|
|
 |
|
Reply
| | (1 recommendation so far) | Message 1 of 14 in Discussion |
|
| Myths About Gun Control |
| Despite some 20,000 gun laws in the United States, mostly at the state and local levels, there is little evidence that any but the most weakly motivated citizens have been discouraged from gun ownership. And there is no evidence that these gun control laws have made a dent in the crime rate.
| 
Domestic Evidence.
If gun control laws have any effect, it may be to increase crime. For instance:19 - New Jersey adopted what sponsors described as "the most stringent gun law" in the nation in 1966; two years later, the murder rate was up 46 percent and the reported robbery rate had nearly doubled.
- In 1968, Hawaii imposed a series of increasingly harsh measures and its murder rate, then a low 2.4 per 100,000 per year, tripled to 7.2 by 1977.
- In 1976, Washington, D.C., enacted one of the most restrictive gun control laws in the nation. Since then, the city's murder rate has risen 134 percent while the national murder rate has dropped 2 percent.
Defenders of the Washington law say it isn't working because criminals are getting guns in Virginia, where the laws are more relaxed. But just across the Potomac River, Arlington, Va., has a murder rate less than 10 percent of that of Washington (7.0 murders versus 77.8 per 100,000 population). Can the difference be explained by the fact that Washington is a large city? Virginia's largest city, Virginia Beach, has a population of nearly 400,000, allows easy access to firearms - and has had one of the country's lowest murder rates for years (4.1 per 100,000 population in 1991).
An analysis of 19 types of gun control laws [Table I] concluded that not only do they fail to reduce rates of violence, they even fail "to reduce the use of guns or induce people to substitute other weapons in acts of violence."20 For example:21
- When Morton Grove, Ill., outlawed handgun ownership, fewer than 20 were turned in.
- After Evanston, Ill., a Chicago suburb of 75,000 residents, became the largest town to ban handgun ownership in September 1982, it experienced no decline in violent crime.
- Among the 15 states with the highest homicide rates, 10 have restrictive or very restrictive gun laws.
- 20 percent of U.S. homicides occur in four cities with just 6 percent of the population - New York, Chicago, Detroit and Washington, D.C. - and each has a virtual prohibition on private handguns.
- New York has one of the most restrictive gun laws in the nation - and 20 percent of the armed robberies. Even more troublesome is the fact that the places where gun control laws are toughest tend to be the places where the most crime is committed with illegal weapons:22
International Evidence.
Other countries have had similar experiences. After Canada passed a gun control law in 1977, the murder rate failed to decline but armed robbery and burglary, crimes frequently deterred by gun ownership, increased.23 (Canadian homicide rates are slightly lower than those in states along the U.S. border.) Violent crime accelerated in Taiwan and Jamaica after handguns were banned.24
Why Gun Control Laws May Benefit Criminals.
An increase in violent crime that appears to follow a tightening of controls on gun ownership and use is consistent with economic reasoning. Gun control laws are most likely to be obeyed by people who are otherwise law-abiding if, indeed, they are obeyed by anybody. Thus measures that apply equally to criminals and noncriminals, if they affect behavior at all, are almost certain to reduce gun possession more among noncriminals. As the popular slogan puts it: "If guns are outlawed, only outlaws will have guns."
Scholarly studies have not been able to demonstrate any effect of gun control laws. But if there is an effect, it is likely to benefit criminals in two ways: fewer armed victims to worry about and fewer criminal justice resources to devote to prosecuting real criminals. If fewer potential victims have guns for defense, the balance of power tilts slightly toward criminals. The overall crime rate tends to increase, although guns may not be used in any more crimes because, on average, victim resistance is lowered.
Because more police resources are spent on gun registration, gun law enforcement and gun law convictions, fewer resources are available to deter real criminals. Arrests for weapons violations already exceed 220,000 per year,25 a nontrivial load on the criminal justice system. A Chicago judge from one of the two courtrooms exclusively dedicated to trying gun law offenses in that city testified a few years ago:26
The most striking experience I can take away from the Gun Court . . . is . . . the kinds of people that appear there as defendants. . . . This is their very first arrest of any kind. Many of them are old people, many of them are shopkeepers, persons who have been previous victims of violent crime.
Although many of these "criminals" get probation, the advocates of stricter gun laws press for mandatory sentencing. Meanwhile, punishments meted out for gun law violations not connected with real crimes tend to depress citizens' respect for law and the criminal justice system. As attorney David B. Kopel puts it, "In a world where first-time muggers often receive probation, it is morally outrageous to imprison . . . everyone who carries a firearm for self-defense."27
| | Previous | Next | |
|
 First
Previous
2-14 of 14
Next
Last
|
|
Reply
| |
| Myths About Gun Control |
| Over the years, police and other experts have changed their recommendations about how to deal with criminals. In the early and middle 1970s, they advised cooperating with robbers and rapists to minimize chances of personal injury. Today, some who gave that advice tacitly admit that it was misguided. They now urge resistance in selected instances, especially for rape victims. Studies show that robbery and rape victims who resist with a gun are only half as likely to suffer injuries as those who put up no defense.28
|
Why Guns Deter Criminals
Advocates of gun control have paid for several studies, hoping to prove that guns are not useful for self-defense. But every study has shown the opposite: Handguns are used at least as often in repelling crimes as in committing them and are particularly successful as weapons of defense.29 This is one reason why 88 percent of the nation's command-rank police officials disagree with the statement, " The banning of private ownership of firearms will result in fewer crimes from firearms."30
In the 1960s a New York-based antigun group printed signs for its members to post on their homes, "THERE ARE NO GUNS IN THIS HOUSE." But the signs came down and the organization withered after a large number of those homes were robbed or burglarized.31 On the other hand, during a 1974 police strike in Albuquerque, N. M., armed citizens patrolled the streets - and felonies dropped sharply.32
Americans use firearms for protection an estimated one million times each year. Ninety-eight percent of the time, they simply brandish the weapon or fire a warning shot.33 But not always34 - Each year, gun-wielding citizens kill an estimated 2,000 to 3,000 criminals in self-defense, three times the number killed by police.
- They wound another 9,000 to 17,000 criminals each year.
| "Criminals are three times more likely to be killed bytheir victims than by the police." | | Criminals may not read statistical studies, but they are generally aware of the large number of firearms in existence and of the fact that law-abiding citizens own most of them. Although violent crime and total crime reported to the police is much higher in the United States than in Western Europe, U.S. burglary rates are about the same, or lower, probably because of the deterrent effect of civilian firearms.35 Burglars say they spend an average of two hours "casing" a house to establish that no one is at home.36 They avoid late-night burglaries because " that's the way to get shot."37 Interviews with convicted felons are especially revealing:38 - As Figure II shows, a survey of 1,874 felons in 10 states found that most worry more about meeting an armed victim than about running into the police.
- 42 percent reported they had encountered a victim armed with a gun, and 38 percent had been scared off, shot at, wounded or captured by an armed victim.
- A majority agreed that " a store owner who is known to keep a gun on the premises is not going to get robbed very often."
Adverse Results are Rare.
Despite stories of gun owners who mistake family members for intruders and shoot them, and of criminals harming victims with the victims' guns, the fact is that defending oneself with a firearm generally is safer than the alternatives:39 - The accidental shooting of an innocent person mistaken for an intruder occurs in fewer than 30 fatal firearm incidents a year, about 2 percent of all fatal firearms incidents.
- At a maximum, criminals take a gun away from armed victims only 1 percent of the time (while 10 percent of police who are shot are shot with their own guns).
- Interestingly, 70 percent of defensive gun uses are against criminals who do not have a gun.
| "Defending oneself with a firearm generally is safer than the alternatives." | | A nationwide comparative study conducted by Don B. Kates, Jr., at the St. Louis University School of Law found that armed citizens were quite responsible in using handguns.40 The vast majority of people are not violent and use firearms only as a last resort. When they do use them, firearms can be effective:41
• As noted above, private citizens kill about three times as many criminals as do law enforcement officials. • And although only 2 percent of those involved in civilian shootings are misidentified, 11 percent of individuals involved in police shootings were later found to be innocents misidentified as criminals. Of course, police must enter situations in which they are not personally involved, while the private citizen is likely to be under attack and unlikely to mistake the target, so there is a greater likelihood that police might make a misidentification.
| |
|
Reply
| |
Advocates of gun control frequently argue that there is no defensible reason for innocent people to own handguns, since the only function of such weapons is to kill other people. Actually, there are a number of legitimate reasons to own a handgun - not the least of which is self defense. Pistol shooting (at inanimate targets) is a sport, and some professionals in the sport have million-dollar contracts.42 And, contrary to antigun propaganda, pistol hunting is also a sport.43 More important, as noted above, firearms are used one million times a year to ward off criminals and most of the time they are not discharged.
|
Who Owns Guns.
Surveys show that owning a gun is associated with peace of mind. Those who own guns are less fearful of walking in their neighborhoods. They are less apt to be afraid at night in their homes, less likely to have been burglarized or robbed within the last year. They also are more likely to be political conservatives and hunters. The overall pattern of gun ownership has been relatively stable over the past 30 years. The biggest single predictor of whether a householder owns a gun is whether he or she grew up in a household with a gun. This helps to explain the deep-seated cultural conflict between those who find gun ownership wholesome and judicious and those who find it abhorrent and in need of control.44
Guns for Self-Protection.
| "Firearms are used a million times a year to ward off criminals." | | Higher crime in an area sometimes stimulates more people to buy firearms for protection. Twenty-seven percent of gun owners say they have a gun mainly for protection. Another 62 percent say that protection from crime is at least one of the reasons they own guns.45 Of households with guns, those with no adult male are twice as likely as others to keep a loaded gun. Black gun owners are four times as likely as white gun owners to keep a loaded handgun.46
Criminals vs. Noncriminals.
Survey data show that gun ownership among people who are arrested is moderately higher than in the general population, but the difference is modest for handguns, the type most frequently involved in violence.47 Scattered evidence suggests that during the period of fastest increase in violent crime, from 1964 to 1974, gun possession grew more rapidly among criminals than among law-abiding citizens.48 Perhaps the sturdiest evidence is that the fraction of homicides, aggravated assaults and robberies involving guns increased from 1964 to 1974.
| |
|
Reply
| |
There is little association between gun ownership and attitudes toward violence:49
• Overall, gun owners disapprove of violence to the same extent as or even more strongly than those who do not own guns.
• However, gun owners are more likely to approve of using defensive force against attackers.50
• Those who exhibit "violent attitudes" - as reflected in their approval of police brutality, violence against social deviants and dissenters, and so on - are less likely to own guns.
The traits associated with gun owners show virtually no statistical association with criminal or violent behavior. If anything, gun | "If anything, gun ownership is inversely correlated with criminal characteristics." | | ownership is inversely correlated with criminal characteristics. Although crime and violence " as well as gun ownership " are more frequent among males than females and in the South (a region with a moderately higher rate of violence), a closer look tells a different story. Violence is higher among black than white, young than middle-aged, single than married, lower-income than middle- and upper-income and urban than rural individuals - all contrary to the pattern of gun ownership. [See the sidebar on Americans and guns.] In terms of crude statistical association, violence and crime are higher in locales and among populations with lower gun ownership (cities) and lower in places and populations with higher gun ownership (rural).51 These facts also cast doubt on the theory that violence is impulsive and/or fostered by the presence of guns. (See the discussion below.) |
|
Reply
| |
The number one reason criminals acquire handguns is not to commit crimes but, like noncriminals, to protect themselves.52 Criminals keenly feel the need for self-protection because they associate with other criminals and are likely to be victims as well as victimizers. As Figure II shows:
• In a survey of imprisoned felons, 58 percent said protection was a very important reason for getting a handgun and 26 percent said it was a somewhat important reason. • Only 28 percent cited use in crime as very important and 20 percent said it was somewhat important. |
There was violence along the frontiers, but most of it was related to clashes with Indians, bandits or foreign nations. There was not a great deal of "ordinary" crime. From 1870 to 1885, the era of the Wild West when "everybody wore a gun," arrest rates per 100 residents were much lower in the West than in eastern cities.53 Moreover, "the Western frontier was a far more civilized, more peaceful, and safer place than American society istoday."54 Contrary to the impression left by movies and Western novels, crime and homicides were rare. For example:55
• In 1880, wide-open towns like Virginia City, Nev., Leadville, Colo., and Dallas had no homicides. • By comparison, Cincinnati had 17 homicides that year. • From 1870 to 1885, the five Kansas railheads of Abilene, Caldwell, Dodge City, Ellsworth and Wichita had a total of 45 homicides, or an average of three per year - a lower homicide rate than New York City, Baltimore and Boston.56 • Sixteen of the 45 homicides were committed by duly authorized peace officers, and only two towns " Ellsworth in 1873 and Dodge City in 1876 " ever had as many as five killings in any one year.57 |
With a few legendary exceptions, law enforcement officers in the Old West were | "There was not much ordinary crime in the Old West, primarily because almost everybody was armed." | | rather ineffective. Still, there were few robberies, thefts or burglaries in western towns, primarily because almost everybody carried or possessed firearms and was willing to resist. "The citizens themselves, armed with various types of firearms and willing to kill to protect their persons or property, were evidently the most important deterrent to larcenous crime," said one author.58 Unlike "Gunsmoke's" Matt Dillon, the much-heralded western peace officer actually faced fewer problems than his counterpart elsewhere. The westerner, said one student of the era, "probably enjoyed greater security in both person and property than did his contemporary in the urban centers of the East."59 "It's a fairly recent idea that guns aren't a good thing," says Jon Weiner, a professor of history at the University of California. "The image of the lone man defending his homestead . . . is deeply embedded in the American psyche."60
| |
|
Reply
| |
Because less than 1 percent of firearms is ever involved in a crime and because felons acquire only a small fraction of their guns through licensed channels, all gun control measures suffer from a "needle in the haystack" problem. New restrictions could reduce the small number of guns that criminals obtain through regulated dealers but probably would have little effect on the total number of guns in criminal hands. Where do criminals get their guns? The previously cited survey of prisoners in 10 states found that:61
• Just over half of the felons (compared to one-quarter of the general population) said that they owned handguns. • Fewer than one in six had purchased their guns from a retail dealer. • Three-quarters of the felons agreed that they would have "no trouble" or "only a little trouble"obtaining a gun when they were released, despite the legal barriers to such purchases. • Half had stolen at least one gun in their criminal careers; between 40 percent and 70 percent | "About 3.1 million of the estimated 8.6 million firearms transactions each year are outside licensed retail sources." | | of the handguns these men possessed most recently were stolen.62 These were incarcerated felons, likely to be among the most active and strongly motivated criminals. Advocates of gun control measures may believe that weakly motivated, infrequent criminals can be disarmed or prevented from acquiring guns through regulation. However, even among members of the general, noncriminal population, about 36 percent of guns are acquired through private parties, often as a gift.63 This implies that of an estimated 8.6 million firearms transactions each year, some 3.1 million are outside licensed retail sources. While some jurisdictions try to regulate the informal markets in gun trades, such transactions are invisible to authorities. And virtually all social scientists who have investigated the question have concluded that gun control laws are ineffective in denying guns to criminals because guns are so available on the underground market.
Do Gun Laws Matter?
Existing studies find that current U.S. gun laws have no substantial impact on gun ownership or crime. Two possible exceptions are the 1934 federal machine gun ban and well-enforced prohibitions on carrying guns - although 5 percent of all U.S. adults regularly carry guns.64 Overall, restrictive gun laws raise the price of acquisition and diminish the value of guns, but the impact on both felons and nonfelons appears to be weak or nonexistent.
Other Methods of Deterrence.
Harsher punishment of armed criminals by the criminal justice system " such as mandatory prison sentences for using a firearm in the commission of a crime " appears to be one of the few effective crime deterrents. Mandatory penalties appear to reduce armed robbery rates, for example.65 And one study found that gun offenders receive harsher treatment at all stages of court processing and, when convicted, receive substantially longer prison sentences.66
|
|
Reply
| |
One of the most popular forms of gun control is a mandatory waiting period. For example, if the Brady bill (named after Ronald Reagan's press secretary, James Brady) were law, all U.S. citizens would have to wait seven days before purchasing a handgun. Do such laws make sense?
To generate support for waiting-period laws, proponents frequently refer to the Brady case and to other vicious crimes committed with guns. [See the sidebar on "How Waiting Periods Would Have Affected High-Profile Crimes."] Unfortunately, the cure has nothing to do with the disease. The Brady bill would not have saved Jim Brady. Nor would it have prevented the Killeen, Texas, massacre or the Stockton, Calif., massacre. In each case, the predator still could have legally obtained the weapon he used, because he had no previous felony record.
Gun control proponents argue that, during the waiting period, officials would have the opportunity to check out the criminal records of potential purchasers. A waiting period does give them that opportunity. But as a practical matter, most criminal records are not kept where they are accessible to gun dealers, police departments or anyone else. In general, there is no national reporting of criminal records and no computer records system that can be tapped into.
| "The Brady bill would not have saved Jim Brady." | | Without providing funding, Congress has asked the U.S. Justice Department to bring its records up to date and maintain them in easy-access form on computers. A nationwide database system would permit gun dealers to instantly check for a purchaser's criminal record before selling a gun. Of course, if instant record checks were possible, there would be no need for a waiting period.
|
|
Reply
| |
Are most murders, particularly of friends and relatives, committed by otherwise peaceful citizens who happen to have loaded guns available in a moment of anger, and who make one slip? Rarely. Domestic homicide usually is a terminal episode in a syndrome of violence rather than an isolated event. When a husband kills a wife, it usually is with his fists or a bludgeon, and he has beaten her many times before. Significantly, if a firearm is used when one spouse kills another, it more often is the wife who uses it in defense against her larger, more aggressive male partner.68 Most of these wives are never indicted because they are legally defending themselves or their children.
About 40 percent of defensive gun uses are connected with assaults in the home,69 and most presumably are cases of family violence.70 But the notion that much serious violence is accounted for by previouslynonviolent people in "crime-of-passion" domestic homicides is wrong.71 For example, in a Kansas City study, in nine out of ten domestic "crime-of-passion" homicides, police had responded to disturbance calls at the same address within the preceding two years an average (median) of five times.72 Moreover, it's not clear what difference gun control laws would make. A large number of men who kill in these circumstances have a previous history of convictions and, as felons, are forbidden by current law to have a gun. One crime study concludes:73
| "In most domestic homicides, there is a pattern of previous violence." | | It is commonly hypothesized that much criminal violence, especially homicide, occurs simply because the means of lethal violence (firearms) are readily at hand, and thus that much homicide would not occur were firearms generally less available. There is no persuasive evidence that supports this view.
|
|
Reply
| |
On "Miami Vice," the weapons of choice among drug dealers are Uzi machine guns and M-16 military automatic fire weapons. Don Johnson, amazingly, manages to prevail week after week using only a handgun. Of course in real life, Don Johnson wouldn't stand a chance against such superior fire power. Fortunately, in real life criminals don't carry machine guns.
Criminals overwhelmingly choose handguns for their concealability and small size.74 Guns that are rare in the nonfelon population are also rare in the criminal population. If a weapon is useful for crime, it is also useful for legitimate purposes. Even drive-by shootings involve mostly handguns and shotguns. And, despite television and the movies, most Florida police agencies have not come across a single "assault weapon."
Automatic Rifles.
Since 1934 it has been unlawful for civilians to possess automatic-fire weapons without special permission of the U.S. Department of Treasury, and since 1986 all importation and manufacture of these weapons for private use have been prohibited. Furthermore, no semiautomatic weapons sold to civilians are readily convertible to automatic fire. Nonetheless, it is fairly easy for a law-abiding civilian to get permission to own one of these weapons as a "collector" and about 103,000 are in private hands.
| "Over the past 50 years, no civilian has ever used a legally owned machine gun in a violent crime." | | The existence of guns that are legally in private hands has posed no threat to the rest of us, however. Over the past 50 years, no civilian has ever used a legally owned machine gun in a violent crime. Even the illegal use of machine guns by drug dealers and other violent criminals is close to nonexistent. Since 1980, when the first Uzi was imported into the United States, not one police officer has been killed with an Uzi machine gun.
|
Assault weapons.
The official Department of Defense definition of an assault rifle is one capable of "selective fire," that is, of both automatic fire (many shots per trigger pull) and semiautomatic (one shot per trigger pull). The media, however, have broadened the term "assault rifle" to include any semiautomatic rifle with a military appearance (e.g., plastic stock instead of wood stock, loop for a lanyard and dull instead of shiny surface). There is no mechanical difference between these weapons and those with different styling used for hunting and target shooting. The only difference is cosmetic.
| "Despite ‘Miami Vice, - not a single police officer has been killed with an Uzi machine gun." | | Semiautomatic weapons are rarely used in crime. When they have been used " as in Stockton, Calif. " they caused no more damage than easily could have been caused by a garden-variety weapon.75 In fact, the death toll from a shotgun or full-power hunting rifle probably would have been higher. Overall:
• All rifles are involved in less than 3 percent of homicides.
• Of 14,988 guns seized by police in Chicago in 1988, only 3.1 percent were semiautomatics of any kind.
• Of 217 homicides committed in Dade County (Miami), Fla., in 1989, only three involved an "assault weapon."76
The total number of felonious deaths of police officers has been declining since 1980 and the maximum number killed by an "assault rifle" was 11 during 1987. Even a spokesperson for Handgun Control, Inc., the primary gun control lobby, conceded that assault weapons "play a small role in overall violent crime."77
Cop-Killer Bullets.
The political debate changes periodically to focus on other specific weapons, such as "cop-killer" bullets and plastic guns. To the best of our knowledge, teflon-coated bullets " which were developed by and for the police " have never been used in a crime. Nor are they the only danger faced by police officers. An ice pick will also pierce a bulletproof vest and kill the wearer.
In general, the piecemeal approach to weapons control is ineffective because it overlooks substitute weapons. Success in getting rid of one type of weapon would encourage criminals to use another. For example, it is highly unlikely that even extensive reductions in handguns would reduce homicides because offenders would substitute long guns, often sawed-off, which are as much as three times deadlier than handguns. The circumstances of most homicides imply that a long gun could easily have been used. | |
|
Reply
| |
| So-called Saturday Night Specials are small caliber, inexpensive handguns. These have been commonplace in the United States since the 19th century. Gun control advocates argue that cheap handguns serve little or no legitimate purpose and are used to commit most crime. These claims are wrong. Only 10 percent to 27 percent of crime involves handguns that fit the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms definition of a Saturday Night Special (SNS). Since handguns are involved in only 10 percent of violent crime (another 2 percent involve other firearms), SNSs are involved in only 1 to 3 percent of violent crime. Criminals are no more likely to rely on SNSs than the share of SNSs in the handgun stock (about one in five), and therefore criminals cannot be said to prefer Saturday Night Specials. Because they are less expensive, most SNSs are probably owned by lower income people for protection, and any laws to ban them would disproportionately hurt the poor, who are the most frequent victims of crimes.
|
|
One of the most prevalent myths is that people don't need firearms because law enforcement officers can protect them. But just how much protection against criminals can citizens expect?
Protection from Ordinary Crime.
There are about 500,000 police officers in the United States. Adjusting for three shifts per day, vacations, desk duty, etc., leaves about 75,000 police on patrol at any moment to protect 250 million Americans.78 That's one police officer for every 3,360 potential victims. And experience shows that's not enough:79
- Every year nearly five million people are victims of violent crimes - murder, rape, robbery or life-threatening assault.
- 98 percent of the time, violent and serious property crimes do not result in a prison sentence.
- The median sentence actually served by state prisoners declined from 21 months in the 1950s and early 1960s to 13 months in 1988.
- The expected punishment for all serious crimes, taking into account the low probability of going to prison, declined from an estimated 24 days in prison in 1950 to 8.5 days in 1990.
| "‘Saturday Night Specials' are used in only 1 to 3 percent of all violent crimes." | | Riots and Civil Emergencies.
After the Los Angeles riots, Korean-American merchants said they had no choice but to defend their stores and, in some cases, shoot at looters. Police, they said, ignored pleas for help that included attempts to flag down patrol cars and dozens of calls to the 911 emergency number80 Men with guns also defended Mann's Chinese Theatre and nearby businesses through the first night of rioting. At midnight the following night, a squad of National Guardsmen arrived but, after talking with the defenders and looking over what they were doing, the commander concluded that his men could be of greater use elsewhere, and they left.81 After Hurricane Hugo devastated the U.S. Virgin Island of St. Croix in 1989, National Guardsmen and local police did nothing to stop the looting. Some even took part in it. Only one shopping center was spared - because the owner had heavily armed men patrolling the roofs.82
Lack of a Right to Government Protection.
Gun control laws implicitly assume that the criminal justice system has the duty and the ability to protect individuals. Our judges have ruled otherwise.83 For example, New York State's highest court ruled in 1968 that a victim who was attacked after seeking police protection to no avail had no right to protection. The court refused to create such a right, saying it would impose a crushing economic burden on the government.84 For the most part, federal courts have agreed. The Supreme Court held in an 1856 case85 that local law enforcement officers had a general duty to enforce laws, not to protect a particular person. In 1982,86 a federal court of appeals said: . . . [T]here is no constitutional right to be protected by the state against being murdered by criminals or madmen. It is monstrous if the state fails to protect its residents against such predators, but it does not violate the due process clause of the Fourteen Amendment or, we suppose, any other provision of the Constitution. The Constitution is a charter of negative liberties: it tells the state to let people alone, it does not require the federal government or the state to provide services, even so elementary a service as maintaining law and order. These rulings are probably consistent with the original intent of the founding fathers. Some legal scholars argue that the framers of the U.S. Constitution assumed that law-abiding people would largely be responsible for their own safety.87 They note that under English common law, which is the basis for U.S. law, the sheriff's main jobs were collecting taxes and enforcing government decisions. Keeping public order was a secondary duty.
| |
|
Reply
| |
A primary obstacle in the path of those who seek to expand governmental control over private ownership of firearms is the United States Constitution's Second Amendment, which says:
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. Note that the right to bear arms is not granted by the amendment. Instead its existence is presumed, probably as part of the general right of self-defense. Note also that since the founding fathers made this right second on a list of ten, they must have believed that it was especially important. [See the sidebar on what the founding fathers thought.]
Some people argue that the right to bear arms is conditional upon the need to have an armed citizenry as part of our national defense. Thus, if the need were not there, the founding fathers would not have asserted the right. In the modern era, supposedly the need is not there. Does this mean there is no longer any constitutional right? At the time the Constitution was written, "militia" had two meanings. The "select militia" was the forerunner of our modern national guard. The "general militia" referred to all able-bodied men with arms. Both are distinct from the "army."89
The founding fathers strongly believed in the right of ordinary " nonarmy " citizens to bear arms, and not just for defense against foreigners. In general, people feared the new federal government and its standing army as much as they feared foreign invaders. As James Madison explained in the Federalist Papers, the primary check on government tyranny and an abusive army was citizens with their own arms.90 As Tench Cox, a friend of Madison, wrote at the time the Constitution was being adopted:91
| "The founders wanted citizens to be able to defend themselves against tyranny by their own government." | | As civil rulers not having their duty to the people duly before them, may attempt to tyrannize and as the military force which must be occasionally raised to defend our country might convert their power to the injury of their fellow citizens, the people are confirmed by the next article [2nd Amendment] in their right to keep and bear their private arms. The founders' purpose was to constitutionalize the right to arms, which they knew from English common law and Enlightenment political philosophy. Militia laws blended three related purposes: opposition to standing armies, dependence on militias and support of the armed citizen and his willingness to defend himself and his free society. Standing armies were considered a threat to the development of the virtuous, self-reliant citizen on whom the republic's vitality rested.
All subsequent 18th- and 19th-century legal interpretation understood the Second Amendment right to arms as a guaranteed constitutional right. It was among Blackstone's five "absolute rights of individuals" at common law. The "right of the people to keep and bear arms" was self-defining to the founders. They felt that clarification was unnecessary. Familiar to them in Colonial law, derived from the earliest known English codes and its Greek and Roman antecedents, proclaimed by every commentator known to them, the right to bear private arms not only was hailed as fundamental to republican institutions and popular liberty but was viewed as inherent in the natural law right of self-defense.
It is also worth noting that the Revolutionary War was sparked by the British attempt to confiscate the patriots' privately owned arms at Lexington and Concord. Thus the notion that the founding fathers, or for that matter anyone alive at the time, thought that the government had a Constitutional right to disarm peaceable citizens is ludicrous.
|
|
Reply
| |
The National Crime Survey estimates that 83 percent of Americans will be victims of violent crime at some time in their lives.2 Parties with diametrically opposed views on gun control seize on this estimate to support their positions. Those favoring gun control laws claim that such laws would keep more guns off the streets and out of the hands of criminals in an increasingly violent world. Opponents of new gun restrictions contend that a firearm in the hands of a law-abiding person is one of the best deterrents to crime, protecting people with limited physical strength from physically stronger criminals. Let's take a look at the available evidence.
Domestic Studies.
Several sophisticated statistical models have attempted to measure the net effect of firearms on criminal violence. On balance, they show that there is nothing to be gained from reducing the general level of gun ownership.3
- A thorough review of 18 studies of the effects of gun availability among potential victims and criminals found that the overall effect on criminal violence was zero.4
- In one study, researchers found no significant differences in total robbery rates between cities where guns were widely available and cities where they were not; in cities with fewer firearms, armed robbers simply used other weapons.5
- The best available evidence, based on at least eight national surveys of the general adult population, indicates that guns are used about as often for defensive as for criminal purposes.6
This conclusion is especially true of handguns.
International Evidence.
The experience of other nations also provides little support for the notion that guns causecrime:7 - Switzerland has one of the lowest murder rates in the world, and it requires all able-bodied males between the ages of 20 and 50 to have a military-issued automatic weapon, ammunition and other equipment in their dwellings.8
- Israel, which has an extremely low crime rate but is vulnerable to enemies including terrorists, depends on the defensive value of widespread civilian gun possession.
- Denmark and Finland also have high rates of gun ownership and low crime rates.
The experience of these countries shows that widespread gun possession is compatible with low crime rates. On the other hand, nations like Japan and England also have low crime rates but low gun ownership. There is no simple relationship between firearm availability and crime.9
Crimes Involving Guns.
| "Eighty-eight percent of violent crimes do not involve firearms." | | How many violent crimes involving guns are committed each year? FBI data for 1990 show that criminals used firearms in about 258,000 violent offenses, or about 16 percent of the 1.6 million crimes reported to the police. Fewer than half of all violent crimes are reported to the police, however. The National Crime Survey (NCS) estimates that there are about 5.4 million violent crimes (both reported and unreported) and that guns of all types are involved in some 650,000 or 12 percent.10 In other words, 88 percent of violent crimes do not involve firearms.
While certainly a very large annual number, reported and unreported violent crimes committed with guns remain relatively rare events. Less than 2 percent of the estimated 36 million crimes of all types (in the National Crime Survey) committed each year involve a gun. A majority of gun crimes are assaults, but only one in 42 handgun crimes involves a victim being shot. While there is a lot of violent crime in America relative to other industrial nations, an overwhelming majority of the violence involves knives, hammers, sticks, broken bottles, hands and feet and other weapons besides firearms.
| "Firearms were used in a higher percentage of homicides in the 1920s than in the 1980s." | | Guns are used in a majority of murders (from 59 percent to 66.3 percent in each of the past 10 years) and accounted for 14,265 deaths in 1991. According to the FBI's Uniform Crime Reports, 53.1 percent of reported murders in 1991 were committed with handguns, 5.2 percent with shotguns and 3.4 percent with rifles, while miscellaneous and unknown firearms accounted for the remaining 4.6 percent. (Long guns, although virtually uncontrolled, were involved in only 8.6 percent of homicides.) By contrast, firearms were used to commit about 70 to 75 percent of homicides in the 1920s, a higher percentage than the average 60 percent rate during the 1980s.11 Firearms were the instrument of death in 60 percent of murders in 1980 and 66 percent in 1991 " the highest percentage in recent years " suggesting an upward trend. Firearms were used in 40 percent of all reported robberies but in only 11 percent of all rapes, 12 percent of severe assaults and 12 percent of all violent crimes. [See Figure I.]
Guns Involved in Crimes.
No one knows what fraction of firearms ultimately is used to commit crime, but the percentage is almost certainly tiny. Even if the same gun were never used more than once in committing a crime, only one out of every 309 guns would be involved in a crime in a given year.12 Overall: - Only one out of every 123 handguns (less than 1 percent) and one out of every 1,247 long guns (less than one-tenth of 1 percent) are used in crime in any given year.13
- Even under very generous assumptions to maximize the estimated percentage of guns used in a crime, at most 6.7 percent of handguns would ever be involved in a crime.14
- If we realistically allow for repeated criminal uses of the same weapons, the fraction of all guns that are ever involved in crime would be less than 1 percent, with long guns under 0.5 percent and handguns under 2 percent.
Gun control laws cannot possibly reduce the crime rate unless they affect the 1 percent of guns that are actually used in crimes. Even if the laws did this, criminals would find it easy to acquire new guns. The numbers by themselves raise doubts about the efficacy of general restrictions on gun ownership in decreasing the frequency of gun use in violent crime.
Case Study: Killeen, Texas.
George Hennard crashed a pickup truck through the front of a Luby's Cafeteria in Killeen, Texas, on October 16, 1991, got out with two semiautomatic pistols and methodically killed 23 people in 10 minutes before police finally arrived and killed him.
Dr. Suzanna Gratia, who watched as her mother and father were shot to death by Hennard, said later that she had left a pistol in her car outside the cafeteria because Texas law forbade carrying a weapon. From where she lay, she said, she had a clear shot at Hennard early on - and would have taken it. "We were sitting ducks and that just makes me so blasted mad," said Dr. Gratia, a chiropractor. "I've got a right to protect myself."15
On that day, coincidentally, Congress was debating a crime control bill. Congressman Chet Edwards, in whose district the massacre occurred, said the event convinced him to favor a ban on so-called assault weapons (although assault weapons were not used in the Killeen massacre).
Case Study: Anniston, Ala.
Two months later, two armed robbers herded 20 customers and employees in an Anniston, Ala., Shoney's restaurant into a walk-in cooler and held the manager outside at gunpoint. Then they spotted Thomas Glen Terry, a customer, hiding under a table and began shooting at him. Unlike the situation in Texas, Terry, who had a permit, was carrying a .45 caliber automatic handgun. He shot back, killing one robber and wounding the other. The manager and the hostages were released. unharmed.16
Case Study: Los Angeles, Calif.
Rioters in Los Angeles in the spring of 1992 looted and burned a store owned by Korean-Americans in Hollywood, even though they had to break through steel roll-down doors with crowbars and sledgehammers to get at it. But they spared a similar business in Koreatown. The reason? The rioters could see commandos with Uzi machine guns on top of the Koreatown building. The merchants later revealed that, although they did have a few guns that they fully intended to use if necessary, the "Uzis" were toys, and the "commandos" were costumed merchants.17
The looters and arsonists tended to leave houses and apartment buildings in the riot area of Los Angeles alone - not out of compassion, but because, as a 13-year-old neighborhood resident said, "They (the residents) got guns and everybody knows that. Nobody's going to want to mess with folks in houses." |
|
|
First
Previous
2-14 of 14
Next
Last
|
|
|
Free Forum Hosting
Important Announcement
Return to Incoming!