviet Union, Red China, Cuba and other totalitarian regimes of
the 20th century.

When presented with these deadly chronicles and the perilous historic
sequence, Americans often opine that it cannot happen here. As to the dangers
of licensing of gun owners and registration of firearms, they frequently
retort, “If you don’t have anything to hide, then you don’t have anything to
fear!” Followed by, “I see nothing wrong with gun registration because we
have to do something; there are just too many guns out there that fall into
the wrong hands.”

These naive attitudes ignore the penchant of governments to accrue power at
the expense of the liberties of individuals.

Civilian disarmament is not only harmful to one’s freedom but also
counterproductive in achieving safety.

That has been further attested by University of Hawaii Professor R. J.
Rummel’s “Death by Government” (1994) and Stephane Courtois’ edited volume,
“The Black Book of Communism” (1999). These books make it clear that
authoritarianism and totalitarianism are dangerous to the health of humanity.
During the 20th century, more than 100 million people were killed by their
own governments bent on destroying liberty and building socialism and
collectivism.

I personally can testify that when Cubans lost their guns in 1959, they also
lost their ability to regain freedom. Thus today, Cubans on the other side of
the Florida Strait remain enslaved in what was supposed to have been the
dream of a socialist utopia, the ultimate Caribbean Worker’s Paradise. What
they ended up with was the nightmare of a police state in a communist island
prison.

Although with the new administration in Washington, registration may not be a
politically viable option, other freedom-eroding legislation remains a real
concern, particularly if hidden among the scores of bills passed by Congress
year after year. Americans must vigilantly protect their sacred liberties,
which are threatened, for example, by the closing of gun shows with
burdensome regulations, rationing lawful gun purchases, and banning the
importation of certain firearm accessories. Laws should be directed against
criminals and felons, and should be referred to as crime control rather than
gun control.

REGISTRATION AND THE LAW

Another fact Americans need to understand is that registration is directed at
law-abiding citizens, not criminals. Not only do convicted criminals by
definition fail to obey the law, but they are also constitutionally protected
against any registration requirement. In Haynes v. United States (1968), the
U.S. Supreme Court ruled that requiring registration by those who unlawfully
possess firearms amounts to a violation of the Fifth Amendment’s proscription
against forced self-incrimination. The court said that if someone
“realistically can expect that registration will substantially increase the
likelihood of his prosecution,” the registration requirement is
unconstitutional.

In short, with the historically crucial and potentially fatal issue of
progressive civilian disarmament, perhaps, we should once again summon the
words of the “Federal Farmer” (1788): “To preserve liberty, it is
essential that the whole body of the people always possess arms, and be
taught alike, especially when young, how to use them.”

Miguel A. Faria Jr., M.D., is the editor-in-chief of Medical Sentinel, the
journal of the Association of American Physicians and Surgeons, and author of
“Vandals at the Gates of Medicine: Historic Perspectives on the Battle Over
Health Care Reform” (1995) and “Medical Warrior: Fighting Corporate
Socialized Medicine” (1997).