Days of Change

Unarmed

The killing of a Bosnian man by hammer-wielding criminals made me wonder what the reaction would have been if that man had a gun and used it to kill the assailants. Would he be accused of racism? Would the murders have been described as “unarmed” like Michael Brown? The possibility of preemptive Second Amendment remedies reminded me of the case of Bernhard Goetz.

Just a few weeks shy of 30 years ago, Goetz shot 4 black teens (killing none, but paralyzing one) on a New York City Subway. I looked up a story about him on The Daily Beast from least year during the height of Trayvon Martin hysteria. They didn’t mention the screwdrivers.

The shooting victims in the Subway were found to have screwdrivers. They may or may not have been sharpened, but they were apparently never brandished as weapons. Their claim is that the screwdrivers were to be used for breaking into arcade games. Then again, while New York was doing a terrible job stopping crime, they were almost obsessed with keeping guns from citizens. A screwdriver would make a handy stabbing device without proving criminal intent if they were stopped on the street.

Guns are an equalizer. Sure, criminals can carry guns, but a group of criminals can be lethal with hand tools against a single individual. However, that single individual with a gun can have a fighting chance against a group of assailants.

It’s a form of democracy that was important enough to make the Second Amendment to the Constitution. While gun violence will decrease with the elimination of guns, general violence would not and it would get closer to home. The right to bear arms gives people autonomy from nature, criminality and, if necessary, authoritarian government. For a population to be subdued, guns must become hated.