Celebrating New Orleans’ Gun Owners
September 2, 2005 · By Peter Rempel
The tangible aftermath of Katrina in the forms of flooding and damage to infrastructure was bad enough, but nothing could have prepared me for the human aftermath. And I don’t mean the human suffering and loss of life, I mean the rioting and looting that has now essentially transformed New Orleans into a state of nature.
It defies description. With cops all but cut off from the outside world, officers have either given up or are engaging in looting themselves. When new officers have been dispatched to trouble areas, they have actually been driven away by mobs of locals. A helicopter attempting to deliver supplies couldn’t land because a threatening mob had assembled to greet it. It is only natural that looting will occur in such a situation. But roving gangs of locals looting, hunting down tourists, and beating back advances by the state is something that does not naturally occur in such a situation. In an almost incomprehensible example of the lawlessness which currently pervades New Orleans, transport of patients out of a local hospital was halted when snipers began shooting at the ambulances.
There are some legitimate questions to be asked. Why is it taking so long for the necessary armed officers to be delivered to New Orleans in order to restore order? Why weren’t they there to begin with?
There has been, however, one bright spot that has emenated from the lawlessness of New Orleans. That is shop-keepers and business-owners that have remainded to protect their livelihoods by brandishing their personal firearms. Most rioters are unarmed, looking for an easy target. These shop-keepers have refused to give it to them, protecting themselves and their property by resorting to their right to bear arms. In an atmosphere of lawlessness, these brave men have stepped up to the plate and used their guns to uphold the law.
Canadians, of course, would be much too cowardly to protect their property and their families by use of their own firearms. The idea that the state could not protect them would be almost incomprehensible.
Or to put it another way, even those Canadians who would be willing to use firearms to protect their property and families, likely wouldn’t have firearms because of over-regulation that only serves to penalise good law abiding gun owners. Unfortunately, it often takes a tragedy like that of hurricane Katrina to get people to snap back into reality; a world where states of nature are all too real, appearing with little warning or no notice.
Many thanks Mr. Rempel for a telling reminder of human instinct — whether barbaric or survivalist — untamed by reason, a wake-up to why good people need guns too.
Your inference, Peter, that Canadians are cowardly because they do not have guns is pure, unadulterated garbage. Bravery (or cowardice) does not have a damned thing to do with which end of a gun you happen to be on.
What is happening in New Orleans can just as easily be characterized as being exacerbated by the uncontrolled presence of guns.
The breakdown of law and order is fundamentally unrelated to the presence or absence of firearms in the hands of individuals. The situation in New Orleans has devolved into a matter of survival. Those that have guns are realistically little better off than those that don’t. A complete collapse of urban infrastructure eliminates the basic social cooperation upon which civil society is based.
In other words, if you are an anarchist that believes society is going to collapse, then New Orleans makes a valid template. For the rest of the world, it is an isolated disaster, and unrelated to the political dialogue over gun control.
At best, it is a reach to extend the situation in New Orleans to the Canadian gun laws debate.
OTOH, it is only a reach given that Canada continues to benefit from a relatively stable and climatically safe geographic location in the world.
The problem with common perceptions of “gun control” is the assumption that we can control guns to whatever extent we deem necessary. This assumption is quickly debunked once you consider the many ways in which a black market can flurish, how organised criminals can keep illegal weapons in high demand. And then there is the consideration of how far we are willing to compromise our own liberty inorder to exact near perfect control by state in reigning in the crimes of a few.
The idea that insufficient gun control has exacerbated the situation in New Orleans, when gangs would have guns any way, is laughable. The idea that the break down in civil association has stemmed from the city being under water and not the age-old wrestling of mankind with evil (being a self-absorbed and shallow man with no concern for the greater order of reality), is also laughable. The problem that Peter is getting at is that Canadian political culture is infested with dreamy progressive social contructionists, those with little understanding of what makes a human being, a city, or civil association for that matter. Canadians should be more careful when bragging about exemplifying all that is decent and civil when by and large we have not faced the same trials that other parts of the world have had to face.
You write, “A complete collapse of urban infrastructure eliminates the basic social cooperation upon which civil society is based.” I would wager that this statement is false. Social co-operation stems from a shared concern for the greater good on the part of individuals, not on concrete and sewer pipes!
Canadians seem to assume this wouldn’t happen here, but I recall during police strikes in Canada, citizens became more and more lawless, until back to work legislation would be implemented. Finally policing was deemed an essential service; not because legislatures wanted to infringe on worker’s rights, but human nature trumped order. The LA riots proved there’s a tipping point when mobs realize law is an illusion if enough break it and all order is lost.
[...] We at ThePolitic admire men who are willing to shoulder a high-powered rifle in order to protect their property and families. Such bravery manifested itself in the immediate aftermath of Hurricane Katrina: There has been, however, one bright spot that has emenated from the lawlessness of New Orleans. That is shop-keepers and business-owners that have remainded to protect their livelihoods by brandishing their personal firearms. Most rioters are unarmed, looking for an easy target. These shop-keepers have refused to give it to them, protecting themselves and their property by resorting to their right to bear arms. In an atmosphere of lawlessness, these brave men have stepped up to the plate and used their guns to uphold the law. [...]