“Most systems taught today could not meet even basic combat training needs,” wrote Richard Loewenhagen in Mastering Kung Fu, “because they are more artistic expressions than scientific achievements of maximum efficiencies in a life-and-death reality. The real danger in this type of training is that it leads to the illusion of competence.”
This illusion of competence extends to the attitudes of certain “martial” artists when it comes to the reality of weapons. Few issues are as immediately polarizing as that of “gun control” – restricting (or allowing) private citizens’ access to firearms. Many countries in the world already severely limit possession of handguns and even long guns. The US, which has historically had a greater tradition of liberty and individualism than have other nations, stands almost alone in its relatively “liberal” gun laws. Translated from politically correct jargon, this means that in the US it is still possible in most states for a private citizen to own and perhaps carry the most effective tool for self-preservation: the handgun.
The contemporary martial artist cannot afford to ignore
modern weapons – nor fail to master their use.
Sweep aside any illusions, wishful thinking, and action movie fantasies you may have. We are going to be bluntly honest and realistic. There is no more effective individual self-defense tool than the firearm. That is an indisputable fact, borne out by various statistics but self-evident throughout history and in contemporary life. If you’re reading this going, “Oh, no it isn’t. The knife is more effective than the handgun because it doesn’t run out of ammunition,” or perhaps, “The stick is more effective than the handgun because it extends reach and allows non-lethal options,” or even, “Weapons put the practitioner at a disadvantage because he’ll fixate on the weapon,” then put this magazine down. You are too deluded to look at these issues objectively and your wishful thinking will eventually get you killed.
Before we continue, let’s talk about statistics for a moment. People who argue about “gun control” – a euphemism for civilian disarmament or firearms prohibition – love to cite statistics. The facts to which I’ll refer in this article come from the US Justice Department, various public studies from states like Texas and Florida, and the work of criminologists Gary Kleck and John Lott, who’ve conducted the most extensive studies of firearms and crime in the United States. I am citing these figures from memory. What I won’t address are the factually challenged “studies” of the gun control crowd – because with rare exceptions these statistics are fatally flawed in their methodologies. The NRA’s Institute for Legislative Action has done a good job of exposing such flaws, as does Richard Poe’s book The Seven Myths of Gun Control. If you feel the need for more figures, you can do your own homework – there’s plenty out there.
The well-trained martial artist owns a variety of weapons, including guns.
Let us continue, then, by framing this debate. If you are not educated and trained in the use of firearms, you are not qualified to have an opinion on gun control. You heard me correctly. There are a lot of self-righteous firearms prohibitionists out there who are completely and profoundly ignorant of the weapons on whose possession they presume to pontificate. They repeat foolish nonsense they read in gun control literature and see in movies as if they actually know what they’re discussing – all the while making fools of themselves as they breathlessly condemn non-existent “plastic guns,” fictional “cop-killer bullets,” and paradoxical “semi-automatic machineguns.”
Ignorance must dismiss from the gun control debate the uninformed citizen – for a thorough working understanding of firearms is necessary for rational discourse on them. Firearms columnist Jeff Cooper coined the term “hoplophobia” for the irrational fear of weapons. Hoplophobes are, almost without exception, ignorant of the uses, limitations, and realistic power of firearms. Their ignorance spawns fear through lack of understanding, but also hamstrings them in the gun control debate. Both parties to such a debate, in fact, are at a disadvantage, for how does one dispel fabrication held up as fact? Firearms advocates cannot easily discuss weapons with people who believe the fictional tenets of gun control mythology.
It is my firm belief that anyone who actually takes the time to learn firearms in earnest will convert to firearms advocacy – for understanding and realistic training will bring almost anyone around, showing all who engage in such training the utility of guns while dispelling any misconceptions and irrational fear they may possess. Don’t trot out for me former military combatants who now abhor guns; being a soldier in war and being an armed citizen in daily life are different things. The scions of the Left occasionally produce gun control advocates who claim to be gun owners and regular shooters, but these are rarely legitimate.
The only realistic defense against a world in which criminals
use force is superior force – and superior training.
That is one thing many people — who, at least academically, support “reasonable gun control” – do not realize and find hardest to believe: the fact that those who most actively campaign against firearms are spreading lies about these tools, either deliberately or through ignorance. Let’s run through a short list of gun mythology before we move on to the primary point of this article.
Myth: Guns Cause Crime
No, guns do not cause crime, any more than gardening equipment causes tomatoes. A gun is an inanimate object. Without a human being to operate it, a gun is a paperweight, possessing neither volition nor intent. The presence of a gun does not turn a previously rational individual into a bloodthirsty Rambophile bent on blowing away the neighbors.
Hoplophobes may counter that certain dangerous people are drawn to guns, or that guns bring out homicidal tendencies in some individuals. This is like asking, “Does Dungeons and Dragons cause people to lose touch with reality?” There will always be an unbalanced minority within society whose members are drawn to things with which they shouldn’t involves themselves. These are the same people who shouldn’t be driving cars, babysitting children, or preparing and serving food in restaurants. What you must ask yourself is whether you choose to treat all your fellow citizens as simply criminals who have not yet committed crimes. Do you view your fellow citizen’s freedom of action as a benefit to all within a free society – or as a threat that must be controlled? If you choose the latter, a free society is not for you. If you choose the latter, yours is the attitude that has buoyed history’s greatest tyrants.
Responsibility for individual action begins and ends with the individual. Guns really don’t kill people, as the old saying goes. This is because guns cannot DO anything. A gun cannot take action. It is a tool. Only the user of the tool can be held accountable for its use.
Myth: The United States’ Lack of Gun Control Leads to Higher Violent Crime Rates
Believers in this myth invariably point to places like Japan or the UK that have strict gun control and relatively low rates of violent crime. What these people fail to realize is that these countries had much lower rates of violent crime (compared to the US) BEFORE they implemented strict firearms prohibition. This is because their cultures are very different than ours.
There are countries such as Mexico and Columbia that have gun laws every bit as strict as those in Japan or the UK, but in which shooting crimes are rampant. In the US, we have stricter gun control than ever before in our nation’s history, but our rates of violent crime are much higher than they were when firearms were virtually freely accessible to all – while proportionate levels of firearms ownership have remained stable.
Violence is culturally determined. What is culture? It is the context in which individuals take individual action. Culture is not an external force, no – but its influence is felt in the ways in which individuals take their decisions. Cross-cultural comparisons of violent crime, then, must focus on individuals’ willingness to take violent action – rather than on the availability of weapons. If we could magically erase all firearms from existence tomorrow, I guarantee that violent crimes would still be committed – and that individuals within certain cultures would be more comfortable with violence than those from other cultures.
Myth: The Second Amendment is About Militias, Not Private Citizens
The Second Amendment to the United States Constitution states, “A well regulated militia, being necessary to the security of a free state, the right of the people to keep and bear arms, shall not be infringed.” Like all the rights protected by the Bill of Rights, the right to keep and bear arms is an individual right. There is no such thing as a “collective right,” for only mortal individuals can be said to possess rights at all.
The Founding Fathers envisioned a society without a standing army in which all citizens were armed – in part for individual defense and in part for defense of the nation. They wrote at length about their feelings on individual firearms ownership, calling guns “liberty teeth” and regarding the possession of arms as a means of maintaining the Enlightenment society they were building. Regardless of the decline in the “militia” in later years, the intent and meaning of the Second Amendment is clear to anyone who understands English. The Federal Government cannot legally infringe on the right to keep and bear arms, because this is explicitly forbidden in the Second Amendment – regardless of the justification or rationale for the amendment’s placement in the Bill of Rights.
While we’re on the topic, let’s also recognize another important fact. The Constitution is NOT a “living document.” Yes, provision has been made to change it, but to call it a “living document” implies that it can be reinterpreted at whim to change its restrictions and protections. This is utterly false. If this was true, there would be no need for a Constitution at all, for majority rule would determine what we believed at any given moment and protections on the rights of the minority in the face of the majority’s desires would be meaningless.
If you wish to ban guns, you must repeal the Second Amendment. There is no other way to do so legally.
Myth: Guns Today Are Too Powerful
Firearms technology has not actually progressed much for some time. One of the most popular handgun designs today, the 1911-pattern .45 pistol, was introduced almost a hundred years ago. Most of the ammunition types popular today were available a century past, too.
“Assault rifles” are, by definition, select-fire military weapons capable of fully automatic fire. No citizen in the US may easily own such weapons, despite what you have heard in the news or on television. The “assault weapons” banned in the 1990s and since are semi-automatic civilian versions of these military rifles, cosmetically similar but incapable of automatic fire. If you think “semi-automatic” is synonymous with “machine gun,” you are an ignorant tool of the prohibitionists and unqualified to have an opinion on gun control. (“Semi-automatic” means that for each time the trigger is pulled, one bullet is launched from the weapon.)
The MAK90 pictured is NOT an “assault rifle,” by definition.
The cartridges fired by civilian weapons that look like “assault rifles” are also quite weak. The assault rifle concept was pioneered by the Germans and taken up by the Soviets and Americans after World War II. The idea was that, because studies indicated that combat takes place at relatively short distances, ammunition need not be very powerful. Rather than equipping soldiers with big-bore battle rifles capable of long distance shooting, modern armies could equip soldiers with rifles that fired lighter, shorter-distance ammunition. The soldiers could thus carry more ammunition with them.
The average “assault rifle” is pitifully underpowered compared to the average hunting rifle. The M16-series rifle used by the United States fires a .223 round that is essentially a glorified varmint cartridge – a .22 bullet sitting on top of a lot of propellant. The Soviet AK47 7.62 x 39 cartridge is slower and heavier, but the Soviets switched to an even lighter round for the AK74.
In all cases, “assault rifles” have been demonized to be something they are not. They are not super-powerful portable death machines. They have also never been the “weapon of choice of criminals,” who prefer weapons that are less expensive and easier to conceal.
The technology for firearms, while we’re talking about it, does not come from space aliens. Anyone with access to a machine shop can manufacture an expedient firearm – and a fully automatic weapon is easier to produce than a semi-automatic weapon. Ammunition is harder to create “from scratch,” but still not terribly difficult.
Firearms are not much more powerful than they were when the Second Amendment was written (though they are considerably more reliable).
Myth: Guns are the Tools of Criminals or Weaklings
It’s true that criminals misuse guns. However, law-abiding owners of guns – those private citizens who follow the law and own their guns legally – are among the most responsible members of society. They commit crime at much lower rates than the population at large, are more likely to vote and to be employed, and tend to be morally conservative.
Of the millions of firearms in the United States, only a very small percentage will be used in crimes in a given year. Most guns used in crimes are stolen or smuggled rather than purchased legally by the end-user. Most crimes committed with guns are committed by members of the same small minority of recidivist criminals.
We do not have a gun control problem in the United States – we have a crime control problem, thanks to a “justice” system that continually releases violent criminals back into society.
Some hoplophobes like to claim that gun owners are Freudian malcontents compensating for small genitalia, or perhaps paranoid, or maybe woefully under-confident in their martial skills. These are all intellectually bankrupt insults and nothing more. The gun owner is not arrogant enough to believe he or she can control every situation, nor foolish enough to dismiss the most powerful individual self-defense tool ever invented. If any parties to the debate suffer from mental issues, it is the firearms prohibitionists – who act out of ignorant fear rather than rational consideration of the issue.
Myth: Guns Aren’t Safe
Hoplophobes who shriek that firearms are inherently dangerous are acting out of fear rather than reason. A firearm in good working order won’t shoot unless you pull the trigger. That’s a fact. If you don’t know what you are doing, no, you shouldn’t be handling a gun – but that gun cannot hurt you without your help.
Recently a child accidentally shot another child while the two were fooling about with an unsecured firearm. The news reported that the gun “somehow went off.” Well, I’ll tell you right now, that gun did not “somehow go off.” That gun went off because the person handling it PULLED THE TRIGGER.
Invariably we are treated to horror stories about children finding their parents’ guns. One of the most evil firearms prohibitionist commercials I ever saw actually showed teenagers how to guess combinations their parents might use for their gun safes. The fact is, though, that the majority of gun owners are responsible and store their guns safely. My father, for example, kept his handguns in a safe with an electronic lock. I never knew the combination – and I never will.
There is no lock and there is no containment device that can override human stupidity. Most law-abiding gun owners are NOT stupid, no matter what prohibitionist politicians would have you believe.
Myth: Your Gun Will Be Taken Away From You
This happens in less than one percent of all firearms defense scenarios. Those who use firearms are much more likely to successfully defend themselves than those who do not – and much more likely to do so without being injured.
FACT: Anyone Can Get a Gun and Use It
It is very true that anyone, with very little training, can obtain a firearm and use it. How, then, does making guns illegal make us safer? Denying firearms to only the people who choose to follow the law makes all law-abiding citizens less safe while empowering criminals. I guarantee that passing a law will not make guns go away – for we have laws against drugs that do absolutely nothing to keep drugs out of the United States while creating enormous profits for those willing to break the law and use violence as part of the drug trade.
A lot of martial artists resent the fact that someone without training can simply shoot a dedicated practitioner with years of effort behind him. Well, get over it. You have no choice but to master all the tools of force, including firearms. You must then to combine that training with awareness and apply it to life. Any punk can hit you from behind with a bottle or a two-by-four, too – but will you let that stop you from training?
FACT: Guns Can’t Help You In Some Situations
While it’s a myth that guns “are useless for self-defense,” as some ignorant hoplophobes opine, guns really can’t help you in all cases. “What if someone hits you from behind with a bottle?” the question sometimes goes. The answer is, “You lose.”
A gun isn’t a magic wand. A gun is a tool that must be combined with training and awareness to be effective.
Debunking firearms myths could go on forever, but we’ve hit the most salient points. This brings us to the primary purpose of this article and the thesis that inspired it:
Martial artists who support gun control aren’t “martial” artists at all.
The martial arts aren’t about fitness, spiritual development, building confidence, or any of a thousand other ancillary benefits. The martial arts are about force. If your art cannot be used to deliver force effectively and efficiently, what you practice is not a martial art at all. It is some other art entirely. If your art cannot be used to defend your person and your family, it is not martial and it never will be.
Learning to punch is fairly useless unless you also learn to shoot.
Too many “martial” artists lose sight of this, believing in bizarre, self-destructive, unrealistic tenets of alleged self-defense. They believe they should “respect the attacker,” placing themselves at an immediate disadvantage in the face of those willing to hurt or kill without justification. They might, in their arrogance and fantasies, believe they will “control the situation” – betraying a monumental ignorance of the risks and unpredictability of real violence. These artists have forgotten the martial purpose of their training – and thus they fail to grasp the concept of self-defense.
Matthew Woodring Stover (author of Heroes Die) summed up the concept of viable, effective, efficient self-defense in a single sentence. “Attack, attack, attack – come at your target from every possible direction and press until his defenses overload. Never give him time to recover his balance: never give him time to counter.” For those of you who still do not understand, I will elaborate: No one has the right to hurt you without justification. No one has the right to initiate force against you. No one has the right to expect YOU to assume the risk of harm in defending against initiated force. As such, the man or woman who uses force against you assumes the moral risk of harm by choosing to hurt you first.
How is this relevant to guns? The handgun is the most effective tool for individual self-defense. Using a handgun, a physically weaker defender can prevail against multiple attackers and do so with less risk of incurring physical damage. The gun has real power – more power than the knife, the club, and every other individual weapon.
A martial art is a means of delivering force for self-defense. Martial artists train to be able to accomplish this – to use force to preempt or resolve the initiation of force. If those same martial artists then denied themselves (and others) the use of the most powerful tools for accomplishing that goal, they would be worse than fools; they would be delusional and ultimately self-destructive.
My point is this: You cannot claim to believe in self-defense while simultaneously fearing and seeking to ban the most effective means of self-defense.
“Martial” artists who believe they are training to defend themselves while advocating gun control are living in worlds of fantasy. They do not wish to confront that which they fear and do not understand, so they hope to make these things go away. In so doing, they reveal their failure to grasp the concept of self-defense. They reveal their failure to accept reality.
To be effective, self-defense methods must be based on reality. There can be no self-defense – there can be no martial art – where reality is not recognized and where fantasy is substituted for fact.
If you have not trained with firearms, you are uninformed and your opinion on “gun control” is pontification from ignorance. If you claim to believe in self-defense but you fear guns and seek their prohibition, you do not grasp the concept of self-defense at all. If you train in a martial art but support “gun control,” you are not a MARTIAL artist.
You are, in fact, part of the problem of violence, rather than part of its solution.