Out of the Barrel of a Gun - an evening with Professor Self

My debate against Professor Will Self on the subject of ‘gun control’ was both frustrating and satisfying. (As he is  Professor of Contemporary Thought at Brunel University, perhaps I should be appointed Professor of Non-Contemporary Thought at the University of Fleet Street, where I have been doing a remedial course for the past 36 years).

 

It was frustrating because the format made it difficult for either of us to engage directly. Google, no doubt, wants its funky ‘hangouts’ and other web interventions in these debates, but there really is no substitute for being present in the flesh. The two other main participants, both in the USA,  did not stick to what I had been told was their main aim- which was to question Professor Self and me in an adversarial manner. They just prosed on , on their own account. There was no real point in the Professor or I standing at the lectern while that went on.

 

It was rewarding because Professor Self was actually rather tentative, did not take the cliché-strewn path of the standard liberal, took the argument seriously and scrupulously avoided demagogy or appeals to the emotions. I could have dealt with the cliches if he had decided to use them, but it was largely thanks to his restraint and responsibility that I was able to make a serious case rather than just defend my position against propaganda and violins.

 

I was only sorry that we didn’t have time to examine his curious contention that the state had some legal claim to possess a monopoly of violence. I should have thought that in a free country, the state , embodying the people, would share that ‘monopoly’ with the people ( as happens in Switzerland). So it wouldn’t then be a monopoly. It does strike me that the two countries on earth with the greatest respect for freedom, the USA and Switzerland, have the most relaxed gun laws. Britain, when it had more respect for liberty, also had relaxed gun laws. And the 1920 restrictions which led to our current disarmed state were, without doubt, enacted because the executive had come to fear the people. The 1920 Firearms Act could never have got through Parliament in pre-1914 Britain.

 

My case was not for an American-style position. It was for the much older English Bill of Rights and Common Law position, which entitled free British people (Scotland has its own, similar but not identical, Claim of Right) to own arms for their defence (there’s nothing about a militia in *our* Bill of Rights, or in Blackstone.

 

Also I thought that the two crucial points – that banning guns by law does not take them out of the hands of criminals, and that criminals ought not to be able to assume that their victims are disarmed – were for once given a reasonable airing.

 

I find many anti-gun liberals are rendered quite thoughtful by the figures about ‘hot’ burglaries (burglaries of homes which are occupied at the time). These are a much smaller proportion of burglaries as a whole in the USA than they are in Britain, and they are virtually unknown in some US States which have positive laws supporting ‘defence of habitation’. Criminals simply assume that the householder will be armed, and stay away.

 

I was only sorry I couldn’t mention the ‘Second Amendment Sisters’, an organisation of feminists, with chapters in many of the United States,  who argue for gun ownership as a protection against assault and rape. The idea of a British militant feminist carrying a gun is so unlikely that it is almost comical, and this illustrates one of the deep differences between our societies.

 

I stick to the analogy with cars. I would argue that the freedom to possess a gun, for a law-abiding adult, can fulfil a purpose. Even if he or she never owns a gun, the criminal’s fear that he does own one may well prevent or deter many crimes. To withdraw that freedom is also a demonstration of mistrust between states and individual, and a withdrawal of the presumption of innocence on which all justice depends.

 

Privately-owned cars, on the other hand, perform no function which could not be performed in some other way, in most cases more healthily, more quietly and more cleanly.

 

Yet, while we unprotestingly accept the accidental carnage caused by cars, especially when under the control of young men, we use the accidental abuse of guns (also usually by the young) as an absolute argument against free gun ownership by law-abiding adults.

 

Readers may not know that (as far as I could find out) the voting in the auditorium quite closely reflected the voting online. What this might mean, I do not know. It is interesting, though.