Escalating the gun debate

Lawrence Corbett claims to stake out a middle ground in the gun-control debate. His, he claims, is the ground of objective scholarship, while both the gun-control community and "the NRA and their ilk" take neglectfully one-sided stances that ignore other facets of the great question. In an op-ed that reads like a plea for research funding, Corbett argues that we can determine the reasonable scope of gun ownership by focusing on one facet of the question. He appears less concerned with the individual right of self-defense advocated by the NRA than with the collective right of defense against tyranny. The decisive question, he claims, is twofold: "What is the minimum level of arms that a population needs in order to allow it to resist a future government gone bad, and at what point do we decide that the cost of having that capability is too high?" Only people with specialized knowledge -- Corbett is a scholar of logistics -- can provide the information to answer these questions. Yet his plea can't help seeming disingenuous. Though he pays lip service to the possibility that such weapons as the AR-15 are "wholly unworthy of the damage they cause on a day-to-day basis," he has to anticipate that many observers will think the risk to individuals worth the security against tyranny. It may be telling that he doesn't discuss the possibility that no volume of private gun ownership can provide an effective safeguard against a tyranny armed with the full military power of the state. If his theoretical committee came to such a conclusion, would Corbett concede that there is no good reason for hoarding assault weapons, or would he let the question be decided according to the principle of individual self-defense? While he may have wanted to escape that facet of the issue by reverting to the original intent of the Framers, Corbett may stake too much on an obsolete argument. Those who would have prevented tyranny may have been better off limiting the expansion of the military establishment before it surpassed irreversibly the civilian power to match it. That's a side of this issue nearly everyone ignores.