WHAT H. L. MENCKEN THOUGHT

Same stuff, different time -- past replayed in the here and now

The more you know about the past, the more you realize that there has
been a great deal less change than some folks think.

Take the year 1925. Guess what: People were proposing to ban
handguns to reduce crime. The proposal came from the magazine The
Nation. This magazine is still published.

It came during alcohol prohibition. Our current ban-the-devil-firearm
proposals are occurring during drug prohibition. Trying to ban alcohol
produced the following effects: a product dirt cheap to make became
expensive on the black market; huge crime organizations grew wealthy;
bribery and corruption became rampant; there grew a general contempt
for the law. Perhaps that seems familiar.

At any rate, in 1925, H.L. Mencken, one of America's greatest and most
libertarian journalists, was writing columns for the Baltimore Evening Sun.
The proposal to ban handguns produced this from Mencken:
"The new law that it [the magazine] advocated, indeed, is one of the most
absurd specimens of jackass legislation ever heard of, even in this paradise
of legislative donkeyism. Its single and sole effect would be to exaggerate
enormously all of the evils it proposes to put down. It would not take
pistols out of the hands of rogues and fools; it would simply take them out
of the hands of honest men."

Mencken even pointed out that prohibition agents could not stop
liquor coming in by the shipload of bulky cases, and they certainly
would not be able to stop something as small as a pistol. "Thus the
camel gets in," Mencken said, "and yet the proponents of the new
anti-pistol law tell us that they will catch the gnat. Go tell it to
the Marines." In our own times, a government unable to keep out drugs
by the tons and illegal aliens by the hundreds of thousands will
certainly play heck trying to stop firearms should Congress ever be
silly enough to ban guns. And Congress may be seized by such an
attack of silliness. Outbreaks of legislative silliness seem to be
occurring with greater frequency. If Mencken thought his era was a
time of legislative donkeyism, he should look down from heaven and see
what nonsense consumes our public servants. Mencken stated in his
column that he owned two pistols and that his brother had six and that
they would certainly sell them on the black market rather than let the
government seize them. Indeed while Englishmen and Aussies meekly
surrendered most of their guns recently, I doubt seriously that
America's 80 million gun owners would do so. I personally would not
want the job of going around to confiscate folks' firearms. I grew up
in a part of the country where folks would shoot you for a whole lot
less than that. But the point is that human nature never changes.
There are always people who think you can legislate paradise on Earth.
There are always people unwilling to allow others to be free, if what
those others want to do with their freedom (drink or snort) doesn't
meet the do-gooders' high standards for OPB -- other people's behavior.

Man is a fallen, sinful critter, but there is no salvation to be
found in a law book or the courthouse. Nor will any paradise ever be
created by legislation. Attempts at perfecting society through
coercion have produced human-rights disasters on a unprecedented scale.

Freedom means living with warts and risks, so to speak. But free
people just deal with the warts and risks on an individual basis. They
know that you cannot legislate warts and risks out of existence.

But people won't change, and maybe that's an argument for knowing
nothing about the past. At least then you wouldn't realize how
repetitious it all is.