If gun ownership by civilians were banned by law, there would be fewer murders. Many murders are committed with guns. Making guns harder to acquire would reduce the number of guns in all hands, not just the hands of law-abiding citizens.
Guns are not all bad. We need them in both law enforcement and in the military. We do not “need” them for hunting or for target practice as a sport. Some people do need guns for their own protection, in the US, because there are so many guns in the hands of law-breakers, and because in rural areas it can take unreasonably long to wait for police protection in emergencies.
If we could find a way to eliminate guns from the bad guys, then no additional gun control measures would be needed. Until then, we need more gun control, not less.
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16 comments:
This is like saying "We could stop STDs if everyone would just stop having sex!"
Sounds good, but is impossible to actually implement.
Here's your problem - there are 270,000,000 firearms in civilian possession in the US. Now, let's pick a ridiculously high number of "crimes committed while using a gun", say 100,000. The real number is less than that, but I'll give you a wide margin of error.
That would mean .000374% of all guns are used in crimes.
Now, let's take another example without numbers (so we can't play statistics games). Out of every crime committed each year with guns, how many of those are the criminal's very first foray into crime? How many people go from honest, law abiding citizen to armed robber?
Most gun crime is committed by people with records.
If you can't control the criminals and keep them off the street, how can making it harder for me to legally purchase a firearm going to do a better job? I'm the one who follows the law, not the criminal. They steal their guns or buy stolen ones. That's already illegal. How is making it more illegal going to solve that .000374%?
Making guns harder to acquire would reduce the number of guns in all hands
It's already hard for criminals to acquire guns. Most cannot legally purchase them in the first place, however, they still manage to get them.
Gun control laws only have influence over those who abide by the law. Criminals, as the very name implies, do not.
So, you say more gun control will take the guns away from criminals, but criminals already have their access to guns severly curtailed.
All more gun control will accomplish is the creation of more victims.
Bottom Line, Its been tried and it completely backfires.
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/uk/article568214.ece
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk/3419401.stm
Also you speak of "Need" and only refer to hunting and other sports. I will agree, while I'm an avid target and sport shooter (though I don't have much interest in hunting) That's not why I am against massive gun bans like yours, and that's not why UK's violent crime rate keeps getting higher every year. Why we need guns is personal protection.
I could talk about myself, but being 6'00" and 190 lbs and fairly strong, I'm not the best example.
My wife (who is in the process of getting her conceal carry permit) IS. She's not very strong, a poor runner, and a woman (not many rapes happen to men, comparatively). She relies on Public transportation to get to and from work. She works in Boston. It doesn't take a person with a gun to overpower her and do with her what they wish. Really all it would take is a weight advantage and bare hands to make a corpse of her. Throw in a peice of pipe, a baseball bat, or a knife, and she would have NO chance if somebody targeted her for a violent crime. No chance, unless she was armed.
Also, Robb is right, the crimes we're all concerned about are not caused by legally held guns. Expanding laws, or banning altogether is only going to effect the legal guns, and won't touch the ones held by the criminals (see again the UK).
So more gun control flys right in the face of your very good line of:
"If we could find a way to eliminate guns from the bad guys, then no additional gun control measures would be needed." seeing as more gun control only stops the GOOD guys with guns. The bad guys, by nature, don't care to follow laws.
With all due respect you are wrong. What I think you are missing is that the only thing standing between The Citizens of the United States of America and dictatorship. Is the Law abiding gun owner. The Second amendment was not a mistake, by the founding fathers, rather they saw it as the protection of all the other rights that Americans should have.
The result of no firearms except in Police hands would not be as wonderful as you might think. Look at the history when gun bans have been enacted. Police states follow.
Criminals do not follow laws anyway. Laws only affect the “Law abiding”
Here are some facts.
You have no right to Police protection
Castle Rock v. Gonzales, the Supreme Court found that Jessica Gonzales did not have a constitutional right to police protection even in the presence of a restraining order.
By a vote of 7-to-2, the Supreme Court ruled that Gonzales has no right to sue her local police department for failing to protect her and her children from her estranged husband.
11 November 1938, The Nazis enacted Regulations against Jews' Possession of weapons; we know the end result of this.
Please do not be blinded by the lies from the anti gun crowd. Get the facts, go to the local gun range and meet some of the people you will be pleasantly surprised how kind, decent and normal they are.
I ask you, Choose not to be a victim.
Robb Allen, thanks for your comments.
The difference is that with gun control, we do not end the human race, which is the outcome of stopping sex.
A better analogy is that gun control is to guns as medicine is to STDs.
Typically, only one gun is used by a person at a time, so a bettter stat would be, how many Americans have guns.
But it would be even more instructive to know (I don't) what percent of crimes are committed with guns. I suspect that is a significant figure.
On the second point, every single criminal was once a law-abiding person. Every single armed robber was once a law-abiding person.
It is too easy for criminals to get their hands on guns. The aim of gun control is to make it a lot harder, and more consistent from state to state.
I agree that our criminal justice system is too soft on crime. We need to overhaul it so that no criminal ever gets off the hook on any type of technicality, and we need justice to be much quicker.
It ought not be easier to get a gun than a driver's license. We need intelligent gun control laws where the aim is reducing crime, as opposed to making profits for the gun manufacturers.
We also need to reduce the number of guns in circulation. Maybe the government can buy back some guns, and then destroy them.
rustmeister, thanks for your comments.
I am certain that better gun controls would reduce the use of guns in crime. Just like changes in the minimum wage or tax rates affect economic activity on the margin, so would intelligent gun control.
Right now, a lot of people from New York (as an example) drive south where they purchase a boatload of guns and bring them back to the city where the guns end up in the hands of criminals. The actual buyer may not have a criminal record, but consorts with criminals. Therefore, we need consistency state to state on gun controls, and we need to make it harder to obtain guns.
Maybe we need a registry of people who can purchase guns, as opposed to walk-ins. This would have minimal effect on the good guys, but most of the effect on the bad guys. Then there would be fewer victims.
weer'd beard, thanks for your comments.
I would like us to enact intelligent gun control at the national level. A national law could still specify regional differences. But we should experiment with the laws, to attempt to reduce the number of guns which end up in the wrong hands. Better gun technology would also help, but we would still need a law to mandate that.
Unless a person is trained in handling a gun, a person's gun might (and probably does too often) become used against him/her by the bad guy. So gun control should also require some level of training with firearms.
I agree with most of your sentiments, but my point is to save some innocent lives on the margin. I realize that gun control can never be a cure-all. Only by experimenting with different gun controls can we answer the question about whether controls do more harm than good.
Timothy,
I own several firearms that are untraceable. They were given to me as a gift or purchased from another person. As far as the government is concerned, those weapons do not exist, and most of us will fight tooth and nail to keep it that way. Confiscation always follows registration. It is historically proven.
However, most firearms used in crimes were not purchased, but stolen. The latest statistics (and I truly regret not having the link on hand. I'm leaving soon, but will try to track it down tomorrow when I'm home) clearly shows that the "boatloads" of firearms you are talking about do not exist. Those guns that were traced after being used in a crime took an average of 9 years from their legitimate purchase. That's not an indicator of mass purchases.
And it's already illegal to sell firearms to felons. The only way to "improve" the odds are to start classifying more people as felons.
As far as percentages of crimes with guns, you'll find there are more stabbings than gunshot wounds at any ER. The fact of the matter is that 80% of gunshot victims survive, thanks to modern medicine. A MUCH higher percentage (again, I need to provide you with a link) of stabbing victims survive and there's many more of them. You just don't hear about them on the news because they're generally not as lethal.
You state that generally, a person only uses one gun at a time. You are very right! So, pray tell, why does it matter how many guns a person owns then? It only takes one, so why make laws harder to obtain more than that when you admit it doesn't matter. Basically, the number of guns is irrelevant so long as the criminal can obtain just one.
And, just like it's illegal to own Meth or LSD, plenty of people make and sell it. The only reason gun manufacturers have high tech manufacturing facilities is because they spend an inordinate amount of effort into building quality firearms with safety. You'd be surprised how easy it is to make a simply gun out of a bar of steel (available at any welding shop) and a lathe. Wouldn't be safe nor durable, but it would be cheap, untraceable, and some enterprising criminals would learn how to manufacture them just like they learn complex chemistry to manufacture drugs.
It all starts with the criminal. That's what you need to control. Not the tool he or she uses.
"anonymous", thank you for your comments.
A lot of dictatorships have gun-toting citizens, and there are many democracies (including ours) with gun control.
Most governments have very powerful, high-tech militaries, not like when the Second Amendment was passed. I don't believe that amendment is what keeps us a democracy. In this day and age, we need plenty of institutions (free press, the vote, fair laws, sound courts of justice, and so on) and a vigilant populace to prevent a dictatorship. Times have changed, and what made sense 200 years ago does not necessarily make sense today. (Still, I am amazed at the foresight of our founding fathers!)
Correlation does not prove cause and effect. The Nazis were also gun lovers, but that did not make them evil.
I write about policy, but I don't make policy. I have to live in the world as it is, not as I wish it were. I may purchase a firearm someday, but I still think we need gun control.
Law-abiding citizens should not fear gun control. The bad guys should.
Robb,
Confiscation never followed registration of cars, so I don't follow that line of reasoning.
I don't know why a law-abiding person would object to registering firearms.
All those stolen firearms were once purchased by law-abiding persons, so we need to better control these weapons.
I agree that the guy from NYC who buys a bunch of firearms in, say, Virginia, is not typical. Still, if nothing else, why can't we stop guys like that?
I don't think our gun controls are so tight that felons don't buy guns "legally". That's the problem: felons do walk into gun shops and buy guns every day! We need better controls to prevent this from happening. A national registry, at least.
I agree that if you take guns away from the bad guys, a certain percentage of them will select another weapon, such as a hunting knife. But I think intelligent gun control would reduce crime on the margin.
I am glad that the survival rate is so good. But a lot of the survivors are also crippled for life. Guns are very dangerous in the wrong hands, which is why we need better controls.
The reason it matters how many guns a person owns is, the more guns, the easier for a bad guy to steal one. Again, I am talking about "on the margin". Besides, none of us lives forever. If you own 100 guns, what happens to them after you pass on? Again, on the margin, many guns from large collections end up in the wrong hands.
I suspect you agree with me that we need to control drugs like meth and LSD, even though bad guys can get their hands on them anyway....
I agree we need to control the criminals. I say, lock them up and force them to do hard labor. But sadly, only a police state has "no crime" (or, at least they don't admit to having crime). It is a lot harder to convict the bad guys than to control guns. (We need to do both, of course.) In many states, including my own (NJ), there are witnesses to murders and mayhem who do not give testimony because there is a high probability that if they do, they will be murdered (usually via a gun). So gun control would also, on the margin, help us lock up the bad guys.
Alright, I will be honest - I am not going to address the primary thrust of this weblog post. Other people have already adequately done so, and better than I could have probably managed.
What does bug me, however, is this sentiment, implied in your post, as well as your subsuquent comments: "I don't know why a law-abiding person would object to registering firearms."
That is the same rationale which has created the Big-Brother-like state currently being "enjoyed" in Great Britain with one camera for every 14 citizens over there. Oh, and coincidentally, the crime rates have either remained the same, or increased, depending.
I suppose no law-abiding citizen would be concerned about computer-registration with the government, either? After all, a skilled hacker could inflict massive damages to corporations and individuals around the world. And we all know how much damage illegal downloaders have done to the music and movie industries (being partially fascetious with that comment, mind you).
Of course, a law-abiding citizen would not really mind having cameras set up in and around his house... after all, it might help the police determine who broke in, or if the house was being cased, or other such useful information... right?
These are, perhaps, outlandish analogies, but they are equally apt.
The simple fact of the matter is that the government has no business in certain aspects of our lives. Unfortunately, it is already too late for a vast majority of things, simply because people have become so enured to the Nanny State they have created around them. But why on God's Green Earth (tm) should we give them more information than they already have, when that information will serve no plausible purpose.
The rationale of "No law-abiding citizen should be afraid of..." can be used, and abused, for just about anything, including a rights-abolishing move such as the one you are proposing. Which brings me to the final point, which I will only touch upon briefly... what, exactly, happened to "... shall not be abridged"?
Well, what we have here is another example of "Coincidence is God's way of remaining anonymous."
I just happened to be poking through my blogroll after writing this comment, and stumbled across this:
http://blog.joehuffman.org/2007/11/01/PreventingCrime.aspx
As always, other people said it better than me.
The problem is, there is demand for firearms. As long as there is demand, there will be someone there to meet that demand. What makes you think we'd be any more successful banning guns as we have been at banning pot? Both are fools errands, and the drug war is only serving to fuel a violent black market.
A mistake a lot of folks who don't know much about guns make is assuming they are advanced technology. They aren't. A small machine shop has all the technology you need to produce a functioning firearm. Today there's not much black market arms manufacturing in the United States, because there are other sources for black market guns. But in Britain it's becoming a big problem.
Timothy, we have ample evidence that confiscation follows registration. California is a prime example. The gov't required registration of "assault weapons" and promised that it would not confiscate them later. Most owners of these weapons did not trust the gov't and did not register them, but a few did (approximately 1500). A year later, the gov't renegged on its promise and demanded that the registered guns beremoved from the state, or turned in. Failure to do so would result in the cops coming to your door to take them by force. Obviously, those who did not trust the gov't were vindicated in their distrust.
The Nazis were evil, regardless of their love for guns. And wherever they went, they confiscated guns from civilians. Look what they did to them after that. BTW, do you know what you have when only the military and law enforcement have guns? A police state, of course. Even if it is benevolent, it is a police state.
Also, comparing guns and cars for registration does not follow logically. Cars do not generate the irrational fear that guns do. That is what makes confiscation the politically correct thing to do.
Washington, D.C. has the most common-sense gun law you could want: an absolute ban on handguns, and storage rules for long guns that render those guns useless for self-defense. (In fact, they're so strict, they border on the ludicrous!)
Gun control has been historically shown to be a dismal failure as crime control, and believing otherwise will not make it so.
Remember, when guns are outlawed only outlaws will have guns. Still true, after all these years.
Timothy, we have ample evidence that confiscation follows registration. California is a prime example. The gov't required registration of "assault weapons" and promised that it would not confiscate them later. Most owners of these weapons did not trust the gov't and did not register them, but a few did (approximately 1500). A year later, the gov't renegged on its promise and demanded that the registered guns beremoved from the state, or turned in. Failure to do so would result in the cops coming to your door to take them by force. Obviously, those who did not trust the gov't were vindicated in their distrust.
The Nazis were evil, regardless of their love for guns. And wherever they went, they confiscated guns from civilians. Look what they did to them after that. BTW, do you know what you have when only the military and law enforcement have guns? A police state, of course. Even if it is benevolent, it is a police state.
Also, comparing guns and cars for registration does not follow logically. Cars do not generate the irrational fear that guns do. That is what makes confiscation the politically correct thing to do.
Washington, D.C. has the most common-sense gun law you could want: an absolute ban on handguns, and storage rules for long guns that render those guns useless for self-defense. (In fact, they're so strict, they border on the ludicrous!)
Gun control has been historically shown to be a dismal failure as crime control, and believing otherwise will not make it so.
Remember, when guns are outlawed only outlaws will have guns. Still true, after all these years.
MORE GUN CONTROL.....Yes, lets ban guns alltogether. Then we will turn the hard working honest people into criminals because, then they will be out hideing in alleysbuying stollen guns to protect themselves from the gun wheeling thugs that just happened to forget to turn their guns overto our police. And lets not forget that percentage or criminals that are walking the streets with multiple gun charges. No thanks, you keep holdings up that news paper and harping on gun control. And remember, when you swat that punk thug with that news paper swing it really hard, because you may only get one swing.
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