Carrie Nation Prohibition
By Philipp Kester (German photojournalist, 1873-1958) - Cropped File:Carrie Nation, 1910.jpg, Public Domain, Link

By Theresa Inacker

100 years after Prohibition, it’s still a doomed proposition

There is an uncanny parallel between anti-gun rights groups like Moms Demand Action, which continually seeks more ineffective gun control laws, and the infamous women of the temperance movement, which brought about the failed experiment of Prohibition.

In 1920, Prohibition outlawed the sale, manufacturing and transport of intoxicating beverages enjoyed by most of the population. Women led the charge for temperance reform starting in the 1800’s. The women who campaigned for Prohibition focused on men’s alcohol abuse and proclaimed that it harmed women, children and families.

Stories of women using hatchets, rocks and axes to break whisky bottles in saloons painted a visual of sometimes radical and extreme tactics.

Moms Demand Action and similar groups irrationally claim that guns and Second Amendment-guaranteed rights are the cause of mass murders and violent crime. These anti-rights groups insist more gun control is the necessary solution. Gun control advocates ignore the multitude of existing, ineffective gun control laws, yet clamor for still more. Their appetite for restrictions on gun rights is insatiable.

Coyly, anti-rights gun control fanatics claim they are not interested in banning all guns-after all, they purport to be for “common sense” gun control. However, no one is buying it. We know that they will not stop until every last firearm is banned, and the Constitution is torn to pieces.

This incremental shift is not novel; it is actually quite familiar. As Melissa Strong wrote in Women and the Temperance Movement . . .

At first, the temperance movement sought to moderate drinking, then to promote resisting the temptation to drink. Later, the goal became outright prohibition of alcohol sales.

The women of the temperance movement, sought to vilify and criminalize a lawful activity. There were instances of alcohol abuse, of course, yet it was a failed route of reform to insist on a ban of alcohol for everyone.

We all know it missed the mark. The results of Prohibition are well known. Organized crime flourished, “gun violence” soared, and the 18th Amendment was ultimately repealed Dec. 5, 1933, via the 21st Amendment.

Just as the temperance reformers wanted to force their ban on everyone, anti-gun advocates want to turn lawful firearm ownership into criminals. The anti-rights types, of course, ignore the thousands of instances in which firearms have been used in defensive situations. They likewise ignore the ubiquitous mental health issues of those behind mass murder sprees, as well as facts such as the reality that more children drown in pools annually than die by firearm.

Whether you focus on the inanimate bottle of whiskey, or a scary looking firearm, they will fail to change human behavior. They will fail to effectuate the change desired.

Just as Prohibition was a failed American experiment, gun control efforts will also continue to be a failure. The ‘good guys’ with guns are coalescing, like giants awakening from their slumber ready to stop the likes of Mom Demand Action and Everytown.

Undeniably, Second Amendment sanctuaries are cropping up all across the country, and Virginia gun owners have beaten back some recent attacks by leftist gun grabbers.

Anti-gun prohibitionists should take a lesson from the failure of alcohol Prohibition 100 years ago. The nation’s population of lawful gun owners is not going to divest itself of their legally-obtained firearms or forgo their Second Amendment rights simply to make you feel safer, or because you insist on it.

 

Theresa Inacker, an attorney and Second Amendment advocate, is a member of the Supreme Court Bar, the New Jersey Delegate to The DC Project, and serves as the Communications Director for the Coalition of New Jersey Firearm Owners.   

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88 COMMENTS

      • You left out fill it with trash, because that’s what he found. I know because I watched the whole show. In the for what its worth department; it sure looked like he had fun playing with the Tommy Gun.

        • I heard the firearms guy that brought that tommy gun almost beat the shit out of him for walking up on the target like he did…all unplanned and unsafe!

  2. “The results of Prohibition are well known.”

    Less remembered is the reduction of alcohol related deaths, injuries and social issues. Had cars been more widely owned drunk driving would have fallen as well. There were positive effects from removing alcohol from every store but the country wanted to have a drink and the criminals obliged. Eventually the crime was used as a reason to pass the 21st. Prohibition is consistently painted as wrong in every aspect because it’s a rare even that an amendment is repealed. It’s also the model for legalizing every drug and illegal compound there is with promises of eliminating crime.

    We The People have a long history of using problems to create results in other areas.

    I’ll sit back and let the tomatoes hit me over these comments….

    • Left uncounted is the number of deaths caused by the government deliberately poisoning industrial ethanol.

      • And lead poisoning from people using radiators for condensing their bathtub gin…

    • What “social issues” improved under Prohibition? Absenteeism and productivity did not increase. Alcohol consumption dropped at first, then increased. So did opium use and use of other narcotics which is to be expected when the legal alternative is made illegal. Tax revenue dropped. Enforcement expenditures increased.

      Non-violent behavior between consenting adults should not be criminalized. Attempts at social engineering fail. That is the argument.

    • Freedom is dangerous. The collective population could be overall healthier and safer, with the banning of alcohol, drugs, unhealthy foods, large sodas, cigarets, ect… but in America, we generally reject collective protection by our betters “for our own good.” The American spirit of individualism and self governance supersedes safety.

      • I would rather live with some danger than give up freedom for a false promise of safety.

        “Those that give up freedom for safety deserve neither”

        And likely will end up without either one.

      • Our “bettors” are just interested in making us their serfs. The for our own good stuff is the easy initial sale before the forced compliance for the leader’s profit and control lust kicks in. What government in history have the leaders operated for the good of their people? Name me a society! Our Constitution is as close as it has ever come.

    • So you’re a bloomberg supporter? We must be forced to do what’s healthy?

      By the way. I don’t drink, smoke or do illegal drugs.

    • One of the craftiest orations in the history of American politics was the “Whiskey Speech,” delivered in April 1952 by a young Mississippi legislator named Noah S. “Soggy” Sweat, Jr. The occasion was a banquet at the old King Edward Hotel in Jackson, Mississippi.

      “My friends, I had not intended to discuss this controversial subject at this particular time. However, I want you to know that I do not shun controversy. On the contrary, I will take a stand on any issue at any time, regardless of how fraught with controversy it might be. You have asked me how I feel about whiskey. All right, here is how I feel about whiskey.
      If when you say “whiskey” you mean the devil’s brew, the poison scourge, the bloody monster, that defiles innocence, dethrones reason, destroys the home, creates misery and poverty, yea, literally takes the bread from the mouths of little children; if you mean the evil drink that topples the Christian man and woman from the pinnacle of righteous, gracious living into the bottomless pit of degradation and despair and shame and helplessness and hopelessness, then certainly I am against it.
      But if when you say “whiskey” you mean the oil of conversation, the philosophic wine, the ale that is consumed when good fellows get together, that puts a song in their hearts and laughter on their lips, and the warm glow of contentment in their eyes; if you mean Christmas cheer; if you mean the stimulating drink that puts the spring in the old gentleman’s step on a frosty, crispy morning; if you mean the drink which enables a man to magnify his joy, and his happiness, and to forget, if only for a little while, life’s great tragedies, and heartaches, and sorrows; if you mean that drink, the sale of which pours into our treasuries untold millions of dollars, which are used to provide tender care for our little crippled children, our blind, our deaf, our dumb, our pitiful aged and infirm, to build highways and hospitals and schools, then certainly I am for it.
      This is my stand. I will not retreat from it. I will not compromise.”

      • One my favorite noncommittal political statements of all time. Stood for nothing and proved nothing.
        So What is your point, exactly?

        • Hannial Ha Ha Ha
          Obviously over worked sexting with my GF.
          Sorry for I habve beren disstrccterd bveriiery sedrioutry.
          Wllim be bcka soomn

    • Typical liberal response to every social ill. Personal responsibility is something liberals just don’t understand. It is not the inanimate objects that are the problem. It is the liberals excusing evil acts that is the problem. They never blame the crazy evil psycho. They blame the inanimate object he uses to commit his mayhem. This misguided thinking results in more whackos and more bloodshed. But, you can’t tell these intellectual fools this. Their minds are so twisted that they themselves border on insanity. Think about it. Is there anything sane about their complete lack of common sense?

      • Personal Responsibility is something I’ve instilled into my son, who at not even 12 has the respect of many adults.

  3. There is the “organized crime flourished” myth again. Organized crime existed and flourished in the US since the 1850s. The infamous 1919 “Black Sox” scandal was undertaken by organized crime. The increase in the murder rate in the early and mid 1920s was actually below the trend line. About the only thing Prohibition did was accelerate the nationalization and cartelization of organized crime. This actually reduced the level of violence after an initial surge as “surplus capacity” was eliminated.

    • Organized crime’s profits skyrocketed under prohibition. Much like the explosive growth of Colombian and later Mexican cartels and the spread of American street gangs under the drug war.

      Legalize everything and let people be responsible for themselves.

      • False. Even during prohibition organized crime’s principal revenue sources were gambling, loan sharking and protection. And even during prohibition organized crime made tons of money in legitimate business. Al Capone’s Irish rival had a huge business as florist and operated several prominent dry nightclubs. He also made lots of money running guns to the IRA. The mob built a legal gambling empire in Nevada.

    • yaaa sure a billion dollars of BOOZE money did not help only ONE mobster get bigger….pull the other leg!

      one expl out of hundreds!

      Al Capone
      Al Capone, the American gangster who ran the Chicago Mafia, made most of his money during prohibition. By 1929, Capone’s income from the various aspects of his business included: $60 million from illegal alcohol, $25 million from gambling establishments, $10 million from vice, and another $10 million from various other rackets. It is claimed that Capone was employing over 600 gangsters to protect his business from rival gangs. Based on inflation, his empire would be worth about $1.3 billion today.

  4. I guess your also forgetting about the rise in deaths from “bad” and unregulated alcohol then since it was banned…how many folks, who wanted only to have a couple drinks on a Friday night, got poisoning from bath tub gin who otherwise would have just had a fun night had they been able to purchase a 6 pack of Bud light?

    I’m not letting that go to the other extreme…I’m just illustrating that there might be another side your not looking at. Besides…. would you rather deal with drunk drivers or gang wars in your town?

    • Much like “gun violence” the drunk drivers are scarier as they could harm anyone. Even white suburban people. The gang related stuff mostly stays in the poorer, browner neighborhoods.

      Which is why we get Monsanto Mom and her biddies completely ignoring Chicago and Baltimore and going full attack mode white people and their 3-gun rifles.

      The same democrat racism that got us the Clinton AWB and dragged 2 Live Crew in front of Congressional hearings.

  5. The temperance movement alllowed “organized crime” to demonstrate how lucrative it was supplying something otherwise banned; then, like large tech companies buying little start-ups that have proven a product and market, the bigger thugs repealed the ammendment to put themselves in control of the loot(ing.)

    Or did I take the wrong lesson from this?

  6. “Had cars been more widely owned drunk driving would have fallen as well.” Or, better still, had cars been banned by a constitutional amendment like National Prohibition was automotive related death rates would have also been dramatically reduced. This, of course, is pure twaddle. National Prohibition (like gun control today) institutionalized coercive reform of a kind more familiar to totalitarian societies than to a free society like ours. The Temperance Movement spent decades attempting use assimilation as a form of social change. The problem it faced is that only part of American society agreed with its non-drinking goals. When assimilation failed, the movement turned to authoritarianism and coercion as a way of achieving its “reforms”.

    Prohibition was a failure because, despite a constitutional amendment, most Americans simply refused to accept Prohibitionist ideology. In a free society, when upwards of 50% of the population refuse to obey a bad law, that law is ultimately doomed to failure. This is what happened with National Prohibition. A similar thing is happening with the Gun Control Movement’s increasing reliance on coercive reform (gun-confiscation, red-flag laws, etc.). This is happening because, as happened with National Prohibition, most Americans reject gun control ideology and prefer owning, keeping, and using guns.

    Gun Control ideology also rejects the essential intent of our 2nd Amendment which sees an armed citizenry as being essential to preventing government tyranny. The connection between gun-control and tyrannical government is, not surprisingly, coercion.

    • “Prohibition was a failure because, despite a constitutional amendment, most Americans simply refused to accept Prohibitionist ideology. In a free society, when upwards of 50% of the population refuse to obey a bad law, that law is ultimately doomed to failure.”

      Very true, and illustrative of the saying, “People don’t obey the law because it is the law. They obey the law because it makes sense.”

    • The term “Irish Democracy” refers to the population ignoring unjust laws and not helping law enforcement. The English King was noted for abusing the residents of Ireland and Scotland, and the local tribes and clans resisted. Many of them settled in the US.

      Unlicensed distillers are out there, some may even be neighbors. I trust their product, especially if they’re drinking it. Likewise, 80% lowers are a thing. Anyone with a machine shop can obtain tooling and go into barrel production.

      You can’t stop the signal.

  7. The Temperance Movement offered to remove a vice from society that caused men to quit their jobs, beat their wives, and murder people. Basically all the stuff the modern gun control movement promised guns do more or less. The difference, the temperance people were right. We just didn’t have the discipline as a society to say no liquor. Now get me a root beer and tommygun!

    * Ducks as godless libertines throw rotten fruit

  8. Hey, if we never had Prohibition, we wouldn’t have gotten The Untouchables tv show with Robert Stack.

    “Rico! Youngblood! Smash it all!”

  9. It is an interesting comment on human behavior that laws do not control the demand for a product and where there is a demand, there will be a person willing to fulfill it. This is so basic that even children will follow this pattern. When Michelle O’s school lunch program removed condiments from the lunch room enterprising kids filled the gap!

    https://freebeacon.com/issues/kids-create-salt-black-markets-in-cafeterias-due-to-michelle-obamas-lunch-rules/

    It’s human nature and cannot be stopped.

  10. Yes! And Bloomberg, Bernie and the rest of the Dems are hoping to ride the hoplophobic waves into political power. We don’t actually know if they actually believe their own bullshit! …except for “Shotgun Joe”. Don’t go near his porch or front door! Oh, and keep an eye out for “Minnesota Uncle Dick”!

  11. No “right” to drink. Being armed is a RIGHT. I quit drinking 20 years because it was damaging my marriage. Quite the opposite with being a gun owner…

    • Your decision to drink, or not to, IS your absolute, human RIGHT, numbnuts.

      The 2A doesn’t establish our right to self-defense or the RKBA – those are INHERENT rights – it simply (theoretically, at least) prohibits government infringement thereof.

      You’re a real authoritarian, aren’t you????

  13. There’s a quote attributed to Miles Davis the guy who transformed instrumental jazz a couple times in his career. (You can consider that good, bad, or indifferent. In all cases, he had some impact.)

    Asked about why he had used drugs: “… because I liked it. Anybody who tells you different is lying.”
    Why he quite: “… because it was gonna kill me.”

    People do things all the time that they like, or need, more than what they give up. They say economics is the study of trade-offs. Really what’s the problem with Betty or Veronica? That it’s Betty *or*, *exclusive or* Veronica. The money, time and health you’re spending on doping up can’t go to something else. If you lose control, you lose even more. If you get too involved with sketchy people who come after you other ways, that’s another risk.

    So, you can have yourself an argument about self-medicating with alcohol, till “the click that makes me peaceful”, or simply spending some blissed out time “wasted away in margaritaville”, or the experience of a little buzz n wine with dinner. Or the many studies now that report metered, moderate consumption creates a net health gain, statistically.

    Gun “control” is prohibition: they don’t like your reasons, don’t like the trade-offs you prefer, and don’t think it’s your business to choose. It’s prohibition: you don’t get to wield some choice, because you might make it wrong, even by your own standards. We can’t all be Miles Davis (or Larry Flint for that matter, who went cold turkey off the pain meds, when surgery eliminated the pain.)

    But, it’s managing your own risk isn’t it? And is it your life to spend as you like, or is your life theirs to spend as they prefer? And guns, being arms, are a particular kind of agency that makes them more nuts than booze: the agency to decline their help. Drinkers deprived of alcohol haven’t lost their means to take care of themselves. When the helpful people want to “take care” of your arms, your money, your speech, they’re *also* taking away your means to advocate for yourself.

    Gun control is prohibition redux, this time stepping on what would unwind it at the same time. Clever.

  14. They are also using tactics from the anti-tobacco campaign by attempting to make pariahs out of gun dealers and owners while suing manufacturers. Watch how that went and you’ll see what the anti-2A tropes are attempting now.

    • They used the second hand smoke issue. And it’s a good one. You can’t say people don’t get a “second hand high” from other persons pot smoking. People make jokes about it.
      btw
      There used to be “smoking rooms” 100 years ago as well. That is where you went to smoke indoors and away from a crowd. Now today people demand to do all their vices in public for everyone to see. Even it they don’t want to look at them.

      • Just like the gays. 20 years ago when the whole gay “rights” shit started, they said nothing would change, the gays just wanted sodomy laws removed and the right to marry. Now you can’t throw on a kids TV show without gay sex on it. Every commercial has a gay act in it. It’s a lesson on why we can’t allow the left to take one inch because they’ll ram a mile up our asses. Gender is a construct and there’s men in women’s bathrooms.

  15. Comparing the gun control movement with the temperance movement is absolutely correct. I’ve thought about it too. And It’s not about religion. There are plenty of atheists who want you disarmed. The early 20th century atheist progressives wanted to control people’s behavior as well. Their creation of the Government Welfare Industrial Complex, replacing private church charity, is a great example.
    They want your guns replaced by the guns of a big city police department.

    I have no problem legalizing all drugs. But we get to shoot the drug user dead. Just as we shot the drinker dead. When they robbed, raped, stole, broke into or vandalized private property.
    The drug legalization crowd like to forget about that part. Intoxication is not an excuse. It’s not extenuating circumstances for breaking the law, and taking other people’s property.

    • From your post “The drug legalization crowd like to forget about that part”.
      How ignorant can you be??? None of us who are for the legalization of cannabis for the sale, and use, to adults believes you, or anyone, should give up your right to self defense. Do not assume that everyone who uses cannabis is a criminal. That is a bogus ideology stuck in the governments “Reefer Madness” lies. You should educate yourself about the prohibition on cannabis in the USA. You will find the same people who want to take away our gun rights are those who were involved in the cannabis prohibition. Also, not all drug users, which I do not agree with the legalization of hard drugs for the addictive, and destructive properties they have on human lives, are criminal who would rob, or steal from you. Prejudice lumps all in where a few are at fault. Don’t be like that.

      • See the video above. It’s not about the substance or the object. Legal or illegal. It’s about criminals. And we will always have criminals.

        • “You should educate yourself about the prohibition on cannabis in the USA. You will find the same people who want to take away our gun rights are those who were involved in the cannabis prohibition’

          You are uneducated or miss-educated on the issue of gun rights support from the “Pothead” community. The Marijuana Billionaires are the ones who paid big $$$ to get gun control passed in California, Colorado and Washington State. Pot smokers historically have always been anti-civil rights.

          Now some of them do want THEIR guns. But they don’t support the 2A. Pot smokers are FUDDs.

          If they really wanted to help the Pothead billionaires would donate the kind of $$$ that Bloomberg is using to take away our civil rights. American Marijuana billionaires are just like the cartels down south. They want guns to protect their profits. And to hell with everyone else.
          As I said before. The rich. Criminal or law abiding will always have guns.

    • Meth is the drug of the Third Reich and modern neo Nazis. So I suppose you are now showing your true colors as being Pro Nazi.

        • A red flag in the shape of the sun? Then wouldn’t that be the flag of the Rising Sun?

          Who knew Imperial Japanese trolls are a thing?

        • “A red flag in the shape of the sun? Then wouldn’t that be the flag of the Rising Sun?”

          “The big bang, took and shook the world
          Shot down the rising sun
          The end was begun, it would hit everyone
          When the chain reaction was done…”

          ‘Manhattan Project’ – Neil Peart

    • There are plenty of people willing to give up their gun rights for their favorite intoxicant. Some people can it addiction.

      • Meth is now a non arrestable offence in many cities in CA, that have banned many types of guns.

        Cited with a ticket and released for meth. Arrested for AR15s.

        Therefore, meth has been effectively decriminalized, ergo, legal.

        • I expect meth and other drugs will be added to the 4473 form very soon. Just like marijuana is on it now.
          The drug user will trade their guns for intoxication. They always do. Yes I know some of this is medicine. But the potheads ruined it for the sick ones out there.

    • There’s a lot to be learned about drugs and society from studying the Opium Wars. I highly suggest anyone reading this to learn about them. The once mighty nation of China* was entirely subdued by the British Empire with very little effort, due to mass opium addiction rampant in China.

      Having said that, there’s an argument to be made evolution wise, in that those addicted, will all eventually die off, and the addiction disorder will eventually die off in the human race, if we allow the addicts to simply go about their natural course.

      * “once mighty” in 1800s terms, as China was embarrassingly weak for such a large nation at that time.

    • So, you think you’re gonna repeal the 2A, commie? Good luck with that. And after Trump nominates two more SCOTUS justices, and Cocaine Mitch gets them confirmed, y’all gun-grabbin’ @$$holes gonna get some serious Heller rammed up your fourth point of contact. Enjoy the Bern.

  17. They’re not going to take away anyone’s beer. If you already have a beer, you can keep it. Common sense and all.

  18. Cannabis needs to be legalized for adult purchase and consumption in the USA. It was once legal, and then put under the same, but worse, prohibition as alcohol. Yet cannabis is safer, and does not lead to the violence that alcohol produces in some people. Secondly, people who consume cannabis should not lose their Constitutional Second Amendment Right, or any Constitutional Rights. This is a government that is out of control, when they think they can take away the Constitutional Rights of any Citizen.
    Cannabis prohibition has a dirty lobbyist history, which includes the Pharmaceutical industry, because they cannot make money from a plant, the Hearst company, because he did not want competition with his use of his trees for his printed materials, the Alcohol industry, because they do not want the competition (how democratic of them), and several other wealthy individuals who did not want competition with their industries. The gun lobby groups should also get behind the end to cannabis prohibition. Many cannabis users are also gun enthusiast.

  19. Disagree – it’s nothing like a modern temperance movement. It follows the formula set forth and executed by statists time and time again – even well within the lifetimes of many, many living people (e.g. Khmer Rouge/Pol Pot – that was from 1951 through the end of the century). But that stuff isn’t taught anymore, people forget, and things are often repeated.

    • And in what way, exactly, was the Temperance Movement NOT a ‘statist’ movement???

      ‘Splain it to me, Lucy.

    • You are quite wrong about this. Gun Control is exactly like the Temperance And Prohibition Movement.

  20. Temperance movement and Prohibition in the form of the 18th Amendment was ultimately repealed by the 21st Amendment is a good article, but leaves out several major parts that are still around today. The Temperance movement still lives on in the 21st Amendment by weakening the amount of alcohol can be contained in an alcoholic beverage, along with states and counties can vote to still prohibit the sale of alcoholic beverages, and other things. So, in part if the gun control groups are able and might I say might be able to prohibit firearms in the US totally by some law or amendment and is repealed in the future our rights will still be watered down more than they are today like what they did in the 21st Amendment by weakening the 2nd Amendment more than it is now.

  21. I think maybe there is a better lesson to be learned here. Let’s not forget that Prohibition was only made possible with the passage of the 18th Amendment and which then made Prohibition on alcohol consumption the “Law of the Land”. Then later this failed experiment needed to be corrected but could not easily be done with any act of the Congress or by presidential executive order. No Sir, this change required another constitutional amendment. And so it was not until with the passage of the 21st Amendment that the era of Prohibition finally came to an end. It is an accepted fact that an amendment to the Constitution permanently changes and alters the document because under contract law an amendment always over rides and “supersedes” the conditions and the terms of the original document. And so only via the amendment process can the Constitution be changed or altered. In like manner, the Second Amendment made permanent changes that over ride and supersede the original document and so regardless of what authority to regulate firearms is claimed under the provisions of the original document (Supremacy Clause and Commerce Clause), the new terms, conditions and the command directives of the Second Amendment over ride and supersede all that came before it. And so therefore, “the Right of the people to keep and bear arms Shall Not be infringed” remains as the Law of the Land and is not subject to any change or reinterpretation without first following the dictates of the Constitution and going through another formal amendment process… In other words, absent a constitutional amendment that specifically addresses the provisions and the very explicit directive of the Second Amendment, the Right of the people to keep and bear arms Shall Not be infringed stands and remains as the unimpeachable Supreme Law of the Land.

    So why are we not making this argument in federal court when defending individual gun Rights???

    • You make a great point. It is mainly because the federal and state governments have said they can do it (firearm control) and the courts have went along with it. We have relinquished our 2nd Amendment rights a long time ago when the first state, county, and city governmental body decided to control firearms and no one fought it.

    • 2A is about us, the people, having power over our government – by violence if necessary. Is it any surprise that when one part of the government passes a bill that decreases this power and infringes on RTKBA and other part of the government signs it into a law, the third part of the government finds no problem with it?

  22. There is a world of difference between having something forced on you by government and having something by individual choice.

    Even if that something is ultimately better.

  23. Except that it’s not. Sobriety is a good thing. Defenselessness isn’t. No reasonable argument can be made to force either, but don’t conflate the desire of having a sober society with that of having a defenseless society.

    • “Sobriety” and “defenselessness” are both subjective values and are equally subject to wide variations in meanings. What Theresa points out in her article is how both National Prohibition and Gun Control are driven by parallel dynamics. Historically, America has seen many dynamically similar movements appear and disappear. What they had in common was not the moral justification of their purposes but, instead, their ultimate incorporation of coercion as a tactic to achieve their goals. As with National Prohibition, contemporary gun control ideology is driven by a coercive ideology. It is that distinction that is most important.

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