Hollywood Director David Mamet: I Want To Defend My Family Just Like Obama Does His

Like many Second Amendment rights advocates, David Mamet — who wrote and directed the upcoming HBO Phil Spector movie — may or may not own a gun.

Unlike many in the entertainment community (who used to be considered edgy and rebellious), however, he does not blindly follow the Obama agenda.

Mamet is the Pulitzer-Prize winning playwright (Glengarry Glen Ross), film director, screenwriter, and author. He also created and executive produced The Unit on television.

In an essay posted at Daily Beast/Newsweek, Mamet writes, in part, about gun ownership regulations and constitutional rights:

“The Constitution’s drafters did not require a wag to teach them that power corrupts: they had experienced it in the person of King George … They realized that King George was not an individual case, but the inevitable outcome of unfettered power; that any person or group with the power to tax, to form laws, and to enforce them by arms will default to dictatorship, absent the constant unflagging scrutiny of the governed, and their severe untempered insistence upon compliance with law.

“… It was to guard us against this inevitable decay of government that the Constitution was written. Its purpose was and is not to enthrone a Government superior to an imperfect and confused electorate, but to protect us from such a government.

“… The Left loves a phantom statistic that a firearm in the hands of a citizen is X times more likely to cause accidental damage than to be used in the prevention of crime, but what is there about criminals that ensures that their gun use is accident-free? If, indeed, a firearm were more dangerous to its possessors than to potential aggressors, would it not make sense for the government to arm all criminals, and let them accidentally shoot themselves? Is this absurd? Yes, and yet the government, of course, is arming criminals. Violence by firearms is most prevalent in big cities with the strictest gun laws … Cities of similar size in Texas, Florida, Arizona, and elsewhere, which leave the citizen the right to keep and bear arms, guaranteed in the Constitution, typically are much safer.

” … [Obama] has just passed a bill that extends to him and his family protection, around the clock and for life, by the Secret Service. He, evidently, feels that he is best qualified to determine his needs, and, of course, he is. As I am best qualified to determine mine.

” …The police do not exist to protect the individual. They exist to cordon off the crime scene and attempt to apprehend the criminal. We individuals are guaranteed by the Constitution the right to self-defense. This right is not the Government’s to ‘award’ us. They have never been granted it.

“… The individual is not only best qualified to provide his own personal defense, he is the only one qualified to do so: and his right to do so is guaranteed by the Constitution.”

In his essay, Mamet asserts that two million times a year, armed law-abiding citizens prevent crimes. As a proponent of arming teachers and other staff with firearms to protect students from a horrible rampage such as the one that occurred at the Sandy Hook Elementary School, he wonders as a practical matter how a “gun-free zone” sign would deter a wrongdoer.

Mamet notes that he respects the president for taking steps to keep his family safe, but asks “why would he want to prohibit me from doing the same?”

At this writing, 88 percent of Daily Beast readers agree with David Mamet’s views on gun control in America. What do you think of his opinion that more guns equal less crime and his take on the Constitution and the Second Amendment?