May 1, 2003 - The National Rifle Association is always quick to remind us that the right to keep and bear arms is essential to the maintenance of liberty. Gun control is always the first step to an oppressive dictatorship. Registration of guns and gun owners is just one step on the slippery slope to tyranny. Take away a man’s handgun or assault rifle and you take away his right to defend against an oppressive government usurping the legitimate power of Constitutional government. Take away our guns and you deprive us of our right to defend our homes and families. A disarmed populace is an oppressed people.

Iraqis, under Saddam, were an oppressed people. Until America, Britain and Australia marshaled their military might and brought them freedom at the point of a lot of guns the Iraqi people suffered under the most repressive regime since Hitler blew his brains out in the Bunker some 58 years ago. It would follow then that the Iraqi people must have been deprived then of that essential right to keep and bear arms. Surely a well armed citizenry could not be held under the yoke of totalitarian oppression for three decades. It would follow, that is, if the logic of the NRA were sound.

If anything the Iraqi population is now and was under Saddam far better armed than America’s. Private ownership of firearms was and is endemic. It was and is the rare Iraqi home that does not have at least one AK-47 and a supply of ammunition stored in a closet. In pre-March 20 Iraq arms were sold openly in the markets and at astoundingly low prices by our standards and that brisk trade in weapons of all descriptions resumed as soon as the bombing stopped. Private possession of firearms did not prevent the imposition of oppressive one party rule in Iraq.

The American and British occupying forces are discovering just how well armed the Iraqi population is. We are repeatedly reminded that in Iraq as in Afghanistan celebratory gunfire marks every joyous or solemn occasion. In repeated incidents those privately owned guns are being turned against our occupying army. With the daily reports of American soldiers coming under small arms fire it is increasing amazing that the forces of the coalition have not decreed that the private possession of these weapons of individual destruction is prohibited in the occupied territory. It is almost shocking that there has not been a program to disarm the increasingly hostile Iraqi civilian population.

Whether their perceptions have been mistaken or accurate it is to be expected that soldiers believing themselves to have come under fire will defend themselves. The result has been dead and maimed Iraqi men, women and children caught in the killing zone. We can hardly expect to win the hearts and minds of Iraqis to the rule of law that we proclaim with the evidence of an increasing pile of bodies. It seems obvious that the first step in bringing order out of chaos is to disarm the Iraqi population. So long as law-abiding Iraqis have guns – so too will the Iraqi outlaws. We need to bare the Iraqi possession of arms and put their guns under control,

Perhaps there is a lesson here for America as well.