HOW GUN CONTROL WORKED FOR POLAND

Throughout Polish history, the Poles had been marched over and through; partitioned, oppressed, worked to death, and summarily abused in the worst ways by almost every country around them, including Germany, Russia, Hungary, and Prussia. However – all of the tortures and murders they endured were always by someone from another country – up until WWII.

In 1970, it wasn’t the Russians who picked off the shipyard strikers, it wasn’t the Russian army driving the tanks over the workers; and it wasn’t the Russians who fired into the panicking people on the streets from the buildings and helicopters. It was the Polish Zomo police. It was Poles killing Poles. For Poland – even more so than for the U.S. -- being at war with fellow Poles could not have been imagined in a million eons. The Poles are 99% homogeneous. Unlike the “melting pot" of the United States, they are all the same people, and they have always stood together in the face of annihilation. But not this time. This time, their own people on whom the citizens had always relied on for defense, had turned their weapons from the outside enemy on to their own people.

Gun control in a communist country (or even a Nazi-occupied country) was utter and complete. No one but the army had a gun: there was no such thing as the common man hunting or target practicing. So here were the ordinary workers, in a workers’ state, striking for higher wages so that they could afford food to feed their starving families. They were met with guns, and forced to fight back with bottles, bricks, sticks, stones – anything that their arms could hurl.

I know for a fact that the Polish people at this time, and any other oppressive time in their history would have wept to be able read these words from their governement:

"Before a standing army can rule, the people must be disarmed; as they are in almost every kingdom in Europe. The supreme power in America cannot enforce unjust laws by the sword; because the whole body of the people are armed, and constitute a force superior to any band of regular troops that can be, on any pretence, raised in the United States. A military force, at the command of Congress, can execute no laws, but such as the people perceive to be just and constitutional; for they will possess the power, and jealousy will instantly inspire the inclination, to resist the execution of a law which appears to them unjust and oppressive."
---Noah Webster, An Examination of the Leading Principles of the Federal Constitution (Philadelphia 1787).

"To suppose arms in the hands of citizens, to be used at individual discretion, except in private self-defense, or by partial orders of towns, countries or districts of a state, is to demolish every constitution, and lay the laws prostrate, so that liberty can be enjoyed by no man; it is a dissolution of the government. The fundamental law of the militia is, that it be created, directed and commanded by the laws, and ever for the support of the laws."
---John Adams, A Defence of the Constitutions of the United States 475 (1787-1788)

"They that can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety."
---Benjamin Franklin, Historical Review of Pennsylvania, 1759.

"To model our political system upon speculations of lasting tranquility, is to calculate on the weaker springs of the human character."
---Alexander Hamilton

(these and other quotes can be found at http://www.guncite.com/gc2ndfqu.html )

The Poles idealized and fantasized about owning guns to enforce their personal safety, and looked to the United States as the exemplary icon for just such a dream.

At a later time, I brought with me a university professor who’s specialty was Social Economics. When Solidarity found out he owned 10 guns, he became an instant hero, and famously worshipped wherever he went.

The Solidarity logo is only enhanced by the poster of the cowboy from High Noon (Gary Cooper) as the icon of the whole movement. Solidarity thought of itself as the cowboys of Europe – I thought of them as the bravest, smartest people of their generation (http://www.contemporaryposters.com/category.php?Category_ID=143).

Gun control did not work out too well for the working people of Poland.