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November 27th, 2007

Daily Pro-Gun Column Riddled with Holes

On the heels the Supreme Court’s decision to hear a gun rights case and a recent gun raffle by the College Libertarians, Michigan Daily columnist Mike Eber decided to showcase that liberals can like guns just as much as conservatives. Regardless of one’s position of the gun issue (full disclosure: I used to be part of the College Libertarians and helped to coordinate a similar gun raffle several years ago), Eber’s piece showcases a mixture of bombast and ideological rigidity that only detracts from any debate on the gun issue.

Eber begins with a lengthy attempt at reconciliation between his liberalism and his gun enthusiasm.

“I felt a bit alienated from other liberals. This experience has forced me to re-evaluate what it truly means to be a liberal,” states Eber about his experience with gun issues. While Eber quotes Ben Franklin and John Locke in his defense of gun rights as liberal, he does little to examine his alienation. Instead he presents political ideology as a with-us or against-us choice, where one only gets to liberal if one accepts every stricture passed down by pundits and party hardliners.

While Eber’s failure to challenge the false ideological dialectic that oversimplifies the political landscape is disappointing, it’s his jump to extreme cases in defense of gun rights that should disturb readers. In attempting to make the ‘guns a defense against bad governments’ argument, Eber jumps directly to Nazi Germany. He cites a law prohibiting Jews from owning guns and, well, leaves us to infer the implications of the policy. Sadly, the comment neglects to mention that some did take up arms, effacing the rise of Jewish partisans and uprisings such as the one in the Warsaw ghetto. People did violently resist that oppression. To simply state that a law made resistance impossible negates the argument that guns can be used to fight oppressive regimes.

From a cursory look at one of the world’s worst genocides, the column shifts to a glib examination of the 2000 elections. Eber tells liberals that John Locke told them they could take up arms when governments undertake “systematic abuse of its power.” Sure, liberals, or any group for that matter, could have taken up arms but was a disappointing election result (one where all the recounts agreed with the Court’s decision) really worth starting a violent coup over.

I have no problem advocating revolution if one is going to be honest about it. But doing that requires that one not say of the election that “Instead, liberals stood by willingly after the ruling, acting as if they had just lost a close football game.” That comparison may be more apropos than Eber would like to admit, given that the fact that the country did not erupt in bloodshed after the contested election hinted at the stability of the United States rather than a shift toward tyranny.

Sure Presidential elections are somewhat more important than the outcome of the UM-OSU game but the fact is that in a democracy we should react to both losses in much the same way: express our sadness for our candidates, figure out where we went wrong and how to improve, and redouble our efforts for the next time around. Going to DC, or Columbus, with loaded semi-automatics is not a showcase of right against oppression it’s the act of a lunatic.

Maybe all this election talk is Eber hoping to reclaim some of the credibility with liberals that he so exasperatingly fears his stance on guns will cost him rather than effectively showcase the best use of guns.

There are a number of valid claims to be made in defense of gun ownership from personal protection, to Constitutionality, and yes, ever as protection against government. Yet presenting glosses on fascism and calling for bloodshed because your party lost a really important “football game” does not make those claims well.

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