Sarah Brady, wife of former Reagan press secretary Jim Brady and founder of Handgun Control Inc., disclosed in her new autobiography that she purchased a gun for her son for Christmas 2000, a .30-06 bolt-action rifle. She allows that she felt funny driving home packing heat.

The gun she gave to her son is one she and her antigun cronies demonized as a "sniper rifle." How ironic that some of the legislation she and HCI have proposed would have made it a crime for her to put the gun under the tree without transfer papers and prior approval from the Feds, Mrs. Claus and Rudolph.

Two things keep conservatives going through the barrage of disdain they endure as they defend the right to keep and bear arms under the Second Amendment and myriad other nerdy causes they espouse that emit snootiness. Conservatives can peel away the "give peace a chance" layers of pseudo-intellectualism and see two things: data and human nature. Guns are inextricably intertwined with both.

Data show that when you don't have guns, you have trouble. Europe is the current proving ground. Over the past year there have been three shootings on the cosmopolitan continent that surpassed our Columbine. Sixteen people were gunned down at a German high school in April, 14 lawmakers were shot in Switzerland in September 2001 and eight city council members were killed near Paris in March 2002.

Euros, who usually cannot click their tongues sufficiently to express disgust at us and our guns, whether they are hunting Osama in Afghanistan or ducks in Connecticut, and who have Utopia in terms of gun-control legislation, have a problem. Britain banned handguns in 1996, and its gun crimes rose 40 percent in that same time frame. Austria banned the use of guns, even in self-defense, and its armed robberies are up 51 percent. Edelweiss!

Europe is a percolating mess. European nations fell for the '60s social policies hook, line and sinker. They went with free love; in fact, free everything. Without conservatives nipping at their heels and yelping about rule of law and morality, Europe became nonjudgmental central.

Europeans cannot bring themselves to condemn the 9/11 attacks on the United States. They are fit to be tied over Israel's retaliation against the suicide bombers. They grant absolute rights without moral absolutes.

The result is a lawless culture that criminalizes speech, bans guns and wonders why urban crime is out of control. Holland prohibits hate speech in its constitution, has disarmed its citizens and now, having disarmed tongue and self, stands defenseless as an increasing population of radical Islamic immigrants runs rampant through urban areas. Crime-loving immigrants have taken over inner cities and produced a crime rate that has Dutch citizens looking for gun-toting, candid-speaking "extreme right" candidates.

The French nearly sputtered up their foie gras when they realized that "extreme right" Jean-Marie Le Pen took 25 percent of the vote in the recent national election. The socialist and Communist elite feel the outrage and backlash from unemployed blue-collar workers who live unarmed among the crime and criminals. "People feel unsafe in the streets," was the platform of one "extreme right" candidate for the National Assembly.

One Berlin paper, startled at the movement wrote, "Whether Norway, Denmark, Switzerland, Austria, Italy, Portugal, France, Belgium or now Holland, everywhere the right-wing populists are on the march." Oh, how people speak when they regret lost rights.

Gun control is not such a hot idea when you're living in an urban area overrun by crime, particularly by young hostile males as dangerous as elk in search of a hook-up. The savvy Euros are weaponless, both in arms and tongue. Having taken politically correct speech to the point of making discouraging and disparaging words a crime, few dare mention the immigrant crime problem. Guns fire one way - at the silenced law-abiding citizens.

Criminalize guns and, as the bumper sticker goes, only the criminals have guns. The conservative vision embodies prevention via strength. Weapons worked to bring down the Iron Curtain. Gun strength among the citizenry deters crime.

Mark these European events well. Watch these mighty foreshadowings of things that could cross the Atlantic. Euros have sophisticated themselves into a defenseless corner. They now do what Sarah Brady and others of the enlightenment always do when human nature kicks in - they return to conservative views and policies. Embarrassing though it may be, conservative opposition to disarming citizens keeps the peace. Our Euro brethren and sisters have always been ahead of the curve, as they are now. Their lack of weapons finds them defenseless and angry with gun-toting criminals. Take note and prepare to thank a conservative - human nature will soon arrive from the continent.

Marianne M. Jennings is a professor of legal and ethical studies at Arizona State University. Her e-mail address is mmjdiary@aol.com.