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Michael S. Horton
Westminster Theological Seminary in California
Escondido, Calif.

If citizens in the past chose not to avail themselves of firearms because of their inefficiency as your review of Bellesiles's book explains, then this is insignificant in addressing the larger philosophical and legal matters. Where I think that your point against guns may be justified is suggesting that citizens may arm themselves in different ways, such as your discussion of the long bow. Perhaps we can, within constitutionally given bounds, limit the access to certain kinds of weapons. Ultimately, though, citizens do have a right to be armed in some fashion.

It is very interesting that the culture of guns can change. It does appear to be changing in particular parts of the country, but hopefully this will not go with complete disregard for the reasons that the Federalist and Anti-Federalists wanted citizens to be armed.

Lynn D. Robinson
Princeton University
Princeton, N.J.

Please cancel my subscription to Books & Culture immediately. I've enjoyed this publication in the past, but John Wilson's slobbering fawning over Michael Bellesiles's Arming America is more than I can stand. Talk about standing history on its head! If "this massively documented, superbly argued narrative" is so true, I'm at a total loss to imagine why the Second Amendment to the Bill of Rights even exists. What could the founders have been thinking of, to follow the guarantee of Free Speech and Religion, with an assurance that the rights of the people to be armed, and that there should be a militia? Was it added as a postscript after 1840? What are John Wilson's credentials for stamping "TRUTH" on this book? What trash! The book and the review.

I'd like to say more, but don't intend to waste more of my time on this mindless twaddle. It's only by the grace of God that our Republic has survived the likes of revisionists such as Bellesiles, and editors such as John Wilson.

The Rev. George T. Walker, Jr.
Rector, St. John's Episcopal Church
Thibodaux, Louisiana

Mr. Wilson's review of Arming America reveals that he knows little, if anything, about firearms, and as much about the background of the "plastic gun" and "cop-killer bullet" controversies. The "plastic gun" issue focused on the rumored ability of the Glock pistol to evade metal detectors. Before the truth became known, it was "feared" that these (excellent) pistols could do so. But Glocks have only plastic frames; the slides, barrels, magazine interiors, and of course ammunition are metal. Furthermore, these metal parts make up over 90 percent of their weight! My own Glock weighs 22 ounces unloaded, 20 of these are metal. We used an inexpensive, mediocre-quality metal detector at a local business where I was employed in security. Yet this detector was able to detect the pistol in every instance—and I tried every trick I could think of to get it through.

"Cop-killer bullets!" The evil old NRA was excoriated by the media for its opposition to the original bill proposed by Kennedy. Why? Because the bill gave the Treasury Dept. broad authority to define them. When the bill was corrected, defining these bullets within its text, it passed with the endorsement and assistance of the NRA.

If then-Representative Cheney opposed these measures, he was in the right! The only preposterous sham involved here was perpetrated by media types like Mr. Wilson!

Charles Tryor
Via email

Let me see if I actually get the point of John Wilson's amazing little article. Based on the research done by Michael Bellesiles and published in his book of the same name as the article, only a small portion of Americans, perhaps less than ten percent, owned firearms prior to 1850, and even fewer were hunters. Now given this historical situation, Mr. Wilson draws the conclusion that when one appeals to the Second Amendment of the Constitution for protection of the right to be armed, such appeals are a "presposterous sham."

I confess to being surprised that such an argument is found in a publication that styles itself devoted to uniquely Christian views on culture. I am surprised, because Mr. Wilson takes a view of law and the Constitution more in line with Rousseau than the heritage of the Reformation. In short, if the "general" will is indifferent to some part of the law, then it can be safely ignored as a "preposterous sham." If one were to discover that less than ten percent of Americans, prior to 1850, owned printing presses, then Mr. Wilson's style of argument also brings the result that an appeal to the First Amendent is a "preposterous sham" as well.

I would also suppose (and I may be wrong in this) that Mr. Wilson is a Christian. I shudder to think what would happen if he were ever unfortunate enough to find that he was among that group of Americans, hypothetically less than ten percent, who practiced Christianity. I suppose then that appeal to the First Amendment in defense of his religious freedom would be likewise a "preposterous sham" as well.

My point? I thank our Lord that the rights we enjoy are first of all given by Him, and secondly that the Constitution acknowledges these as existing outside of and apart from the "munificent" gifts of government and the popular will. Indeed, I'm quite appalled that Mr. Wilson presupposes that our rights are things to be bestowed or denied based solely on the popular prejudice to practice them or not.

Martin A. Rice, Jr.
University of Pittsburgh at Johnstown
Johnstown, Penn.

What I deplore is the abuse of the Second Amendment by gun-rights absolutists who, as I wrote, "reject even the most modest restrictions on the American citizen's right to arm himself to the teeth." The right to bear arms is not an absolute, unrestricted right. Just as many rights are restricted in various ways for the common good, so too the right to bear arms is subject to regulation, so long as the fundamental right "to keep and bear arms" is preserved.

The same point is made in an article by Gary Rosen, "Yes and No to Gun Control" (Commentary, September 2000, pp. 47-53), which I saw only after my review had appeared. Rosen observes that the "legitimate interests [of gun owners as represented by the NRA] have been translated into a virtually absolutist rejection of any proposal for the regulation of firearms."

A perfect example of such "absolutist rejection" is Dick Cheney, in his votes in the House on "cop-killer bullets" and "plastic" pistols, as cited in my review. And Charles Tryor's response is a perfect example of the rhetoric of gun-rights absolutists. Readers who wish to assess the accuracy of Mr. Tryor's account of the "cop-killer bullets" controversy may want to compare it with Senator Daniel Moynihan's account, given to the Senate on January 19, 1999, in the course of introducing a series of bills intended to reduce gun-related violence (www.senate.gov/~moynihan/0119law.htm). Senator Moynihan notes that he first introduced legislation against armor-piercing bullets in 1982:

Despite the strong support of the law enforcement community, it took four years before this seemingly non-controversial legislation was enacted into law. The National Rifle Association initially opposed it—that is, until the NRA realized that a large number of its members were themselves police officers who strongly supported banning these insidious bullets. Only then did the NRA lend its grudging support.

The "plastic" gun issue is more complex. The legislation introduced in the Senate in 1988 by Senator Ed ward Kennedy and Senator Howard Metzenbaum was first set in motion by egregious misinformation about the Glock pistol, alleging that it could evade detection by airport security—hence my phrase, "so critics feared"; I should have made it clear that those fears were unwarranted. That misinformation was rightly contested, and I share Mr. Tryor's disgust with the media's part in creating the scare. The modified bill that passed in both the Senate and the House required only that guns manufactured and sold in the United States possess enough metal to be readily detectable via X-ray.

Gun-rights absolutists mock the 1988 compromise bill as legislative grandstanding, saying that the result was meaningless in practice, since no firearms on the market were not readily detectable via X-ray. In fact it seems to me that in this case the system functioned rather well. Was the reassuring "protection" offered by the legislation almost entirely symbolic? Yes, but as Gary Rosen writes, "symbols matter."

So it was significant that Dick Cheney was one of only four members of the House to vote against that 1988 bill. He knew what symbolic message he was sending in voting no (just as when he voted against a seven-day waiting period for purchase of a handgun). When asked, earlier this year, to defend his vote and other similar votes, he invoked the sacred legacy of the Second Amendment. That, in my judgment, is a preposterous sham, for it implies that the Second Amendment guarantees an absolutely unrestricted right to bear arms—and that anyone who proposes any sort of regulation on the right to bear arms is in fact insidiously intent on denying that right altogether.

It is quite possible for Americans who share a deep commitment to the Second Amendment to disagree significantly about the merits of this or that proposed regulation of the production, sale, and use of guns. Gary Rosen, for example, suggests expanding the Brady Bill requirement of background checks for gun sales to include gun shows and all other private transfers of firearms. This strikes me as a very sensible idea. Others may disagree. But in any case, the issue is not to be settled by invoking the Second Amendment.

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