Here's an article a friend of mine wrote and posted to a mailing list that I host. With his permission, I am posting it here for public consumption.
The Iron Noose:
Prohibition, Organized Crime, The Media and Gun Control
by
Dan ParkinsonOn January 16, 1919, the United States Congress ratified the eighteenth amendment and summarily outlawed the manufacture, sale, transportation, importation, and exportation of alcohol in the forty-eight states and all subject districts and territories. Almost before the ink was dry on the Constitution, criminal syndicates stepped in to take advantage of the golden opportunity that had been provided to them by well-meaning (or vote-hungry) politicians. As depicted in Martin Scorcese’s film, “The Gangs of New York”, groups of organized criminals had existed in America’s big cities since the early decades of the nineteenth century. But they had been mostly small-time clubs based on ethnic heritage, confined mostly to the slums, and engaged in such petty neighborhood crimes as extortion, prostitution, gambling, and some political thuggery. With the eighteenth amendment however, a new kind of gang was born: the Mafia. While police were shutting down tax-paying breweries and distilleries, Al Capone and others were building what would eventually become a vast, violent, underground, and international supply system to provide a product that tens of millions of otherwise law-abiding Americans were willing to purchase with little thought given to its dark origins.
Despite the fact that this product was literally dripping with the blood of cops, innocent civilians, and the gangsters themselves, Americans by the millions, who saw nothing wrong with a stein of beer or a shot of whiskey, flocked to underground “speakeasies”, bathtub gin parties, and local bootleggers to drink their fill. Police departments, prosecutors, judges, and customs agents eventually began to succumb to bribes and payoffs made possible by the mind-boggling profits being provided by these same Americans to the newly powerful and well-armed underworld. In 1929 on the south side of Chicago alone, the booze trade made sixty million dollars for Al Capone. Results were similar in other American cities. Such profits lured many amoral and ruthless men into the “business” and the headlines of the day bore witness to the bloody wars over “turf” waged by men who would literally stop at nothing to increase their ill-gotten gains.
No subject sold newspapers like stories about gangsters. Reporters thronged around them in public, desperate for a picture or a quote. These glorified thugs wore the finest clothes, drove the most expensive cars, lived in luxurious mansions, and were surrounded by women and bodyguards while basking in their notoriety. At best, people watched their exploits with morbid curiosity or horror; at worst they viewed them as modern day “Robin Hoods” and idolized them like celebrities. Hollywood followed suit, releasing movie after movie glorifying gangsters and their way of life. Even in the “roaring twenties” they were portrayed as larger than life, helping to precipitate a gradual disintegration of social morality and a blurring of the line between right and wrong.
More importantly, these gangsters were always associated with guns and gun violence. Newspapers ran front-page pictures of blood-spattered sidewalks and restaurants littered with grotesquely sprawled dead men. Movie screens smoked with screeching tires and blazing guns in scenes that would nowadays be called “drive-bys”. In a 1932 movie called “Scarface”, title character Tony Camonte, upon seeing a Thompson’s submachine gun for the first time exclaims, “Machine guns you can carry? Give me some of those and I’ll rule the whole world in a month!” The maxim, “if it bleeds it leads” ruled the behavior of the media then even as it does now, in the age of television news. For increasing numbers of Americans from all walks of life the association of guns with anarchy and lawlessness became an automatic reflex due to their constant exposure to such images in the media of the day. Without a heritage of hunting or a strong understanding of the second amendment to counter these misconceptions the ground was being prepared for constitutional and social disaster.
In 1933, after fourteen years and untold tax dollars wasted, the government admitted defeat in its war on booze. Congress passed the twenty-first amendment, which repealed prohibition. Al Capone was out of work. But the genie had been let out of the bottle and now there would be hell to pay. Organized crime did not die with the law that had given it birth. Big government had wielded its hammer quite clumsily and instead of killing one devil spawned dozens by this grand mistake. America had changed in those fourteen years. Millions of people had grown comfortable habitually breaking laws which they felt were unreasonable. Corruption had gained a strong foothold from the local police station and city hall to the border patrol and the federal government. The old avenues of criminal behavior remained for those who could no longer profit from bootlegging. Bank heists and murder for hire were popular, and the old protection rackets, as well as the gambling and prostitution business still turned a good profit. But the real future of organized crime would be found by exploiting the “new prohibition” against narcotics.
The most damaging effects of the eighteenth amendment were to occur the year after its repeal, however. To quote the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearm’s history website, “National dismay over the weaponry wielded so conspicuously by organized crime during Prohibition led to passage in 1934 of the National Firearms Act, followed in four years by the Federal Firearms Act.” Using the crime wave spawned by its own foolish legislation as justification, the federal government chose to sweep away 145 years of constitutional protection against infringement of the right to keep and bear arms and passed these laws which in effect repealed the second amendment. Four more such laws would follow, the earliest of which, interestingly enough, coincided with the beginning of the federal government’s escalation of prohibition against narcotic substances in the late 1960’s and was precipitated by a new crime wave associated once again with the actions of those engaging in the manufacture and sale of banned intoxicants. Ironically, statutes that had originally been designed to protect individuals from themselves and society from any crimes they might commit while under the influence led to such increases in violent crime that a cure was administered which we now know has been far worse than the disease.
What was at issue in the failed efforts at outlawing alcoholic consumption early in the last century and the use of narcotics since the 60’s has been the inability to draw the line between an individual’s right to the pursuit of happiness on the one hand, even if that pursuit were medically harmful to the individual, and criminal activity on the other hand. Murder, rape, robbery, burglary, and drunk driving are criminal activities, for they deprive or show intent to deprive another person either of his life, her health, or property. Drinking any beverage, smoking any cigarette, reading any book, owning any gun, speaking any idea, or practicing any religion are not crimes. They may offend or be distasteful to others, but they are constitutionally protected activities.
Supporters of the second amendment understand that it is this right, which under girds and makes possible all other rights. It is only because of our founding fathers’ sacred respect for freedom of conscience, speech, and action that the amendment guaranteeing these rights appears first in the Bill of Rights. They knew clearly that it was by arms that liberty had been won, and that it would be by arms that liberty would be preserved. Thus the words, “A well regulated militia being necessary to the security of a free state, the right of the people to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed” were placed second, not because the rights they guaranteed were somehow inferior to those affirmed in the first amendment, but because they are essential for the preservation of those and all other rights. So today, as we see the second amendment under attack as never before, we must attempt to more fully understand the reasons why six major federal firearm control and prohibition statutes have been enacted since 1934 when none had been enacted in the previous one and one-half centuries.
The main reason the right to keep and bear arms has been and remains under attack is the popular but intellectually shallow rational that since guns are often used in the commission of crimes that they actually cause crime. This was wrong in 1934 and it is wrong today. Everyone familiar with the research of Dr. John Lott knows that in actuality far more crimes are foiled and lives saved by the defensive use of guns than are committed or taken with them. The author personally knows three people who have avoided robbery or worse because they were armed at the crucial moment. But such stories do not make the television news. The stories that do make the news are the senseless killings associated with the drug trade or the sensational public massacres committed by psychotic individuals intent on committing “suicide by cop”. Unfortunately, there is not much that can be done about the random type murders committed by mentally disturbed people except to insure that law-abiding citizens can be armed for their own protection.
There is something though, that can be done about the murders connected to the black market for drugs that constantly saturate television news coverage and furnish compelling propaganda for gun grabbers. Take away the drug gangs’ profits. Repeal the prohibition against these substances, hold people responsible for their behavior, and imprison those who kill, rape or steal. Like Al Capone in 1933, violent drug bootleggers would be out of their jobs. Property crimes committed for the purpose of obtaining money for outrageously priced but relatively cheap-to-manufacture substances would be reduced by several orders of magnitude. Globally, the corruption, destabilization, and terrorism fueled by the illicit trade in smuggled narcotics would lose steam. In this country a large percentage of gun murders would cease to have a cause, and gun related deaths of children (many of whom are either gang members themselves or caught in crossfire between warring gangs) would plummet, removing one of the most distortable propaganda points from the arsenal of the anti-gunners.
We could then reassign tens of thousands of law enforcement agents to the job of protecting lives and property. We could fill prisons with killers, rapists, child molesters and thieves and leave them there instead of releasing them early so there is room for non-violent drug offenders on three strike convictions. We could use taxes from the controlled sale of drugs to erase federal and state budget deficits as well as pay for drug treatment and prevention programs for those who feel unable to quit drinking or taking drugs on their own. But above all we would insure that in the land of the free and the home of the brave, the right of American citizens to keep and bear arms for the protection of life, family, and the ability to resist tyranny shall never again be infringed under the guise of saving people from themselves.
