The comments below point out well why the right to keep and bear arms is important in a free society...if it is to remain free:
Big Easy Loses Right to Bear Arms
"Waters were receding across this flood-beaten city today as police officers began confiscating weapons, including legally registered firearms, from civilians in preparation for a mass forced evacuation of the residents still living here," the New York Times reports.
"No civilians in New Orleans will be allowed to carry pistols, shotguns, or other firearms, said P. Edwin Compass, the superintendent of police. 'Only law enforcement are allowed to have weapons,' he said.
In "Restoring the Right to Bear Arms" from the Cato Handbook on Policy, Gene Healy, a Cato senior editor, and Robert Levy, a Cato senior fellow in constitutional studies, write: "Today, states' incompetence at defending citizens against criminals is a more palpable threat to our liberties than is tyranny by the state. But that incompetence coupled with a disarmed citizenry could well create the conditions that lead to tyranny. The demand for police to defend us increases in proportion to our inability to defend ourselves. That's why disarmed societies tend to become police states. Witness law-abiding inner city residents, many of whom have been disarmed by gun control, begging for police protection against drug gangs -- despite the terrible violations of civil liberties that such protection entails, such as curfews and antiloitering laws. The right to bear arms is thus preventive -- it reduces the demand for a police state. George Washington University law professor Robert Cottrol put it this way: 'A people incapable of protecting themselves will lose their rights as a free people, becoming either servile dependents of the state or of the criminal predators.'"
