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Gun Control
Does it help
By: David K. Every
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Oct 05,1998
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 ome of the most annoying arguments stem from the well meaning (but uninformed) arguing about the costs of guns (in various forms). Many use pseudo-facts and no logic -- and instead they use emotionally charged arguments to appeal to the hearts (and hide from the minds). They attack that which they don't understand. They attack the symptom of violence or crime (Guns), and ignore the problem (the Criminals). Basically many just fear the tool (and are often ignorant about it), and so they are easily manipulated in to think they must be eliminated to make society a better place -- not unlike racists or other forms of bigots and intollerants who attack the cultures they don't understand. It isn't malice -- they all mean well -- but the ends doesn't justify the means, and what matters is their actions.
One of the main attacks against guns implies that guns cause crime (or violence, or death and so on). They use statistics like trying to compare the U.S. to England, Japan or other places with totalitarian gun control laws as rationalization that we should mimic them. They ignore countries with strict gun control and more gun crime than the U.S., they ignore the countries with far more guns than the U.S. and that have far less gun crime the U.S. They want to ignore the consequence of gun control, and the 100 Million Lives lost in this century that were murdered by their Governments (which had Gun Control and gun monopolies) and say that we should mimic those utopic policies. The gun control advocates won't even look at trends in this country with regards to gun control or as to what might be causes of violence and gun violence -- the facts are that they hate guns, and seem to believe that any means to eliminate them is justified.
If you want to read more on Violence, Crime and Cultures (and the causes of violence in America), then read Gun Crime.
To be fair, and do an objective assessment of Gun Control, its effects and costs on society, then we need to be fair and balanced and look the good and the bad of guns -- not just one side. The bad of guns is pounded into the population daily through organized campaigns of propaganda -- so I will more stress the other side in this article (those things you don't hear). I'm not implying that the bad doesn't exist -- it is just that it is so over-stressed and over-sensationalized that people don't have the balances.
          
There are over 300,000,000 guns in the U.S. Over 99.9%+ of Guns will NOT be used to commit a crime each year. Many more guns are used each year to prevent crimes than to commit them. Over 2 million times a year (usually estimated at 2.5 Million times), guns are used in self defense in this country -- compare that number against the murders and assaults, and you learn that the tool is used far more often to end violence/crime rather than to commit it. The 35,000 gun deaths every year to 2.5 million good uses (guns to protect themselves, their families, and their livelihoods) makes about 65 lives protected by guns for every life lost to a gun. And of those 35,000 deaths, a lot can be police or civilians using a gun properly -- so they are gun deaths, but justifiable and a lot better than the alternatives (so those should be factored out). Since suicide ratios have never been proven to change based on availability of guns, all those should be filtered out as well (since they would have killed themselves anyway). We end up with ratios of 100s to 1 (good to bad uses of a gun). Five lives are protected each minute (of those 2.5 million protective uses of guns, about 1/2 million are believed to have saved lives). Gun control is fighting to reduce the good stats and get more people killed, raped, or beaten!? Many criminals are already not allowed to have guns, and so they are already using illegal guns (and breaking many other laws). Outlawing more guns can only change the good-gun to bad-gun ratio in the criminals favor! That will likely increase crimes. Imagine how much worse the nation would be without those good guns (which are the only guns you can ban).
        
There are some really bad studies that claim that you are more likely to be harmed by your own gun than use it for protection. The study that everyone quotes was the New England Journal of Medicine Study that says you are 43 times more likely to have your gun used against you than to use it against someone else.
Gun Ownership as a Risk Factor for Homicide in the Home, Arthur L. Kellermann, MD, MPH; Frederick P. Rivara, MD, MPH; et al, The New England Journal of Medicine, Vol. 329, No. 15, October 7, 1993, pp. 1084-1091.
This fallacious study was fabricated using tax dollars, and is one of the most misused slogans in the antigun-freedom campaign. The study basically went into the worst area of an inner-city (that had huge violence problems), then Kellermann and Rivera totaled up the numbers of firearms murders, suicides, and fatal accidents, and then compared the number to the number of firearms deaths which were classified as justifiable homicide -- and then came up with that number.
The study left out little issues like:
- 2/3rds of the "killings" were suicides. If you aren't suicidal, then you should factor those out to start with -- once you took suicides out, you were already at only a 2.3:1. And that was just getting started.
- The author himself backed down and revised his numbers (still using bad methodologies or corpse-counting) to 2.7 times to 1. But that didn't prevent the press and anti-self-defense groups from using the larger number. That 43:1 is beaten into the ground.
- The figures chose to exclude many cases of lawful self-defense (and miscount them) -- we were already close to 1:1.
- The majority of the remaining killings were of long abused women who finally had enough and used the gun against their abusive spouses. Since the gun was the spouses, that was "against yourself", assuming that you are a wife abuser! If you aren't an abusive man, then you should factor those killings out of the ratio as well.
- This counting corpses methodology doesn't take into account all the times a gun is drawn but not fired, or fired and doesn't kill. Already the ratio was in the favor of the gun owner -- and that isn't counting that there is 65:1 ratio of guns being used to stop a criminal without killing them.
This certainly isn't the only bad study I've read -- almost all the antigun studies are extremely slanted, and the media, academics and others just "lay off". They know the methodology is flawed -- but they don't care -- science, methodology and the facts don't matter when you are persecuting gun owners. This is just one example among dozens. Start doing your research. Read both sides views, and look at the facts and methodology. You may not like guns, but the NRA is about 1,000 times more honest than most of the researchers attacking guns -- because they can be! Defending guns is easy because the facts are so overwhelming in their favor! Guns aren't more likely to be used against you (and certainly not 43 times more likely) -- but the truth didn't matter. The media intentionally sensationalized falsehoods to dupe the masses. Guns are used a couple million times a year to stop crimes, you never hear those stats do you? However, we seem to hear about practically each and every one of the few thousands of murders by guns, with each of them having a picture of a gun (and often misrepresenting what it was).
US Bureau of Justice Statistics studies show that guns are "the safest and most effective means of defense" and that using a gun for protection results in fewer injuries to the defender than using any other means of defense! Guns are even safer than not resisting at all. The myth that "guns are only used for killing" and the myth that "guns are dangerous when used for protection" melt when exposed to scientific examination and data. The myths persist because they are repeated so frequently and dogmatically that few think to question the myths by examining the mountains of data available.
    
Using the FBI's definition of "acquaintance and domestic homicide" requiring only that the murderer knew or was related to the decedent, the data still shows that acquaintance and domestic homicide are a minority of all homicides! That dueling drug dealers or gang-members are acquainted does not make them "friends", so the minority of cases where a "friend" actually does kill a "friend" would be much smaller if we were using your and my definition of what is a "friend"!
Of the remaining cases, over three-quarters of murderers have long histories of violence against not only their enemies and other "acquaintances," but also against their relatives. "A history of violence is the best predictor of violence." So if you know a violent criminal, then certainly do not give them a gun. Of course if they are a violent criminal with a record (conviction), then they are already banned from having guns -- so how will more gun control help?
The perpetrators of "acquaintance" and "domestic" homicide are overwhelmingly vicious aberrants with long histories of violence inflicted upon those close to them. So if you are a normal person, dealing with a normal friend (who doesn't have a long history of violence), then the statistical likelihood of you getting killed (shot) by them is probably up there with them winning the lottery twice and giving you one of the tickets! This reality belies the imagery of "friends and family" murdering each other in fits of passion simply because a gun was present "in the home."
 
Japan has over double the suicide (per capita) of the U.S., as do many European countries that have strict gun control. Despite very few guns, and very restrictive gun control those who want to commit suicide will! Many suicides are committed without guns. And these suicides are only counting the immediate and direct kind and don't count the many slow self-destruction suicides (like drinking yourself to death in East European countries), and so on -- which again seem to be significantly higher in countries with strict gun control. This is probably not causal -- since the relationship is probably more symptomatic (and more likely showing that repressive countries are depressing). There has never been a study that showed that gun control reduces suicide rates. If you show me one, I could rethink this point. In fact, since many countries with gun-control have higher suicide rates, we could use their logic (and false-causal relationship) and deduce that gun-control causes more suicides. So this whole point that outlawing guns will reduce suicide is a fallacy.
A few years ago (1995) there were like 1,400 accidental gun deaths. Considering there are something like 200-400 Million Guns in the U.S., and 50 percent of the homes in the U.S. own one or more guns, this makes them one of the safest tools on the planet. Think of 0.6 deaths per 100,000 for guns and compare that to 330 per hundred thousand for smoking just to get some perspective! There is more likelihood that you will drown to death in water less then one inch deep then that you will be accidentally shot to death (seriously!) -- and remember that the U.S. is a country where suicides are sometimes recategorized as "accidental gun death" by friendly Sheriffs hoping to insure the economic survival of the living family members (insurance often doesn't cover suicides). So there are probably less accidental deaths than are reported. Accidental death ratios are as follows:
- Motor vehicle -- 49,000
- Falls -- 12,400
- Drowning -- 5,000
- Fire, Burns -- 5,000
- Poison (solid, liquid) -- 5,300
- Ingestion of food, Object -- 3,600
- Firearms -- 1,400
- Poison by gas -- 1,000
Does that mean we all must go through licensing requirements before getting up on the roof or climbing a tree or ladder? It seems those activities are a nearly 10 times more dangerous than guns. If we are going to legislate safety (and sacrifice freedoms), then there are a lot more unsafe things to legislate. Since there are more guns than cars, it is just astounding how safe guns really are statistically!
Of course the facts aren't preventing the anti-gun groups from misrepresenting the facts. And those are using the most negative (towards gun) statistics out there -- the National Safety Council data show that accidental gun deaths have been falling steadily since the beginning of this century and now hover at an all time low. This means that about 200 tragic accidental gun deaths occur annually to kids, a far cry from the familiar false imagery of "thousands of innocent children." Should we tolerate those lies in silence?
We need Doctor Control! Newsweek (March 27, 1995, p. 60) reported that 100,000 people a year in the U.S. die "as a result of preventable medical errors--the equivalent of a jumbo-jet crash EVERY DAY." It seems that Doctors and Hospitals are almost 100 times more dangerous to society than guns. Should we outlaw Doctors? Over 6 years only 1,070 physicians were disciplined by state medical boards, after slaughtering an estimated 600,000 innocent citizens! About 3 times as many children will be killed by doctors each year than all gun related homicides and accidents combined. Of course 99%+ of the time you will get the proper medical treatment -- but Doctors (or medicine) are still the bigger risk. Of course we should not outlaw doctors, since we must weigh the good they do versus the bad. The same should be done for guns. Over 2 Million times a year a gun is used to prevent crimes or in self defense!
They are now adding manditory gun-locks to all puchases of guns and things like that for "our protection" -- you can have a gun safe and have no kids, but need to spend another $20 on a gun lock with each gun because bureaucrats think that will make the world safer! First they make people think the guns are unsafe (when they are safer than buckets of water and toilets to little children) then they use their false imagery to atttack gun owners and try to drive up the costs of purchase! You also have to spend another $20 on a gun safety test, and they have transfer fees of another $20 - 40 or so, and you have taxes on top of those. The truth is it is all just another way to attack the gun owners and try to drive the price up further to make them unaffordable to the poorest elements of society (so they can't afford the tools of self-defense). What compassion.
Sadly, there has never been a study (that could stand scrutiny) that showed that Gun Control reduces crime or even gun-crimes. There have been many studies and empirical evidence that showed the opposite -- allowing more concealed weapons to be carried (by individuals), and less restrictive Gun-Control seems to reduce crime.
The most recent was a study done by University of Chicago (there is a book about this titled, "More Guns, Less Crime") -- but there have been dozens of others studies like this, this is just the one of many that I chose to use. The study summarized that -
"we find that allowing citizens to carry concealed weapons deters violent crime, without increasing accidental deaths... 1,500 murders... 4,000 rapes... 11,000 robberies... 60,000 aggravate assaults [could have been prevented YEARLY by allowing more guns to be carried]. $5.75 Billion [could have been saved in 1992 alone]. The annual social benefit from an [each] concealed handgun permit is as high as $5,000".
But that is just one study among many, and there is a mountain of other empirical proof -- all supporting that gun-control increases crimes and violence in the U.S., and less restrictive gun laws (especially "conceal and carry" laws) helps deter crime, violence and gun-violence. And this makes logically sense as well as being proven statistically. Are criminals going to be more concerned about committing crimes and violence if the intended victims have guns? If the intent victim (or observer) pulls a gun, how many time will that stop the crime? If only the criminals have access to guns (and there will always be access to guns in America, whether outlawed or not) -- will the criminals be more or less likely to use them or commit crimes knowing the public doesn't have them? Do you think gun control actually gets guns off the streets? Vicious predators who ignore laws against murder, mayhem, and drug trafficking routinely ignore those existent American gun laws. No amount of well-meaning, wishful thinking will cause these criminals to honor additional gun laws. So what good are these laws? The fact is that gun control gives the criminals all the power, and they are criminals!
Advocates of gun control rarely discuss the enforceability of their proposals, an understandable lapse since even police-state tactics cannot effectively enforce gun bans. In Communist China (a country whose human rights record we dare not emulate) 120,000 banned civilian guns were confiscated in one month in 1994 alone. But they've had a virtual ban on guns for near 50 years!?!? If a country with their civil rights record and powers can find that many guns in such a repressive regime just imagine the ineffectiveness of such laws in the U.S.! Gun laws impact only those willing to comply with such laws (the good people who already honor the laws of common decency) -- which are the people you shouldn't be targeting with repressive legislation.
For over twenty years it has been illegal for teens to buy guns! Despite such gun control, the African-American teenage male homicide rate in Washington, DC is 227 per 100,000 - 20 times the US average! The US group for whom legal gun ownership has the highest prevalence, middle-aged white men, has a homicide rate of less than 7 per 100,000 - about half of the US average. Guns don't increase violence! If the "guns-cause-violence" theory is correct why does Virginia, the alleged "easy purchase" source of all those illegal Washington, DC guns, have a murder rate of 9.3 per 100,000, one-ninth of DC's overall homicide rate of 80.6 (where guns are basically banned)? Why are homicide rates lowest in states with loose gun control (North Dakota 1.1, Maine 1.2, South Dakota 1.7, Idaho 1.8, Iowa 2.0, Montana 2.6) and highest in states and the district with draconian gun controls and bans (District of Columbia 80.6, New York 14.2, California 12.7, Illinois 11.3, Maryland 11.7)? The "guns-cause-violence" and "guns exacerbate violence" theories are bullshit.
If you are looking for the cause of inner city violence (where almost all gun violence is localized) then it would be wiser to focus on the disease (family disruption, media violence, poverty, drugs, lack of opportunity, education) and not attack a minor symptom (gun ownership). Notice the press loves to play up each shooting, and seldom mention that the person doing the shooting (in the majority of cases) was already banned from owning the weapon of that crime but had gotten the gun anyway (usually they were banned because they were a convicted felon, using an illegal gun, or they were a minor). If they are already ignoring the ineffectual gun-control laws, then what good are more of them going to do?
Some examples used by anti-gun groups have been about the effectiveness of waiting periods and checks. The extremists at Handgun Control Inc. boast that "23,000 potential felons" were prevented from retail gun purchases in the first month of the Brady Law. Several jurisdictions have reviewed the preliminary Brady Law data, the results? The Virginia State Police, Phoenix Police Department, and other jurisdictions have shown that almost every one of those "potential" felons were not felons or otherwise disqualified from gun ownership. Many were innocents whose names were only similar to felons. Oops! Misdemeanor traffic convictions, citations for fishing without a license, and failure to license dogs were the types of trivial crimes that resulted in a computer tag that labeled the others as "potential" felons. The Police Departments that studied the results couldn't find a single legitimate case where a real felon was caught! So the statement should really read that in the first month alone 23,000 citizens were unfairly prevented from buying a gun due to bureaucratic snafu's. It wasn't until recently that they were able to dig up 2 felons EVERY that have been actually convicted of trying to buy a gun illegally because of the Brady Law, in the decade since the Brady Law passed! It is estimated that over half a million law abiding citizens have had problems and given the bureaucratic run-around because of government mislabeling and errors. Some ratio their! And then the NRA is vilified when they fight against more of the same.
The National Institute of Justice has shown that very few crime guns are purchased from gun dealers "93% of crime guns are obtained as black market, stolen guns, or from similar non-retail sources". Since none of Brady I or Brady II suggestions impact on the source of 93% of crime guns, their symbolism is wasted effort (that attacks the legal gun owners) and can not be expected to do anything to reduce crime or violence.
 
The cities with the most gun related crimes and problems in the U.S. are Chicago, Los Angeles, New York City, and Washington D.C. The cities with the most restrictive gun laws are, you guessed it, Chicago, Los Angeles, New York City, and Washington D.C. The crime rates went UP in all these cities after the gun laws were enacted.
Since enacting a virtual handgun ban in 1976, Washington, D.C.'s murder rate has risen 200%, with a 300% rise in handgun-related homicide, as handgun use went from less than 60% of killings to 83%. No gun law in any city, state or nation has ever reduced violent crime, or slowed its rate of growth, compared to similar jurisdictions.
With less than 3% of the U.S. population, New York City annually accounts for more than one-eighth of the nation's handgun-related homicides. Since it became a felony to go outside the city to evade its virtual handgun ban, the homicide rate in N.Y.C. has risen three times faster than the rest of the country's.
Gun rationing schemes have failed miserably. In 1975, South Carolina limited handgun sales to individuals to one per month. Since then, South Carolina's violent crime rate has skyrocketed over 100% (far more than the national average).
Before gun control California was 20% lower than the rest of the country in crime, and immediately after enacting legislation increasing gun control in California we rose to equal the rest of the country. After even more restrictive laws set in 1975, we saw crime skyrocket almost overnight -- crime went from 20% better than average to 46% worse than the average in a few short years -- yet the politicians claimed we needed more freedom-restricting gun-control laws to combat the problem.
California law gives local police chiefs and county sheriffs discretion regarding the issuance of Concealed Weapon Licenses. In urban areas (like Los Angeles) the abuse of that discretion is common. The result? In many jurisdictions only the affluent and politically connected are issued such licenses. In California few women and virtually no minorities are so licensed, even though poor minorities are the Californians at greatest risk from violence. But California's own leaders violate the law and carry concealed weapons -- they just don't want the peasants to have the same privileges. A county by county look at C&C permits shows that the counties that have the lowest rates of concealed weapon licensees have the highest rates of murder -- and the counties with the highest rates of concealed license issuance have the lowest rates of murder. If you want to save lives and stop crimes, then allow more people to carry guns.
In 1987 Florida made it legal for just about anyone without a felony conviction to get a permit to carry a concealed weapon. Over 100,000 Floridians took advantage of this offer. The media predicted that this policy would be a disaster, and went on and on about shoot-outs in the streets and the mayhem that would occur (and so no). In the following six years (latest figures I have were 1993) the homicide rate in Florida had decreased by 22% while the nationwide rate had increased by 15%. This is a 37% improvement. University of Maryland's study on the subject concluded that in Florida, "of a total of 266,710 permits that have been issued, 19 have been revoked for firearms related incidents. The facts in Florida are clear, after enacting a statewide right to carry law in 1987, Florida's homicide rate has declined 22%. Florida now has a homicide rate below the national average, prior to the 1987 law it was above the national average." Most of the other categories of criminal behavior also have declined in FL during that period as well.
Tennessee followed with the same sort of gun reforms (allowing people to carry guns), and is seeing a similar trend in reduced crimes and violence. Now many other States and Cities are following suit. We've learned the hard way that Gun-control only prevents honest citizens from defending themselves, and a law can never prevent those who are intent on breaking the law from doing so -- but a gun can.
When criminals learn that law abiding citizens are far more likely to carry guns, and are trained in their usage, they are deterred from committing crimes. As they used to say about Japan (when Samurai wandered with swords), "An armed society is a polite society". A decade ago there were 8,700 murders, and that same year an 870,000 reported legal uses of a gun to prevent a crime. 100:1 ratio in favor of guns -- for every one murder you prevent by outlawing guns, you are likely to allow 100 other crimes (or more) to happen (un-prevented). States with favorable concealed carry laws have lower rates of crime than states with restrictive concealed carry laws (as was demonstrated on a county by county basis in California). Overall, the homicide rate for states with favorable carry laws is 31% lower, and the robbery rate is 36% lower, than for states with restrictive concealed carry laws.
Since some counties like Los Angeles (and others) have started loosening up their controls and restrictions on guns, crime has been going down. Many of the safest communities in the nation can be directly mapped with having the loosest gun control laws. Gun control has, does, and will increase crime in the U.S. It has been proven many times over. Even places (countries) where the laws are far too repressive with regards to search & seizure, and have an authoritarian philosophy of government (that would be completely rejected by the U.S.), crimes skyrocket immediately after enacting "tougher" gun control. The story is the same no matter where you look, gun control is counter-effective and it is anti-freedom.
 
When the antigun people get going, there is no level to which they wont stoop. They start projecting costs of guns to society. To get the costs up they do things like add in estimates of "lost lifetime earnings" or "years of productive life lost -- yet they never factor in issues like the fact that most people killed by guns are criminals. They are assuming that gangsters, drug dealers, and rapists would be as socially productive as teachers, factory workers, and other good Americans (who are protected by guns and those shootings). Some studies factor in costs like lost work because of workers gossiping about gun violence! (Interesting that the don't factor that against them, since it is often their laws or the results of them that people are gossiping about). The actual economic cost of all medical care for gun violence is approximately $1.5 billion per year - less than 0.2% of America's $800-billion annual health care costs.
As for the costs to society of outlawing guns, lets look at who is being shot. I has been noted that more than two-thirds of gun homicide "victims" are drug traffickers or their customers. (Showing the raging success for that prohobition as well). In one study, 67% of 1990 homicide "victims" had a criminal record, averaging 4 arrests for 11 offenses. These active criminals cost society not only untold human suffering, but also an average economic toll of $400,000 per criminal per year before apprehension and $25,000 per criminal per year while in prison. Because the anti-self-defense lobby repeatedly forces us to examine the issue of "costs" we should notice that savings when cutting violent careers short. The gun deaths of those predatory criminals may actually represent an economic savings to society on the order of $4.5 billion annually - three times the declared "costs" of guns. Those annual cost savings are only a small fraction of the total economic savings from guns, because the $4.5 billion does not include the additional savings from innocent lives saved, injuries prevented, medical costs averted, and property protected by guns.
Police 911 call response times in major cities are often measured in hours (or large fractions of an hour). Is 30 or 45 minutes fast enough when you are being beaten, stabbed, or watching your family members being murdered? Do you really trust others to keep the scum out of your house? The police themselves support gun ownership, and will tell people that it is their responsibility to defend themselves (police organizations and chiefs have political concerns and want media exposure and so on, and so they sell out "against" guns for political reasons -- but the average cops are far more realistic and far more pro-gun).
The police can not stop crime -- that isn't even their purpose. The Police can only try to catch and convict criminals AFTER they have committed crimes. This may be a deterrent to the next criminal, or maybe not -- but it won't change what is going to happen (once something is happening). If a criminal is breaking into your house with the intent to murder your family, the odds are that the only thing the police will be able to do (or respond in time to do) is to take your bodies out, and try to collect evidence for convicting them later. Self-defense is your responsibility -- and the best tool of equalization is a gun!
The best choice for defense is not a shotgun, like some people say -- they are too big and weildy for many situations (you can't move them around as quickly, and it is easier to disarm than someone with a pistol). Handguns are actually the best means of defense in a home.
I'm not saying that everyone has to own a gun -- or that they should. And there are lots of gun safety issues and other things that need to be factored in. And of course there can be cases when you may not be able to get to the gun (but it is highly unlikely to be used against you if you keep it properly secured and you have the training to use it). And of course the facts are that you are actually a lot less likely to have a violent crime happen to you than you may think (the media sensationalizes and terrorizes people with that side of the equation as well) -- so the likelihood you will need a gun is very low. But when you are not allowed to own a gun then your risks go up -- and the end result is still that it should be up to individuals to decide for themselves whether they want to have the tools for self defense or not.
Some antigun types say that Joe public is just too dangerous with a gun -- so let's review those facts. Nationally good citizens use guns about seven to ten times as frequently as the police to repel crime and apprehend criminals! Civilians do it with a better safety record than the police do! About 11% of police shootings kill an innocent person - about 2% of shootings by citizens kill an innocent person. The odds of a defensive gun user killing an innocent person are less than 1 in 26,000. Citizens intervening in crime are even less likely to be wounded than the police! This probably has to do with the types of crimes that each (police and public) are likely to get involved in stopping (civilians don't invade homes for drug busts and warrants and the like) -- but the facts remain that you probably have far more to fear from the police using guns than the the average citizen!
A hugh and cry of the antigun people of late is that there are so many gun dealers out there. That begs the question as to why? The press and broadcast media have vilified low-volume gun dealers as the source of a "proliferation of guns on our streets" -- which is directly contradicted by data from the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms (BATF). 43% of gun dealers had no inventory and sold no guns at all -- so how are their zero inventory getting on the streets? In fact the only reason they exist is as direct result of BATF policy. Prior to FOPA ("Firearms Owner Protection Act" of 1986) the BATF prosecuted gun collectors who sold as few as three guns per year at gun shows, claiming that they were unlicensed, and therefore illegal, gun dealers. Imagine you had a relative die and leave you 3 guns which you sold at a show (or were a minor collector and did the same), and the Government goes after you for it as a crime! To avoid such harassment and prosecution, thousands of American gun collectors became (on paper), licensed gun dealers. Now the BATF and the anti-self-defense lobby claim BATF does not have the resources to audit the paperwork monster it created. Reducing the number of gun dealers will be another ploy to ensure that guns are more expensive (unaffordable to the poor who are at greatest risk from violence, ensuring that gun ownership becomes a privilege of only the politically connected and the affluent). And all these different attacks on guns are meant to keep the public off balance (and vilifying guns and gun owners) and avoiding the real issues which is violence and crime and the ineffectiveness of gun control.
There are many people who want gun control -- but their motives almost always boil down to a distrust of others (and themselves). Talk to them and what they have in common is an irrational fear of a tool, most of it programmed by misinformation and dogma from our schools, media and politicians. The gross majority are ignorant about the tool they are trying to ban and have never been trained in its usage.
Guns have never been a cause of crime. Guns are the tool used to end violence, stop crimes, and save more lives than they cost (by far). Guns allow the weak to defend themselves against the strong. Most shootings aren't even "bad" events! Shooting a felon comitting a violent crime is a better alternative then allowing that violent criminal to kill many innocents or continue to do what they are doing.
Most laws classifying guns, and trying to control certain guns, are complete and utter bullshit. Read the articles on What is an assault weapon, or Knife Control if you want to learn more. Most waiting periods have done nothing but harass honest gun buyers. Gun control has never worked, nor can it -- it assumes the tool is the problem and it is not. Tools don't cause crimes, criminals do. Police studies have found that 85 percent of the murders and 61 percent of the murder victims have past arrest records. 74 percent of those murders had at least four major felony arrests. The failings of society seems to be in keeping criminals in prison -- not in society having guns. When we start mapping criminals going free (and lax punishment) statistics against murder and violence rates, you get a far more convincing correlation than between guns and violence. It is time to admit the futility of attacking the supply of legal guns to interdict the less than 1% of the American gun stock that is used criminally. Instead, effort should focus on targeting the actual "black market" in stolen guns or targeting the criminals themselves.
Guns are not used more often in crimes than other tools. The mind of course is a tool and used in every crime -- and for crimes in the U.S. most crimes use a car to get to (or away from) a crime. In fact, more people are killed or injured by accident and intent with cars than with guns each year in the U.S. The amount of energy delivered, the effectiveness, and so on, all make cars a more effective killing machine -- which is proven year after year. Look at the roads littered with the carcasses of dead animals to get an idea. Fortunately the narrow minded understand all the positive uses of cars, and so most don't call for their ban -- unlike guns. But the facts are that some people want to make society safe, by rounding off all the corners, padding all the edges, and creating what they see is a bland and safe society. They ignore the costs of their actions -- and the consequences of gun control.
Gun accidents are a minor problem in our society -- so low as to be irrelevant. Certainly not high enough to consider violating our constitution for the sake of "making a difference". I feel sorry for the few who have died by gun accidents and gun crimes -- but I'd feel far more sorry if we eliminated (or radically reduced) guns that protect people against crime. We know the results of bans will be to increased crimes, murders, and violence -- this is proven time and time again. So while we may not like gun accidents and gun crimes they must be measured in context and against the good those tools do, the lives they save, the crimes they prevent and their true value to society (just like Doctors). It has to be remember that guns are a right, a freedom that can not and should not be taken away -- they are the right to property, and the right to defend ones self -- if you take that away from people, then we (as a nation) can never be free.
With hundreds of millions of guns in this nation, there is no way to get rid of them or even significantly reduce them. Guns are easy to make and easy to smuggle. Guns are a knowledge that individuals and society has, and that can not be eliminated. If we make them profitable to traffic, then we will just create more crimes and criminals, and have less deterrents against them! Hopefully the failed drug war can at least teach us that prohibition doesn't work and people will buy what they want to have, despite laws to the contrary. Criminals are already using guns (that they aren't allowed to have), buying them through illegal means, getting them as minors (against the law), using fully automatic assault weapons (which have been illegal for 50 years), and committing crimes (that are against the law). What is outlawing more types of guns going to do to thwart criminals when criminals ignore the laws? Do we want to make more criminals and guarantee that only criminals will have guns? Will that make us a better society? We should encourage responsible gun ownership, stiff penalties for abuse, and allow people the freedom to not own a gun if they so choose -- but never take away the rights of people to own guns.
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