The Samurai, the Mountie, and the Cowboy

by David B. Kopel, Prometheus Books, 1992 (470 pgs)

This great book, subtitled Should America Adopt the Gun Controls of Other Democracies?, rationally and fairly looks at arguments from both sides of the American gun control debate. It is a well-researched, scholarly work with an index and hundreds of notations. Mister Kopel examines, in great detail, the history and current implementation of gun control laws in seven countries (Japan, Great Britain, Canada, Australia, New Zealand, Jamaica, and Switzerland), offering commentary when appropriate.

Unlike many other books on this subject, not only is everything backed up with references, but the facts are simply presented in a calm, sober, and intelligent manner. He neither states that, "the guvmint kin pry my gun from my cold dead fingers!," nor that "all guns should be melted into slag, violent movies should be outlawed, and magazines with pictures of guns should be burned!"— as you might well know, more than half of the literature available on the subject of "gun rights vs gun prohibition" has been penned by zealots. Very few writings have been by rational moderates willing to concede to a reasonable compromise on gun control. This book was a refreshing change.

We were impressed by this book on many different levels, and strongly recommend that you read it. Several significant excerpts follow, which will give you an idea of this book’s tone and content.

"New Zealand promotes gun safety by promoting responsible gun use, but other nations take the opposite approach. A government researcher in Western Australia concluded that firearms safety classes in high schools might reduce injuries. Nevertheless, the researcher opposed the idea because classes might encourage an interest in firearms, and because instructors might suggest it was legitimate to own firearms.

Unlike the New Zealand Mountain Safety Council, America’s National Rifle Association s not subsidized by the government. The NRA does follow the New Zealand lead, though, by publishing a gun safety comic book. The NRA’s "Eddie Eagle" comic might be considered less controversial than New Zealand’s "Billy Hook," since Billy Hook endorses childhood gun use, while Eddie Eagle does not even endorse adult gun ownership. The message of the NRA’s comic is simply, "No. Go. Tell." Don’t touch an unattended gun, leave the area, and tell an adult. The comic’s only statement that could be construed as pro-gun is, "You should be around guns only if an adult is present."

Although Eddie Eagle could not have a blander message, and although the comic is recommended by the National Association of Chiefs of Police, and the Police Athletic League, the NRA comic has aroused intense opposition. Many school districts have refused to accept free copies. Some districts have substituted alternate "gun safety" programs in which gun control advocates tell children to urge their parents to dispose of all guns, and to report to the police illegal guns owned by their parents.

While New Zealand and Billy Hook have reached a state of equilibrium — moderate gun controls and promotion of sporting-gun use by children — America enjoys no such tranquility. The American debate is polarized between opponents of all regulation, and people who vehemently object to the slightest implication in a comic book that some adults legitimately own guns." (pp. 242-243)

"In the real public health context, gun control is not simply an irrelevancy. Gun control is an active political obstacle to better public health. Criminologist Gary Kleck summarizes: "Fixating on guns seems to be, for many people, a fetish which allows them to ignore the more intransigent causes of American violence, including its dying cities, inequality, deteriorating family structure, and the all-pervasive economic and social consequences of a history of slavery and racism . . . All parties to the crime debate would do well to give more concentrated attention to more difficult, but far more relevant, issues like how to generate more good-paying jobs for the underclass, an issue which is at the heart of the violence problem." Gun control distracts the public and the legislature from the more difficult tasks of taking better care of the mentally ill, of confronting the culture of poverty, and of imprisoning violent criminals for lengthy terms." (p. 391)

"The basic cause of crime is not guns, but the uncontrolled American character. As Charles Siberman writes: "American crime is an outgrowth of the greatest strengths and virtues of American society — its openness, its ethos of equality, its heterogeneity — as well as its greatest vices, such as the long heritage of racial violence and oppression." Indeed, racial and economic inequality, when combined with an ethic that stated that all Americans are created equal, was bound to have explosive results.

America suffers so much crime because it has so little social control. If one social pathology typifies the problems behind America’s high crime rate, it is not gun ownership, but the extremely high rate of teenage illegitimate births — even though (or because?) most industrial European nations are more tolerant of teenage sexual activity. America has been out of control for many years, and may always be." (p. 411)

"A great many domestic homicides involve some self-defense. As was noted in chapter 7, 75 percent of Detroit wives who shot and killed their husbands were not prosecuted, because the wives were legally defending themselves or their children against criminal assault. The rate is comparable in other cities. Indeed, abused wives commit roughly 50 percent of interspousal homicides, and the huge majority of interspousal homicides involving a firearm are perpetrated by wives. When a gun is fired (or brandished) for legal self-defense in a home, the criminal attacker may well be a relative or acquaintance perpetrating aggravated assault, rather than a total stranger committing a burglary.

Even when a gun is fired unlawfully in a domestic situation, the victim may well be a criminal. According to the Southern California Coalition on Battered Women, 63 percent of the boys aged twelve to sixteen who are incarcerated for homicide in California killed a man who was or had been violently abusing them, their siblings, or their mothers. Feminist attorney Cynthia Gillespie suggests that many cases where women shoot husbands or ex-boyfriends and are convicted of a crime are really genuine self-defense. She contends that the legal rules for self-defense, which were written for a context of a fist-fight between men of equal strength, are inappropriately applied to battered women. She also observes that while women are often blamed for failing to leave an abusive relationship, an attempt to leave often precipitates a homicidal act by the male." (p. 417)

"On August 29, 1588, he announced "the Sword Hunt" and banned possession of swords and firearms by anyone other than the noble classes. He decreed: "The people in the various provinces are strictly forbidden to have in their possession any swords, short swords, bows, spears, firearms, or other arms. The possession of unnecessary implements makes difficult the collection of taxes and tends to foment uprisings . . . Therefore the heads of provinces, official agents, and deputies are ordered to collect all the weapons mentioned above and turn them over to the government." (emphasis added)

Although the intent of Hideyoshi’s decree was plain, the Sword Hunt was presented to the masses under the pretext that all the swords would be melted down to supply bolts and nails for a huge statue of the Buddha. The statue would’ve been twice the size of the Statue of Liberty. The Western missionaries’ Jesuit Annual Letter reported that Hideyoshi "is depriving the people of their arms under the pretext of devotion to religion." Once the swords and guns were collected, Hideyoshi had them melted into a statue of himself. Historian Stephen Turnbull writes: "Hideyoshi’s resouces were such that the edict was carried out to the letter. The growing social mobility of peasants was thus flung suddenly into reverse. The ikki, the warrior-monks, became figures of the past . . . Hideyoshi had deprived the peasants of their weapons. Ieyasu [the next ruler] now began to deprive them of their self-respect. If a peasant offended a samurai he might be cut down on the spot by the samurai’s sword." The inferior status of the peasantry having been affirmed by civil disarmament, the samurai enjoyed kiri-sute gomen, permission to kill and depart. Any disrespectful member of the lower class could be executed by a samurai’s sword." (pp. 29-30)

Although this book is rather long, and Mister Kopel seems fond of using "fifty-cent words," it is easy to read, informative, and interesting. It is also a hell of a lot more relevant to current events than 90 percent of what is being taught in the average high school social studies class. Your education cannot be complete without having read this book. Highly recommended.