Official: We can't be trusted
By PAUL JENKINS
C.S. Lewis, noted novelist, literary critic, lay theologian and essayist, was one sharp cookie when it came to the human condition.
He wrote: “Of all tyrannies, a tyranny exercised for the good of its victims may be the most oppressive. It may be better to live under robber barons than under omnipotent moral busybodies. The robber baron's cruelty may sometimes sleep, his cupidity may at some point be satiated; but those who torment us for our own good will torment us without end, for they do so with the approval of their own conscience."
Too many times nowadays, we see that he is right.
A news story in the Anchorage Daily News that Alaska can expect more than 2 million visitors to its national parks this summer tut-tutted that changes in federal law frees you and me, if we legally are allowed to possess firearms under federal, state and local law, to carry a loaded firearm in most of the country's national parks.
It is, Lord have mercy on us, the end of the world for “bear, beaver, and other critters worth cash money when skinned,” especially here in the Frozen North where we have 15 national parks - 10 allowed firearms and hunting before the law - covering 54 million acres. At least that is what some of the more excitable among us appear to think.
Allison Banks, a spokeswoman at Glacier Bay National Park, a park that did allow firearms before the new law, worries that some gun-toting visitors might just be morons. "You might have people shooting at trees, rocks, mountain goats, just to do some target practice," she was quoted as saying in the Associated Press story.
And, if I may be so bold, you might not. The history of the battle to secure rights guaranteed in the Second Amendment of the Constitution are replete with examples of officialdom, here and across the country, telling whoppers and fretting that those who carry guns are mostly irresponsible killers just looking for the chance to drill somebody - anybody - and right now. Just give them an excuse.
Every lame argument, from the old saw that those with concealed weapons would be involved daily in shooting scrapes at intersections to the more-guns-means-more-danger argument, has been trotted out to deny Americans their rights. Those folks include politicians, pundits and even the upper ranks of police, who really should know better.
“Allowing concealed weapons isn't necessary for self-protection, but it does create new dangers,” the local paper said in 1994 as Alaskans were fighting to secure the right to carry. “The more guns in public circulation, the more opportunity criminals have to steal them. The more guns in easy reach, the greater the chance that momentary passions will translate into deadly incidents. Conflict that might otherwise produce only an exchange of words or a fistfight can easily become fatal.”
Or this, from its metro columnist at the time and now state Rep. Mike Doogan: “All this is going to do is get more people shot, civilians as well as cops. Do we suppose it will be the most mature and reliable segment of the population that will want to pack heat? Nope, it'll be men in the low-self-control, high-crime years, like the guys who turn the road signs into Swiss cheese.”
All that, as we have come to know over the years, is poppycock.
Now, faced with weapons in National Parks we get this: "You might have people shooting at trees, rocks, mountain goats, just to do some target practice."
It is increasingly difficult to place much faith or trust in officials, elected or appointed or hired, who have so little faith in the people who pay their salaries; officials who so strongly believe the worst in us, that they will deny our rights, for our own good.
Lewis was right: “It may be better to live under robber barons than under omnipotent moral busybodies. The robber baron's cruelty may sometimes sleep, his cupidity may at some point be satiated; but those who torment us for our own good will torment us without end, for they do so with the approval of their own conscience."
Amen.
Paul Jenkins is editor of the Anchorage Daily Planet. Published March 8, 2010
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