October 19, 2005
Myths About Gun Control
By John Stossel
Guns are dangerous. But myths are dangerous, too. Myths about
guns are very dangerous, because they lead to bad laws. And bad
laws kill people.
"Don't tell me this bill will not make a difference," said
President Clinton, who signed the Brady Bill into law.
Sorry. Even the federal government can't say it has made a
difference. The Centers for Disease Control did an extensive
review of various types of gun control: waiting periods,
registration and licensing, and bans on certain firearms. It
found that the idea that gun control laws have reduced violent
crime is simply a myth.
I wanted to know why the laws weren't working, so I asked the
experts. "I'm not going in the store to buy no gun," said one
maximum-security inmate in New Jersey. "So, I could care less if
they had a background check or not."
"There's guns everywhere," said another inmate. "If you got
money, you can get a gun."
Talking to prisoners about guns emphasizes a few key lessons.
First, criminals don't obey the law. (That's why we call them
"criminals.") Second, no law can repeal the law of supply and
demand. If there's money to be made selling something, someone
will sell it.
A study funded by the Department of Justice confirmed what the
prisoners said. Criminals buy their guns illegally and easily.
The study found that what felons fear most is not the police or
the prison system, but their fellow citizens, who might be armed.
One inmate told me, "When you gonna rob somebody you don't know,
it makes it harder because you don't know what to expect out of
them."
What if it were legal in America for adults to carry concealed
weapons? I put that question to gun-control advocate Rev. Al
Sharpton. His eyes opened wide, and he said, "We'd be living in a
state of terror!"
In fact, it was a trick question. Most states now have "right to
carry" laws. And their people are not living in a state of
terror. Not one of those states reported an upsurge in crime.
Why? Because guns are used more than twice as often defensively
as criminally. When armed men broke into Susan Gonzalez' house
and shot her, she grabbed her husband's gun and started firing.
"I figured if I could shoot one of them, even if we both died,
someone would know who had been in my home." She killed one of
the intruders. She lived. Studies on defensive use of guns find
this kind of thing happens at least 700,000 times a year.
And there's another myth, with a special risk of its own. The
myth has it that the Supreme Court, in a case called United
States v. Miller, interpreted the Second Amendment -- "A well
regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free
State, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not
be infringed" -- as conferring a special privilege on the
National Guard, and not as affirming an individual right. In
fact, what the court held is only that the right to bear arms
doesn't mean Congress can't prohibit certain kinds of guns that
aren't necessary for the common defense. Interestingly, federal
law still says every able-bodied American man from 17 to 44 is a
member of the United States militia.
What's the special risk? As Alex Kozinski, a federal appeals
judge and an immigrant from Eastern Europe, warned in 2003, "the
simple truth -- born of experience -- is that tyranny thrives
best where government need not fear the wrath of an armed
people."
"The prospect of tyranny may not grab the headlines the way vivid
stories of gun crime routinely do," Judge Kozinski noted. "But
few saw the Third Reich coming until it was too late. The Second
Amendment is a doomsday provision, one designed for those
exceptionally rare circumstances where all other rights have
failed -- where the government refuses to stand for reelection
and silences those who protest; where courts have lost the
courage to oppose, or can find no one to enforce their decrees.
However improbable these contingencies may seem today, facing
them unprepared is a mistake a free people get to make only
once."
©2005 JFS Productions, Inc. Distributed by Creators Syndicate
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--
Ms Liberty
United States of America
Lenin coined the term "useful idiots" for the morons who could be
used to wage a campaign for socialism, and they're all out in
force, in the form of liberals on usenet.
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