96 lines
6.5 KiB
Plaintext
96 lines
6.5 KiB
Plaintext
Armed children
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<p>The Bear of Considerable Brain, <a href="http://www.truthlaidbear.com/weblogaction/archives/001455.html">writes</a>:<br />
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“This does not mean every man, woman and child should roam the streets<br />
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packing heat, much as some of my more rabid hoplophile colleagues in<br />
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the Blogosphere might enjoy the sight.”</p>
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<p>N.Z. was probably thinking of me as one of his “rabid hoplophile<br />
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colleagues.”; I’d be rather disappointed if he weren’t, actually. I<br />
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endorse all his good sense about citizen miltias and the necessity of<br />
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a decentralized response to decentralized threats; in fact, I wrote an<br />
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<a href="http://esr.ibiblio.org/index.php?m=200309#63">essay</a><br />
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on that topic the day of the WTC attack. Establishing it as normal<br />
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custom that adults go armed strikes me as an excellent idea, and<br />
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not merely as a tactic against terrorism and crime either. “The possession<br />
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of arms is the distinction between a freeman and a slave.”</p>
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<p>I was originally going to respond to His Ursinity’s remark by<br />
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tossing off some denial that I contemplate universally arming children<br />
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as a response to terrorism. But I’ve decided it would be more<br />
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interesting to attack the question from the opposite side: under what<br />
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circumstances should children be armed?</p>
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<p>If your answer is “Never!” than consider that this is actually<br />
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quite a radical position. In large parts of the U.S., rather young<br />
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children have and use BB rifles. In much of rural America,<br />
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including most of my own state of Pennsylvania, boys learn to hunt<br />
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early, and to accept both the weapons and responsibilities of men<br />
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when barely into their teens.</p>
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<p>The bloody slaughters nervous urban liberals would expect from this<br />
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policy somehow never materialize. Kliebold and Harris, the Columbine<br />
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shooters, were the exception that demonstrates the rule; they were<br />
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<em>not</em> taught to use firearms within approved contexts by their<br />
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parents and other adults, but instead devedloped a pathological,<br />
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isolated relationship to weapons that mirrored their pathological,<br />
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isolated lives. Their victims were not killed by the rural gun<br />
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culture, but by its absence.</p>
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<p>So part of our answer is this: children should be armed, at least<br />
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part of the time when in company with responsible adults, in order<br />
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to prepare them for the responsibility of arming themselves as adults<br />
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and participating in civilian defense against terrorism and crime.</p>
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<p>The next logical question is: under what circumstances should<br />
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children be trusted to carry weapons for self-defense <em>without</em><br />
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direct adult supervision? Again, “Never!” would be a radical and<br />
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historically exceptional answer. It would also be unfair to the<br />
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children, especially poor children who live in areas where the chance<br />
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of encountering criminal or terrorist predators is significant.</p>
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<p>It’s worth bearing in mind that most decisions about using a<br />
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firearm in self-defense are pretty simple. They don’t tend to involve<br />
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complicated ethical abstractions — the relevant question is<br />
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usually “Am I or a defenseless person I am responsible for in imminent<br />
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danger of being assaulted, abducted or killed?” If the answer is no,<br />
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you don’t even draw your weapon.</p>
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<p>Of course, the capacity to make those judgments varies from child<br />
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to child. I have known intelligent, precocious children as young as<br />
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eight years old who I would sooner trust with my .45 than, say, an<br />
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adult alcoholic with an impulse-control problem. In fact, I wouldn’t<br />
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consider most adult pro-gun-control voters as trustworthy as the<br />
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children I have in mind; people who project fear of their own behavior<br />
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with weapons onto others make that spot between my shoulderblades<br />
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itch.</p>
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<p>At the other extreme, it’s pretty obvious that pre-verbal children<br />
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don’t have the apparatus to make even the simplest ethical decisions<br />
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about lethal force. They don’t know enough about the world yet. The<br />
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standard models of childhood development tell me the same thing as my<br />
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experience of real kids; the on average, possibility of ethical<br />
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competence sufficient for self-defense decisions opens up at around<br />
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twelve years old. It is not invariably present at that age, but the<br />
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possibility deserves to be taken seriously.</p>
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<p>I can say this. If a person who is legally a minor but twelve or<br />
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over shows signs of continuing responsibility (including either<br />
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holding down a job or applying him/herself to make steady grades in<br />
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school), and does not have a history of substance abuse or other<br />
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self-destructive or criminal behavior, and <em>wants</em> to accept<br />
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the responsibility of going armed — then I think custom should<br />
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support that.</p>
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<p>Finally, I want to point out that we may be doing children no favor<br />
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by `protecting’ them from the decisions that go with bearing arms.<br />
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Thomas Jefferson once wrote to his teenage nephew as follows:</p>
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<blockquote><p>
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“As to the species of exercise, I advise the gun. While this gives [only]<br />
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moderate exercise to the body, it gives boldness, enterprise, and independence<br />
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to the mind. Games played with the ball and others of that nature, are too<br />
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violent for the body and stamp no character on the mind. Let your gun,<br />
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therefore, be the constant companion to your walks.”
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</p></blockquote>
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<p>This was no aberration. I have developed <a href="http://www.catb.org/~esr/guns/gun-ethics.html">elsewhere</a><br />
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the theme that the practice of bearing arms was not important to the<br />
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Founding Fathers merely as a counter against crime and overweening<br />
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government, but as a school of moral character in the individual<br />
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citizen.</p>
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<p>The retreat of American gun culture from our cities and suburbs has<br />
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coincided with the the fetishization of adolescence and<br />
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the infantilization of our entire society. To reverse that trend, we<br />
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need to remember the ways we used to use to encourage people to<br />
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acquire self-discipline, character, and maturity. One of those ways<br />
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was — and in large parts of the U.S., still is — the<br />
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healthy use of lethal weapons.</p>
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<p><a href="http://enetation.co.uk/comments.php?user=esr&commentid=83850549">Blogspot comments</a></p>
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