Gun ownership is a right?

DIE HARD III

Herman Tiu Laurel

1/7/2013

Daily Tribune

Are the guns used in the Cavite massacre and the New Year's Eve "to whom it may concern" celebratory gunfire killing of Stephanie Nicole Ella registered or unregistered firearms? In the Cavite case, it should be easy by now for the authorities to announce the legal status of the firearm since the pinpointed gunman who was shot dead after the rampage was quickly identified, with his firearm purportedly recovered by the police.

In the stray bullet shooting case, the slug that killed young Nicole has also been in police possession and one would assume that forensics is being applied on it.
However, scanning as many news reports of both cases, I am perplexed to find no mention yet of whether the guns used in the two cases are registered or unregistered; whether these are regular branded firearms or paltik. If these were unregistered or paltiks, then the real issue is failure of enforcement by the authorities. The defense of legalized gun ownership advocates is that banning legal gun possession by citizens would result in only criminals or potential crazies owning guns; leaving honest, law abiding, peaceful citizens defenseless when under threat from these elements.

It is likely that there would have been fewer casualties in the Cavite rampage if there had been citizens with arms right there at the scene to defend the community even before the police arrived. Against the "to whom it may concern" shooters, such as in the case of Nicole, there is no defense except community conscientiousness and vigilance in restraining drunkards and irresponsible, crazed revelers from firing guns randomly into the air without a thought for the random reentry of the bullets to the heads of human beings.

The gun ban controversy was still raging in the US when the Philippines found itself in a similar situation. The Sandy Hook massacre of 20 tots and six teachers by an Asperger-stricken young man spurred anti-gun citizens and US politicians into a frenzy of initiatives to amend or repeal the "second amendment" to their Constitution guaranteeing citizens "the right to bear arms."

The historical experience and principle behind that Constitution's second amendment is the deep distrust of governmental authority, emanating from that country's experience with British colonialism and oppression, a powerful argument which the gun advocates have raised again. Thus, despite the wave of strong anti-gun sentiments, which even Obama openly supports, second amendment advocates are fighting back with cogent arguments.

Anonymous Coward posted an article that spread on the Internet, entitled, "Why Americans must NEVER relinquish their weapons!!! DEMOCIDE WILL be the result," with "Democide" now added to my lexicon as the "genocide of a people and democracy." The article provides a list of historical "Democides," a few of which we quote here: "1911 — Government in Turkey disarmed its citizens, and between 1915–1917 murdered 1.5 million Armenians; 1938 — Government in Germany disarmed its citizens, and between 1939-1945 murdered 16 million Jews, Hungarian Gypsies, mentally disabled, physically disabled; 1956 — Government in Cambodia disarmed its citizens, and between 1975-1977 murdered 1 million educated people, identified as those wearing glasses; over 2000 Australians were SWAT-teamed since their government hijacked the country and took their guns."

In my own discussion with colleagues, I added the cases of Indonesia where 800,000 unarmed peasants, many Indonesians of Chinese descent, were massacred by the Indonesian military under Suharto; and Rwanda where Hutus massacred a million defenseless Tutsi men, women, and children mostly with machetes. The argument can precisely be made that firearms possession in the homes of the Hutus, for instance, could have equalized the fight for the weak.

There are many "do gooders" in Philippine society who have a "shoot from the hip" to citizens' right to own firearms for self-defense. Among the gun-control measures gathering dust in Congress is the proposed Citizen's Protection Act of 2010 filed by pro-life groups and signed by 86 Roman Catholic bishops, along with Aquilino Pimentel Jr. and Wigberto Tañada, who had said, "Possession by civilians or private persons of such deadly weapons is not a matter of right…"

It is my belief that the citizen's right to possess arms is a right because of the inherent right to "life and liberty." It is just too easy to succumb to the anti-citizens' gun right hysteria over the multiple killings of 26 in Sandy Hook and of eight in Kawit, Cavite; or the 77 killed by Anders Breivik in Norway. In these cases, scores needlessly died but, when citizens are defenseless, millions can even die from organized armed forces.

Just think about it: One of the worst massacres of innocent civilians in Philippine annals, the Ampatuan Massacre, may have turned out very differently if some of the journalists in the entourage had been armed.

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