For decades now, I have cleared my throat and articulated a comparison I call The CPR Corollary. It is a comparison of moral purpose and public interest between a CPR-trained society and an armed society. It also answers questions of trust.

The next inevitable issue is how the second amendment is supposed to keep government small. The implication is that it is force, but it is really something much more subtle and compelling.

This interest in non-violence may be on the lips of the non-gun owner electorate before refusing to own a gun in the home or before electing to own a gun in the home. These are the citizens who want to learn more and have a more open mind about how the second amendment serves all homes in America. Their question deserves to be answered.

First of all, we know there are about 5 million completed acts of violence across the nation every year. These are burglaries, beatings, robberies, rapes, and general mayhems. A mayhem is a felony of violence. Not to be confused with bedlam, a hospital of howling and general chaos, a mayhem is among the five enumerated felonies which make up what lawyers call the felony murder rule. If a death results from a burglary, arson, rape, robbery or mayhem, the death is a murder. And for good reason.

Crime is anti-social. It is not an offshoot of poverty, but a series of conscious decisions motivated by older anger and current hostility. Among the five enumerated felonies, a death may not have been intended, but the acts are intentional just the same. The danger for the individual (and community) comes in the likelihood that a simple plan of stealing can deteriorate into a change of heart for no witnesses or for plain old rage. These statistics rise when there is no resistance sufficient to stop them before they can complete what they set out to do; a theft coupled with a beating or worse. These will number in the area of 5 million this year.

Alright, how do we get this down? And can it be done non-violently? And the payoff: how do armed citizens really get us to smaller government?

Yes, it can be done non-violently. It is done non-violently. Armed citizens mean smaller government.

The ubiquitous armed citizen can reduce a number of 5 million completed acts of violence to something smaller. How about a goal of 2.5 million?

Non-violently? You betcha.

Many, many bureaucracies are dependent on violent crime for their very existence. These bureaucracies have no place in a free society such as ours. They are supported purely where political gun control politically robs the people of their ability to resist a crime in progress only to then point to high crime. This is a pattern. Reverse this and you dissolve the very need for such costly and obnoxious bureaucracies to a more suitable asset level.

Would you keep an immense bureaucracy if it depended on high crime rates to exist?

Okay, so that’s the payoff, John. What about the non-violent part?

Oh, yeah, that’s one of the best parts, non-violent return to safer streets after a return to smaller governments. Safer streets are a reflection of a healthy self-rule, and you will never get there under gun control because it keeps crisis alive.

With 5 million violent crimes, we have thousands upon thousands of shootings, and some 14,000 or so shooting deaths. But any good ICU Nurse will note that their GSW patients are criminal shootings, not justifiable self-defense shootings. Where are the self-defense shootings if the armed citizen is such a hot idea? Maybe one or two? Is that enough?

The armed citizen is such a hot idea because the objective of the battery-ready sidearm is not to shoot the suspect to death as a single response, but to stop the crime or attempted crime on the threat of force, in the hand of the victim, often without shooting at all. [The thugs will decide whether they are shot, and gun owners know this very well. Thugs know it, too. Hence, millions of non-shootings while stopping 2.5 million crimes from becoming 2.5 million more completed acts to add to the 5 million this year.]

Millions of times every year, (as shown by the research of Professor John Lott, Jr. and the Gary Kleck Study) this is accomplished by pointing a loaded gun at the suspect and the suspect’s compliance. This ability to shoot if necessary – this upper hand with lethal force and resolve which is so absent in the other 5 million completed acts of violence – keeps 5 million completed acts from becoming 7.5 million completed acts every year.

The formula is to reverse direction now so that, instead of stubbornly controlling guns of the honest – and thereby keeping the 5 million acts of violence hovering at 5 million year in and year out – we reduce the number from 5 million to a rough 2.5 million year in and year out.

Non-violently. Stopping a violent crime in progress is not my idea of violence. Gun control tying the hands of the honest is to advocate violence for political purposes.

Naturally, if America manages to reduce 5 million acts of violent crime by half, perhaps we may see bureaucracies who are no longer needed also diminish by half.

Hm. Congress, call your office. Support the repeal of gun laws for the safety of the people and to begin your promise for smaller government.

John Longenecker is author of Even Safer Streets 2011 – The Second Amendment as a Mainstream Value available worldwide.