Pre-paper Notes

Comments, Etc.

There are quite a few citations, footnotes, professor commentary, and so on, in this paper. In an attempt to keep this page clear and legible, I've put all of them at the end of the paper, and linked back and forth between them and the paper. They are not necessary to read the paper, but do contain a bit of interesting data.

Here's an example. Just click on the zero: [0].

Good Argumentation

It's always been my belief that good argumentation is not aimed at one's opponents. If you truly believe in your cause, why should not they be equally committed and passionate about theirs? The true recipients of good argumentation are the large mass of the undecided.

That being the case, I try to look at what sort of arguments would sway myself, and use them when trying to persuade others. I personally despise hysterical appeals to emotion, and rude name-calling. I do my best, therefore, not to whine or rant at those I'm trying to reason with.

I also happen to agree with the following commentary re the inadvisability of antagonizing those who could be on your side with a little effort on your part.

I encourage everyone to do the same -- a plethora of courtesy, intelligence, and reason in argumentation certainly cannot hurt, and probably will help, any cause you are associated with.

Introduction

There is a growing American fascination with violence. Violent crime is commonly believed to be on the upswing, and the police and legal system are unable to handle the sheer numbers of criminals.

Unfortunately it is my belief that people have come to associate the problem with one of the possible tools used to create it, and have indeed become enamored of inflating the problem in order to more effectively criticize legal, responsible gun ownership. The current notion is if we outlawed guns the amount of violent crime would be reduced and we would all be safer.

However, current reputable studies show outlawing these tools -- guns -- will not solve the problem, and may indeed contribute to it.

The Status Quo

The current status quo is, to put it bluntly, confusing. Gun control varies greatly within the USA. Unlike many countries, every political unit within the USA can make their own laws.

In addition to federal laws such as lifetime firearm prohibition orders for convicted felons, age minimums for buying firearms, and restrictions on the interstate purchase of firearms, every state, county, city, town, and village can and does set up their own gun laws [1]. Many areas of the USA have gun control laws much tougher than anywhere in the world.

A few examples: in Washington D.C., handguns are banned and long arms must be stored disassembled. In Chicago, Illinois, handguns must be registered, but registration forms are not available.

New York City firearms permits take up to 6 months to get, and concealed weapons permits are only available for the rich and politically connected. California has a 15 day waiting period on the purchase of all firearms (Kleck 1995).

Sometimes when we attempt to deal with a problem, we focus on procedure rather than substance. The anti-gun advocates seem to have decided gun control (a procedure) will alleviate violent crime. Yet they do not seem to wish to see the facts that show how useless this procedure will be.

Guns are not a major part of violent crime, nor does owning a gun promote violent crime. Dr. Gary Kleck, from the Florida State University's School of Criminology and Criminal Justice, notes:

Guns were involved in about 12% of all violent crime, and handguns in about 10% [2]. The majority of the gun crimes were assaults, mostly threats without any injury or any element of theft or rape.

According to many different studies, trying to link gun ownership to violence rates finds either no relationship or a negative. Cities and counties with high gun ownership suffer less violence than demographically comparable [3] areas with lower gun ownership [4]. Summarizing these and other studies, a recent National Institute of Justice analysis states:

It is clear that only a very small fraction of privately owned firearms are ever involved in crime or [unlawful] violence, the vast bulk of them being owned and used more or less exclusively for sport and recreational purposes, or for self-protection (Wright & Rossi 1986).

This and other reputable, scientific research shows that outlawing guns will not solve the problem, and may indeed contribute to it. However, anti-gun advocates have not changed their message. Emotional appeals and disinformation [5] characterize their discussions of this topic, and they persist in repeatedly sloganizing discredited, non-scientific advocacy research.

How can we make good laws, if we are basing our information on twisted facts and deliberate falsification?

Anti-Gun Advocates Obfuscate the Issue

One of the major blocks to meaningful communication concerning this issue is anti-gun advocates either don't know what they're talking about, or are deliberately lying to confuse the issue [6]. Indeed, there are anti-gun advocates who actually seem proud of their ignorance [7].

The average person, for, example, doesn't know what the term 'automatic weapon' means, for all its over-use in the media. This phrase is the current meaningless 'bugaboo' expression used by both anti-gun people and politicians on the gun-prohibition bandwagon.

Consider this quote from a policy report of New Right Watch and the Education Fund to End Handgun Violence, written in September 1988 by Josh Sugarman, executive director of New Right Watch and spokesman for the National Coalition to Ban Handguns, titled "Assault Weapons and Accessories in America." In it Sugarman recommends exploiting:

[Assault weapons'] menacing looks, coupled with the public's confusion over fully-automatic machine guns versus semi-automatic assault weapons -- anything that looks like a machine gun is assumed to be a machine gun -- can only increase the chance of public support for restrictions on these weapons.

This unfortunately means legislation is often deliberately phrased so as to obfuscate the issue. Wording may be unclear and confusing, since anti-gun people don't understand the very objects they're trying to control [8].

For example, in a current piece of legislation -- the "Violent Crime Control Act" -- which Congress passed a couple of years ago, assault weapons are described by how they look, rather than how they shoot. This leads people to simply add or subtract a few parts, and legally it's a new, non-criminal weapon, as is demonstrated by the AR-15 and the Colt Sporter. These are two identical weapons, except for the flash suppresser and the bayonet lug (an attachment for a bayonet holder).

Neither a flash suppresser nor a bayonet lug will affect how the weapon shoots. I quote (from a CBS-TV "60 Minutes" interview) Mr. Ron Whittaker, president of Colt, one of the nation's oldest and most reputable gun makers:

We had a crime bill that was supposed to focus on crime, and hopefully criminals. We end up with an assault weapon ban that has nothing to do with defining an assault weapon, but it had a lot to do with what something looks like.

Mr. Sugarman must be proud.

One final, ironic note: the VCCA doesn't outlaw any repeat-firing weapons made previous to the passage of the bill. As a consequence, there has been a sudden upsurge of demand for this style of weapon, due to people worrying that their rights to buy such weaponry will be legally removed in the near future. Indeed, the market has become somewhat glutted with such weaponry.

I am sure this is not what the bill's sponsors and authors had in mind. It is, however, an excellent example of focusing on an attitude (the scary look some weapons have) rather than a deed (lowering the accessibility of 'assault' weapons to criminals) [9].

Other weapons and ballistics are verbally abused in legislation also. For example, in 1988 in Maryland there was an initiative passed that was an attempt to outlaw the so-called Saturday Night Special. The description of the type of weapon again focused on how the weapon looked rather than what it did.

Thus gun makers went to the Maryland commission and repeatedly got their guns passed as not being Saturday Night Specials -- because their guns did not exactly fit the sloppily designed specifications of the initiative. Almost 99% of handguns submitted were approved, with only 10 rejections out of almost 800 models.

One of the approved weapons was a 36 shot 'assault pistol.' This was particularly ironic since one complaining commissioner, Baltimore Police Chief Cornelius Behan, had just displayed a Mac-11 in a New York Times ad (sponsored by Handgun Control, Inc.) calling for a federal ban on such guns. Behan and the other commissioners felt compelled to approve the Mac-11 because, as he explained to the Baltimore Sun, the Maryland Law:

is designed to take out of circulation [only] highly concealable, poorly manufactured, low-caliber weapons. The Mac-10 and -11 unfortunately don't fit into that category (Kates 1992).

Other examples of villainizing various weapon categories include the notorious 'cop-killer' bullets and 'plastic' guns. It is interesting to note the 'cop-killer' bullets, which were restricted in 1986, have never been reportedly used to kill a cop.

Furthermore, the legislation proposed to ban the 'cop-killer' bullets was so poorly worded as to ban even sport and hunting ammunition. Amusingly enough, the company that made these "armor-piercing" bullets was owned and run by senior police officers, and only sold the ammunition in tiny quantities to some police departments and the military anyway.

The ammunition was specifically designed to provide improved penetration against auto body panels and auto glass, and its design actually reduced the chance that it would pierce bullet-resistant vests (Kleck 1995).

And yet the "Coalition to Stop Gun Violence" wrote in a pamphlet: "The NRA's army of slick lobbyists even fought our efforts to ban ... cop killer bullets specifically designed to pierce bullet-proof vests!"

The exaggerated accusations didn't stop there, unfortunately. The 'plastic' gun issue was also used by the "Coalition to Stop Gun Violence" to vilify the NRA. The accusation against the NRA was they "hysterically" fought attempts to ban these guns.

The truth was the 'plastic' gun (the Glock-17) did not deserve special legislation, as it was 83% steel, and completely visible to X-ray machines, as the NRA pointed out. The NRA then worked with the FAA to write a law making undetectable firearms illegal (Kleck 1995).

Indeed, anti-gun groups seem to have a difficult time in reporting truth. One amusing example is the 'Handgun Control, Inc.' slogan: "Handgun Control Incorporated, One million strong." And yet, according to papers filed by HCI, their membership is actually only about 250,000. Their mailing list is only 146,000 (Kleck 1995).

While it may seem to be shooting at a defenseless target (pun intended), I am prompted by a perhaps mean-spirited sense of humor to wonder why we listen to a group that can't even count its own membership accurately!

It is this lack of accuracy -- of outright lies on occasion -- that may have prompted the agreement of members of Congress in a recent poll that the two lobby groups which provide them the most consistently reliable information are the American Library Association and the National Rifle Association [emphasis mine] (Kates 1994).

American/International Comparisons

Western Europe is frequently used by anti-gun advocates as an example of a place where gun laws have kept violent crime rates low. However, this is a faulty analogy. English statistics do not include "political" murders, e.g. those by the IRA [10].

Furthermore, American murder rates have been falling for the last several years. In order to artificially inflate these dropping numbers, anti-gun academics now include suicide in the American homicide numbers when they compare American to European rates of violent deaths -- but not European rates of suicide.

Interestingly, it should be noted violent deaths (not suicides) are now actually rising faster in Europe than in the U.S. (Kates 1994). On the whole, it appears Americans tend to turn their violence outwards, against others, whereas Europeans turn their violence inwards, against themselves.

Playing these statistical games immediately made American death rates appear to soar above the murder-only rate of other countries. And yet, when compared to the combined murder and suicide rates of other countries, America is right in the middle of the pack.

Of 18 nations for which figures were available, the U.S. ranks only 11th in intentional homicide (see Table A). Its combined homicide/suicide rate is less than half of the suicide rate alone in gun-banning Hungary and less than 1/3 the suicide rate alone of gun-banning Rumania.

New Zealand ranks 16th despite a rate of gun ownership that far exceeds the U.S. The lowest rate on the table is for Israel, a country that actually encourages and requires almost universal gun ownership (U.N. Demographic Yearbook for 1985 1987).

Don B. Kates, in his article "Gun Control: A Realistic Assessment," says,

...if greater American gun availability were the cause of international crime differences, the difference in crime would only be as to crimes with guns.

Yet American rates for robbery, rape and other violent crimes committed without guns are enormously higher than the rates for such crimes (with and without guns, combined) which are uniformly low among Western European, British Commonwealth etc. countries regardless of whether they allow or ban gun ownership.

This shows the procedure of gun control will not assist in reversing America's violent crime rate -- a substantive change in the culture will be required. Thus Europe is not an example of the benefits of gun control.

One should also note the effect firearm availability has in other countries. In Israel, three terrorists planned a day of repeated acts of terrorism -- spraying heavily populated areas like malls with semi-automatic fire, then fleeing before the police arrived.

On their first attempt they managed to kill one innocent passerby before the crowd opened up on them. One terrorist died immediately, one died on the operating table, and one was wounded but able to be presented to the press the next day. He rather bitterly commented he and his partners had had no idea Israeli civilians carried guns (Kleck 1995).

David B. Kopel notes,

In the case of Switzerland, ... [a]s soon as the government adopts a new infantry rifle, it sells the old ones to the public. As a result, a nation of only 6 million people has at least 2 million guns, including over 600,000 fully automatic assault rifles (more than in the United States) and 500,000 pistols.

Even without a strict registration scheme, the Swiss homicide rate is only 15% of the American rate, and to the extent that guns are used in crime, the weapon is usually a stolen pistol or revolver. Not only rifles are sold this way; the army sells anything from machine guns and anti-tank weapons to howitzers and cannons.

In New Zealand, where the number of guns has soared since the government loosened controls on gun ownership in the 1980s (there are presently approximately 1,010,000 legal handguns in the nation), there has been a significant decrease in firearms deaths and injuries.

There are fewer than 100 firearms-related robberies, homicides, and attempted homicides per year (Funk 1993). Murder rates in 'gun-controlled' areas, such as Mexico and South Africa, by way of contrast, are more than twice as high as those in the U.S. (Polsby 1994).

These facts lead to an interesting conclusion that is probably not what anti-gun advocates would like. Overwhelmingly, the comparisons with other countries must incline one to believe gun prohibition is not a healthy or viable alternative for the United States.

"Lies, Damn Lies, and Statistics"

There is a statistic frequently used by anti-gun advocates -- a gun in the home is 43 times more likely to be used on a family member or someone you know than on an intruder (Kellerman & Reay 1986). This claim is, to put it bluntly, a gross distortion of the truth.

Unfortunately the authors of that investigation will not release all of their data for other scientists to study. What little they have revealed shows serious methodological flaws in the study. For example, 85% of the in-home homicides are suicides.

Other problems: it was a case study done on a single county, then used to extrapolate for the entire nation. It used obscure terminology -- the authors do not make clear the term 'someone you know' also included drug dealers, gang members, or violent criminals that lived in the neighborhood, or vengeful ex-partners of abused women.

Indeed, the statistics on 'criminal homicides' are not separated out to show that some of those killed 'in the home' included criminals fleeing the police, and homicides the courts ruled self-defense! The inference, of course, is that only loved ones, children, and family members are killed, violently and horribly, by gun use accidents.

It is a shame such advocacy research is quoted so frequently still -- it is at best a distortion of the truth, and at worst a tissue of outright lies. Indeed, Kellerman makes no secret of his hatred of guns -- at the 1993 HELP Conference he publicly and emotionally confessed his anti-gun prejudice (Suter 1995).

This is not scientific detachment. We should not look to this man for accuracy. Let us look, instead, at some facts. From a reputable and repeatable study, Prof. Kleck writes:

The rate of accidental death per ... 100,000 gun-owning households is less than 4-6% of the corresponding rates for automobiles, and has also been sharply declining [emphasis his] for over 20 years, despite rapid increases in the size of the gun stock.

And again,

Gun accidents are apparently largely confined to an unusually reckless subset of the population, with gun accidents disproportionately occurring to people with long records of motor vehicle accidents, traffic tickets, drunk driving arrests, and arrests for violent offenses.

Accidents are most common among alcoholics and people with personality traits related to recklessness, impulsiveness, impatience, and emotional immaturity (Kleck 1991).

Indeed, civilians are less at risk to shoot an innocent person than a policemen is:

Nationally good citizens use guns about 7 to 10 times as frequently as the police to repel crime and apprehend criminals -- and they do it with a better safety record than the police [11].

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 less likely to be wounded than police (Suter 1994).

Let us consider accidental child death, another favorite subject of anti-gun advocates. Two academic anti-gun crusaders put the accidental death toll at "almost 1,000 children" (Kates 1992) per year.

An anti-gun video of theirs, released to schools and hospitals, has an emotional appeal to gun prohibition, spoken over a visual of an infant playing with a handgun.

Don B. Kates Jr. writes of that and other similar and/or emotional claims,

...the National Safety Council figures of identifiable handgun accidental fatality average only 246 people of all ages per year. For children alone, the identifiable handgun average was: '10-15 accidental fatalities per year for children under age five; and 50-55 yearly for children under age fifteen.'

Obviously it is a terrible tragedy when a child dies in an accident, whether with a handgun or otherwise. But that does not justify falsifying statistics in order to concoct an argument for banning handguns.

Later in that same article, Mr. Kates points out the majority of non-suicide homicides in the home are battered women defending themselves from abusive partners. Do we really wish to classify legitimate self-defense as insupportable homicide? Do we wish to tell these women they have no right to defend themselves -- that they should simply submit to beatings, rape, and possible death at the hands of deranged men?

The (Im)Morality of Self-Defense?

Apparently the anti-gun people feel women should simply submit. This is shown by a May 1977 article on guns titled "Is the Robber My Brother," by Rev. Allen Brockway, from the magazine "Engage Social Action Forum, the magazine of the Board of Church and Society of the United Methodist Church."

He rhetorically asks if an attacked woman should simply submit. He answers in the affirmative because, although the:

...woman accosted in the park by a rapist is [not] likely to consider the violator to be a neighbor whose safety is of immediate concern ... [c]riminals are members of the larger community no less than are others. As such they are our neighbors or, as Jesus put it, our brothers...

The odds of this man ever being in such a situation are vanishingly slight. It is easy to condemn another to a horrible fate one cannot truly understand, nor ever expect to experience.

It is unfortunate the Rev. Brockway is not unrepresentative of the anti-gun faction. It is also unfortunate he does not seem to have read his Bible closely.

In both the New and Old Testaments, there are references to the holy duty one has to defend one's life and property. For example, Mosaic law includes the following:

"If a thief is found breaking in, and is struck so that he dies, there shall be no bloodguilt for him" (Exodus 22:2).

Obviously this means one's life and property is a gift from God -- that should not be wasted.

In Luke 11:21 (King James translation) it says, "When a strong man armed keepeth his palace, his goods are in peace...."

Later Jesus himself speaks to his disciples concerning self-defense, "He that hath no sword, let him sell his garment and buy one," in Luke 22:36.

While it is not a Bible quote, St. Augustine (354-430) perhaps put it best when he wrote:

"Though defensive violence will always be 'a sad necessity' in the eyes of men of principle, it would be still more unfortunate if wrongdoers should dominate just men."

Slander and Suspicion

A further problem is that often knowledgeable anti-gun control people are misquoted; their words are taken out of context; and/or they are viciously maligned.

For example, recently Prof. Kleck sent an open (and rather amusing) letter [12] that shows the extent of this problem. In it, Prof. Kleck mentions his surprise at discovering the credentials of his attacker:

I was not aware that Mr. Vernick was an expert on the subject of guns and violence, or that he has any expertise for judging my research.

His training as an attorney and that obtained in gaining a master's degree in public health would not ordinarily entail any professional training in survey research methodology of the sort that I used in the research Mr. Vernick criticized.

The letter goes on to deal, point by point and in a rational fashion, with the spurious accusations leveled against Kleck's research.

The definitive analysis of American gun control literature was conducted for the National Institute of Justice by the Social and Demographic Research Institute. The authors, Wright & Rossi, started out with anti-gun leanings.

However, after conducting the study, they privately referred to the (up to that point overwhelmingly anti-gun) literature as "results-oriented trash." Their report describes how anti-gun advocacy literature consistently portrays gun owners:

...demented and blood-thirsty psychopaths whose concept of fun is to rain death upon innocent creatures both human and otherwise (Wright & Rossi 1981).

Articles written by anti-gun people apparently consistently show this vituperation. I offer a sample of further quotes of anti-gun emotionality:

[T]he need that some homeowners and shopkeepers believe they have for weapons to defend themselves [represents] the worst instincts in the human character... weapons of death... designed only for killing...

There is no other reason to own a handgun (that we have envisioned, at least) than to kill someone with it... [Armed] against their own neighbors, ...gun nuts [are] anti-citizens, traitors, enemies of their own patriae...

[owning guns is] simply beastly behavior... Wretchedness is a warm gun... [13] (Wright & Rossi)

Bigotry by any other name is still bigotry. Furthermore, while gun owners are certainly not immune to name-calling themselves, I'd like to point out two things.

Firstly, if one rains hate down upon a particular group, there should be no surprise at receiving hate in return. Indeed, gun owners should be commended for not resorting to exactly what they are accused of -- violence.

Secondly, there exists what I consider an important difference between the hateful behavior shown by both sides:

Gun owners are not trying to force gun prohibition advocates to own guns.

To Serve and Protect?

Let us examine one final common misconception -- the protectors of society should solely be the police. This turns out to not be the case. I quote, from Lynch v. N.C. Dept. of Justice:

Law enforcement agencies and personnel have no duty to protect individuals from the criminal acts of others; instead their duty is to preserve the peace and arrest law breakers for the protection of the general public.

More quotes [14].

The law in New York remains as decided by the Court of Appeals case Riss v. New York: the government is not liable even for a grossly negligent failure to protect a crime victim.

In the Riss case, a young woman telephoned the police and begged for help because her ex-boyfriend had repeatedly threatened, 'If I can't have you no one else will have you, and when I get through with you, no one else will want you.'

The day after she had pleaded for police protection, the ex-boyfriend threw lye in her face, blinding her in one eye, severely damaging the other, and permanently scarring her features.

'What makes the City's position particularly difficult to understand,' wrote a dissenting opinion, 'is that, in conformity to the dictates of the law, Linda did not carry any weapon for self-defense. Thus by a rather bitter irony she was required to rely for protection on the City of New York which now denies all responsibility to her.'

And this one from Hartzler v. City of San Jose [15].

Ruth Brunell called the police on twenty different occasions to beg for protection from her husband. He was arrested only one time.

One evening Mr. Brunell telephoned his wife and told her he was coming over to kill her. When she called police, they refused her request that they come to protect her. They told her to call back when he got there.

Mr. Brunell stabbed his wife to death before she could call the police to tell them that he was there. The court held that the San Jose police were not liable for ignoring Mrs. Brunell's pleas for help.

It is also significant that most police, when not being observed by anti-gun sponsoring superiors, say overwhelmingly they'd prefer not to see guns outlawed, but rather to see the laws we already have in effect implemented more effectively, so criminals will be punished rather than the average responsible, gun-owning citizen.

In one poll, 88.7% believed that banning all firearms would not reduce the ability of criminals to obtain firearms and 90.4% felt that law-abiding citizens should be able to purchase any legal firearm for either sport or self-defense.

Also, 97.4% of the responding Chiefs of Police agreed that even if Congress approved a ban on all rifles, shotguns, and handguns, criminals would still be able to obtain 'illegal' weapons (NACP 1995) [16].

How Did Our Forefathers See Gun Ownership?

Let us look at this from a historical perspective. Our forefathers believed in the morality of both gun ownership and self-defense. Thomas Jefferson's words are still stirring even today:

And what country can preserve its liberties, if its rulers are not warned from time to time that this people preserve the spirit of resistance? Let them take arms... The tree of liberty must be refreshed from time to time, with the blood of patriots and tyrants [17].

George Mason said, "To disarm the people -- that was the best and most effective way to enslave them..." Alexander Hamilton comments rather dryly, "The best we can hope for concerning the people at large is that they be properly armed." And Patrick Henry is quoted as saying:

Where is the difference between having our arms in possession and under our direction, and having them under the management of Congress? If our defense be the real object of having those arms, in whose hands can they be trusted with more propriety, or equal safety to us, as in our own hands? [18]

We were initially a nation of self-sufficient, self-reliant, responsible individuals who chose to throw off the yoke of an uninterested and distant government.

What will we be saying to our children if we institute gun prohibition? Do we really wish to teach them that they must look to others for protection; that they must live in the enslavement and fear of potential violence rather than the empowerment of self-reliance; that they must pray that a frequently distant and uninterested police force will keep them safe?

The villain in this piece is most frequently defined as the violent criminal. Yet I'd like to assert they are in reality products of the system that forces them into a life of poverty and attitudes of anomie. A gun becomes a symbol of power to them in that situation.

It would seem to me addressing the multiple, real problems of inner city poverty would do more to alleviate our dilemma, rather than blaming a symbolic tool -- the simplest answer is not always the best. I refer to Prof. Kleck:

Fixating on guns seems to be, for many people, a fetish which allows them to ignore the more intransigent causes of American violence, including its dying cities, inequality, deteriorating family structure, and the all-pervasive economic and social consequences of a history of slavery and racism.

If we outlaw guns, we will have addressed only the precipitating causes. The remote causes are the true villains here: ignorance, poverty, helplessness, and fear of the unknown.

These causes are unfortunately ably aided by well-meaning but misinformed and misguided individuals who do not clearly understand cause and effect. The politicians hopping on the gun control bandwagon, the private citizens who are not thinking clearly of what exactly they are espousing -- these are our unfortunate and secondary villains.

Our victims, unfortunately, are ourselves. Each time we chip away at our basic freedoms; each time we believe legislating morality will work; we harm ourselves a little more. Legislating morality has been repeatedly proven to be an ineffective method of cultural change -- we need only study Prohibition to see that.

Our basic freedoms are precious and hard-won. To carelessly surrender them is to deny the toil and blood of our founding fathers, and the Constitution itself. We must not act without thought, or we begin, uncomfortably, to resemble our villains.

1984

It is my hope gun prohibition legislation will be abolished. However, I can visualize a possible world where such legislation will pass. In that case, I do not see a happy outcome.

Clichés become cliched because they express a basic truth we all recognize. It is a cliché, but when guns are outlawed, it is my belief only outlaws, amongst the general public, will have guns.

With no one of sufficient strength to deter them but the police, we will be trapped like sheep in a pen with a wolf, hoping our desperate bleating will alert a distant police dog -- a dog that may not believe our problems are important enough to engage it.

Violent crime will rise as a result of the lack of a deterrent. Our ability to defend ourselves gone, it will be a natural reaction to give the police more and more power in a desperate race against violent criminals.

At some point the police will have enough power that we the sheep, looking up, will no longer be able to tell the dog from the wolf -- and we will rue the day we chose to be helpless and dependent on others.

How Can We Help?

So what can we do for accurate information? Are guns of any use? Let us look at people who have examined the issues repeatedly and dispassionately -- the criminologists and the social scientists who have been quietly, non-hysterically studying the problem all along.

There are criminologists who have changed their minds on the gun issue. Significantly, this only goes one way -- towards wise gun management rather than gun prohibition.

There are no examples of evidence leading scholars who looked skeptically at the gun issue to change their minds in favor of anti-gun sentiment.

There are several examples of this change towards pro-gun sentiment -- Kleck, and Wright & Rossi are a few. Kleck pointed out he changed his mind when he discovered:

...handguns are used by good citizens to defeat crimes about 3 times as often as by criminals committing crimes. Despite all the harm guns do, they do three times as much good (Kleck 1989).

He came to the conclusion gun prohibition would potentially increase violent crime [19]:

Serious predatory criminals perceive a risk from victim gun use which is roughly comparable to that of criminal justice system actions, and this perception may influence their criminal behavior in socially desirable ways.

Consequently, one has to take seriously the possibility that 'across-the-board' gun control measures could decrease the crime-control effects of noncriminal gun ownership more than they would decrease the crime-causing effects of criminal gun ownership. (Kleck 1989)

The solutions these researchers propose are unfortunately not simple. As they point out, it is true we could simply legislate guns, treating them like cars, making them a licensed tool whose use requires training, and which one must demonstrate capability in.

Unfortunately, guns aren't cars, and people would not view them as such without significant educational efforts. To simply start legislating guns in a reasonable fashion would open the door to unreasonable and hysterical anti-gun attempts. As Mr. Kates puts it:

...automobile regulation is not premised on the idea that cars are evils from which any decent person would recoil in horror -- that anyone wanting to possess such an awful thing is atavistic and warped sexually, intellectually, educationally and ethically.

Nor are driver licensing and car registration proposed or implemented as ways to radically reduce the availability of cars to ordinary citizens or to secure the ultimate goal of denying cars to all but the military, police and those special individuals whom the military or police select to receive permits.

Thus I'd have to say legislation should wait until guns are viewed not as civilization-destroying horrors, but as situationally-dependent useful tools. In order to do this, the people must act.

Let us no longer blindly accept the stories we are fed by the media. If you hear of someone quoting a purported study, don't simply accept the information. Do research for yourself -- look to see if the study is repeatable, and if so, does it show consistent results?

Spread the truth. Write your state and federal legislators and insist on honest data for public policy-making. Insist taxes not pay for biased or incompetent research. Insist tax-payer funded studies be made public, not suppressed because the results weren't 'politically correct.'

Write newspapers, TV, and medical journals and let them know you will not tolerate dishonest and unbalanced reporting on the gun prohibition issue. Expose their fallacies, and send honest data to them.

Get involved and vote for legislators that are truthful and that support your freedoms to defend yourself, your family, and your community (Suter 1995). Once the hurdle of disinformation is passed, we can begin making gun laws in a calm, reasoned, non-hysterical fashion.

If we do otherwise we show we are not even sure as to what we should blame for our woes -- and we choose the simplistic, comforting, ultimately useless answer of blaming a tool.

Gun prohibition violates basic premises that are central to our Constitution; it makes villains of the well-meaning and victims of us all. Also, lamentably, should it occur, there is a real possibility gun control will contribute to the crime problem we face, rather than alleviating it.

Gun control will neither prevent violent crime, nor afford us safety. To quote Benjamin Franklin, "Those who would give up essential Liberty, to purchase a little temporary Safety, deserve neither Liberty nor Safety." Gun control, as stated by anti-gun advocates, should be abolished in the United States.

After-notes

This is information garnered from Kopel, written before the turn of the 20th Century:

"The 5 latest, 'great' genocides of this century are as follows:

1. 1933-1945 Nazi occupied Europe, 13 million Jews, gypsies, and others that opposed Hitler were murdered;

2. 1948-1952 China, 20 million anti-Communists;

3. 1960-1981 Guatemala, 100,000 Mayan Indians murdered;

4. 1971-1979 Uganda, 300,000 Christians and political rivals of Idi Amin murdered;

5. 1975-1979 Cambodia, 1 million educated persons murdered.

In every case, there was on the books before the murdering began, at least one 'gun control' law, sometimes the last of a series. In [most of these] cases, 'gun control' was first enacted by a regime that came before the genocide regime -- sometimes decades before."
(Kopel 1992).

A quote from a JPFO report (and I'm not even going to go into the tragedies of Waco, Ruby Ridge, and similar situations):

"Those who say, 'It could never happen here -- we would never need to defend ourselves against our own government,' are quite wrong. In 1950: "GIs returning from W.W.II were faced with a corrupt county government that was forging election returns and violently stopping legitimate voters from exercising their civil right to vote, through the use of armed force.

In the hours following the closing of the polls the Cantrell machine attempted to seize ballot boxes so that they could alter the outcome of the election. The GIs were not about to let this happen and a gun battle erupted. The GIs won. Knox Henry of the GI ticket became the next sheriff of McMinn County, TN."
(JPFO report)

Mr. Kopel has challenged those who say they support "gun control" because they wish to save lives. He asserts that the only way to prevent genocide -- the extermination of 'human lives' -- is through an armed citizenry. He writes in the 'New York Law School Journal of International and Comparative Law:'

Genocide is a human rights violation that dwarfs all other crimes. If we are to be serious -- and not merely sanctimonious -- about human rights then we must be serious about eradicating genocide....

If the people of the world were much better armed, many fewer people would be the victims of genocide. Unless one can propose a different method of ending endemic genocide, then the authors' prescriptions stand as the best, and only, potentially effective medicine.

The burden has shifted to the opponents of firearms rights to either come up with a more effective anti-genocide medicine or to admit that saving lives was never the primary objective of the gun prohibition movement in the first place." [emphasis mine].

Works Cited

There are frequent allusions to other papers and books in the footnotes of articles I read. I could not always glean all the MLA relevant information from the footnote references. However, I have attempted, as much as possible, to credit original authors and include all the information I could find.

Funk, T. Markus, "Gun Control and Economic Discrimination: The Melting Point Case-In-Point." 1993.

Kates, Jr., Don B., "Bigotry, Symbolism, and Ideology in the Battle Over Gun Control," 1992 Public Interest Law Review. 1992.

-----. "Gun Control: A Realistic Assessment," Guns, Murders, and the Constitution. Pacific Research Foundation, San Francisco, June 1994.

Kellerman, Arthur and Donald Reay, "Protection or Peril? An Analysis of Firearm-Related Deaths in the Home," The New England Journal of Medicine 314, no. 24 (June 12, 1986): 1557-1560.

Kopel, David B., The Samurai, The Mountie, and the Cowboy. 1992.

-----. "Trust the People: The Case Against Gun Control." 3 J. On Firearms and Pub. Pol'y 77, 83. 1990.

Kleck, Gary, "Crime Control Through the Private Use of Armed Force." Interview on the Internet, 1994.

-----. "Guns & Violence: A Summary of the Field," summary of Point Blank: Guns and Violence in America. Aldine de Gruyter, 1991.

-----. Open Letter to the MD Governor's Commission on Gun Violence, Sept. 3, 1995.

National Association of Chiefs of Police, 7th National Survey of Law Enforcement Officers in the United States 2. 1995.

Polsby, Daniel D., "The False Promise of Gun Control," The Atlantic Monthly. March 1994.

Sugarman, Josh, "Assault Weapons and Accessories in America," policy report of New Right Watch and the Education Fund to End Handgun Violence, September 1988.

Suter, M.D., Edgar A., "Guns: Facts & Fallacies." Doctors for Integrity in Research Public Policy paper. 1995.

-----. "Rebuttal to California Police Chiefs Association Position Paper." 1994.

U.N. Demographic Yearbook-1985. U.N., N.Y. 1987.

Wright, James D., "Statement of James Wright, Criminologist, Tulane University, Before the Subcommittee on Crime of the Committee on the Judiciary, United States House of Representatives." Mar 31, 1995.

----- & Peter Rossi, Weapons, Crime and Violence in America 26. U.S. Dep't of Justice. 1981

and added later in the footnotes:

Jews for the Preservation of Firearms Ownership Special Report, Guns and Ammo. 50-51, October 1995.

Kopel, David B., Article from the New York Law School Journal of International and Comparative Law. From the Internet. 1995.

Table A: International Intentional Homicide Table

Information taken from Donald B. Kate's 1990 book Gun Control: A Realistic Assessment. Click on the table itself to open another window to see a larger version of the table.

Here are the actual numbers I used to make up the graph, quoted from Kate's book:

Footnotes, Etc.

Click on the "back" link to go back to the appropriate location within the paper.

[0] This is a test. This is only a test.

[1] Professor: but within the limits of the federal law?

[2] Professor: 12% and 10% are not significant? How many injuries and deaths does this equate to?

Later in the study he points out violent crime involving guns is the type where the victim and/or the perpetrator is most likely to have no injuries:

[I]n about 83% of the cases in which an victim is faced with a handgun, he (or she) submits; in 83% of the cases in which a victim with a handgun confronts a criminal the criminal flees or surrenders.

Therefore the presence of a gun appears to lower the incidence of injury in violent crime.

[3] Professor: cite solid evidence to support this claim? [unreadable handwritten word] additions to references.

[4] See Wright & Rossi 1986. Also, Kleck references the following papers on this subject:

"See, e.g. Murray, "Handguns, Gun Control Law and Firearm Violence", 23 SOCIAL PROBLEMS 81 (1975); Lizotte & Bordua and Bordua & Lizotte, above; Kleck, "The Relationship between Gun Ownership levels and Rates of Violence in the United States: in D. Kates (ed.) FIREARMS AND VIOLENCE (1984); McDowall, Gun Availability and Robbery Rates: A Panel Study of Large U.S. Cities, 1974-1978, 8 LAW & POLICY Q. 135 (1986); Bordua, "Firearms Ownership and Violent Crime: A Comparison of Illinois Counties: Kleck & Patterson, "The Impact of Gun Control and Gun Ownership levels on City Violence Rates:, a paper presented to the 1989 Annual Meeting of the American Society of Gun Control and Gun Ownership levels on City Violence Rates:, a paper presented to the 1989 Annual Meeting of the American Society of Criminology (available from the authors at Florida State University School of Criminology). See also Eskridge, "Zero-Order Inverse Correlations between Crimes of Violence and Hunting Licenses in the United States", 71 SOCIOLOGY & SOCIAL RESEARCH 55 (1986)."

I have included all of these in the footnote, since credit should be given where it is due.

[5] Professor: on both sides of the issue? Politics?

I found hysteria on both sides, of course. However, as I note later in this paper re anti- and pro-gun advocate differences: Pro-gun people are not trying to force anti-gun people to own guns. The reverse is not true.

[6] Professor: define terms relevant to various types of weapons at issue?

[7] Professor: ad hominem [against the man] fallacy?

[8] Professor: good point.

[9] Professor: I'm impressed with the way you skillfully use Jensen's [a model for argument] as a tool in constructing this argument.

[10] Professor: amazing!

[11] Professor comment: is this a faulty analogy since use (in terms of hours) is not compatible?

I'd meant to imply this statistically showed we would all benefit by aiding the police in stopping violent crime, due to the larger number of responsible citizens available to help prevent crime, as compared to numbers of police available.

I do not imply in the least the police are somehow incompetent.

[12] Letter from Prof. Gary Kleck to the MD Governor's Commission on Gun Violence, Sept. 3, 1995

[13]Wright & Rossi credit the following in their footnotes: "'Aspects of the Priapic Theory of Gun Ownership' in W. Tonso (ed.), The Gun Culture and its Enemies (1985).

Also see, e.g. Harriet Van Horne, N.Y. Post magazine, (June 21, 1976, p. 2), U.S. Catholic magazine, editorial 'Sex Education Belongs in the Gun Store,' August, 1979, Harlan Ellison, 'Fear Not Your Enemies,' Heavy Metal, March, 1981.

This view is also espoused by Carl Bakal, 'No Right to Bear Arms' (1967) 88-90, and E. Tanay, 'Neurotic Attachment to Guns,' The Fifty Minute Hour. (1976)."

[14] Riss v. New York, 22 N.Y. 2d 579, 293 N.Y.S. 2d 897, 240 N.E. 2d 806 (1958)

[15] Hartzler v. City of San Jose, 46 Cal. App. 3d 6 (1975).

[16] Professor: what is really at the core of the problem for the American people? (not advocates for either side). Is it safety? Is it keeping guns out of the hands of criminals, gangs, and children? It seems these macro-issues need to prevail in this sort of case.

[17] Thomas Jefferson, in a letter to William S. Smith in 1787. Taken from Jefferson, "On Democracy 20."

[18] from "Debates and Other Proceedings of the Convention of Virginia," taken in shorthand by David Robertson of Petersburg. 2nd ed. Richmond, 1805.

[19] Unfortunately the constantly increasing rates of violent crime in both England and Australia, where recent strenuous gun control laws have been recently passed (within the last decade), would seem to bear out this frightening conclusion. London was recently described in the news as a more dangerous city than New York!