Zealots' Gun-Control Laws are a Farce
By Thomas Sowell
IBDEditorials.com
The grand illusion of zealots for laws preventing
ordinary, law-abiding people from having guns is
that "gun control" laws actually control guns. In a
country with many millions of guns, not all of them
registered, this is a fantasy and a farce.
Guns do not vanish into thin air because there are
gun control laws. Guns — whether legal or illegal —
can last for centuries. Passing laws against guns
may enable zealots to feel good about themselves,
but at the cost of other people's lives.
Why anyone would think that criminals who disobey
other laws, including laws against murder, would
obey gun control laws is a mystery. A disarmed
population makes crime a safer occupation and street
violence a safer sport.
The "knockout game" of throwing a punch to the head
of some unsuspecting passerby would not be nearly so
much fun for street hoodlums if there was a serious
risk that the passerby was carrying a concealed
firearm.
Being knocked out in a boxing ring means landing on
the canvas. But being knocked out on a street
usually means landing on concrete. Victims of the
knockout game have ended up in the hospital or in
the morgue.
If, instead, just a few of those who play this sick
game ended up being shot, that would take a lot of
the fun out of it for others who are tempted to play
the same game.
Even in places where law-abiding citizens are
allowed to own guns, they are seldom allowed to
carry concealed weapons — even though concealed
weapons protect not only those who carry them, but
also protect those who do not, for the hoodlums and
criminals have no way of knowing in advance who is
armed and who is not.
Another feature of gun control zealotry is that
sweeping assumptions are made, and enacted into law,
on the basis of sheer ignorance. People who know
nothing about guns, and have never fired a shot in
their lives, much less lived in high-crime areas,
blithely say such things as, "Nobody needs a 30-shot
magazine."
Really? If three criminals invaded your home,
endangering the lives of you and your loved ones,
are you such a sharpshooter that you could take them
all out with a clip holding 10 bullets? Or a clip
with just seven bullets, which is the limit you
would be allowed under gun laws in some places?
Do you think that someone who is prepared to use a
30-shot magazine for criminal purposes is going to
be deterred by a gun control law? All the
wonderful-sounding safeguards in such laws restrict
the victims of criminals, rather than the criminals
themselves. That is why such laws cost lives instead
of save them.
Are there dangers in a widespread availability of
guns? Yes! And one innocent death is one too many.
But what makes anyone think that there are no
innocent lives lost by disarming law-abiding people
while criminals remain armed?
If we are going to be serious, as distinguished from
being political, we need to look at hard evidence,
instead of charging ahead on the basis of rhetoric.
Sweeping assumptions need to be checked against
facts. But that is seldom what gun control zealots
do.
Some gun control zealots may cherry-pick statistics
comparing nations with and without strong gun
control laws, but cherry-picking is very different
from using statistics to actually test a belief.
Among the cherry-picked statistics is that England
has stronger gun control laws than the U.S. and much
lower murder rates. But Mexico, Brazil and Russia
all have stronger gun control laws than the U.S. —
and much higher murder rates.
A closer look at the history of gun laws in England
tells a very different story than what you get from
cherry-picked statistics. The murder rate in New
York over the past two centuries has been some
multiple of the murder rate in London — and, for
most of that time, neither city had strong
restrictions on the ownership of guns.
Beginning in 1911, New York had stronger
restrictions on gun ownership than London had — and
New York still had murder rates that were a multiple
of murder rates in London. It was not the laws that
made the difference in murder rates. It was the
people. That is also true within the U.S.
But are gun control zealots interested in truth
or in political victory? Or perhaps just moral
preening?