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Guns make us safe
Tuesday, November 9, 1999
By Cal Thomas
The latest shootings by two maniacs with grudges in Honolulu
and in Seattle produced the predictable cries for more gun
laws from Attorney General Janet Reno, Vice President
Al(pha) Gore, the big media and the usual suspects in the
anti-gun lobby who won't be satisfied until the only people with
access to guns are criminals.
As National Rifle Association President Charlton Heston testified last
week on Capitol Hill, there are 22,000 federal, state and local gun laws
on the books, most of which are never enforced. He properly asked
why more gun laws are the answer when current laws are not being
enforced and criminals pay no attention to them at all.
Anti-gun people are trying to sell more restrictive legislation on the false
premise that fewer guns mean a safer society. Writing in the New York
Times, Josh Sugarmann, executive director of the Violence Policy
Center, urges Congress to skip "incremental legislation that won't
control handgun violence" and "immediately call on Congress to pass
far-reaching industry regulation" that would effectively "ban" handguns.
Whether such legislation would make us safer is no longer a matter of
conjecture. Evidence in countries where gun laws tougher than ours
exist show more, not less, crime.
In Australia, where strict new gun legislation was passed following a
[1996]* shooting rampage by a man who killed 35 people and wounded
19 others, gun-related crime has increased. According to the Australian
Bureau of Statistics, the number of armed robberies went up 39
percent last year and assaults involving guns rose 28 percent. Gun
murders increased 19 percent. In addition to laws so strict that Olympic
shooters must leave the country in order to practice, an expensive gun
buy-back program resulted in 640,000 guns being turned in to
authorities. The cost of the program averaged $57 per Australian. Still,
gun crime is up. Prior to the new gun laws, crime in Australia was in
decline.
Phillip Adams, a prominent Australian columnist and radio talk show
host, who turned in several of his own guns, got to the heart of the
thinking of anti-gun zealots when he told the Washington Post two
years ago about the main point of the gun laws: "The whole country
feels better." So, facts don't matter, just feelings?
In Great Britain, where massive firearms-confiscation programs were
enacted following a widely publicized shooting in Scotland, gun-related
crimes have increased, including "hot" robberies, meaning those
conducted while the victims are at home. Criminals apparently believe
their odds have improved since many of the law-abiding have been
disarmed.
Even the liberal-leaning Democratic governor of Vermont, Howard
Dean, said after last summer's synagogue shooting in Los Angeles: "Gun
laws wouldn't have helped .... Better enforcement would have helped."
That was Heston's point when he testified before a congressional
committee last week. Only a fraction of laws on the books is enforced,
so why pass more laws? Heston quoted Deputy Attorney General Eric
Holder, who told USA Today, "It's not the federal government's role to
prosecute" gun cases. Then why pass the laws in the first place?
The goal of the anti-gun lobby is confiscation. In Canada, a law that
took effect last December required many new categories of guns to be
surrendered. Those who keep them face prosecution and the potential
for police invasion of their homes and businesses. Fifty-eight percent of
handguns registered in Canada since 1935 are now banned. Those who
fail to turn them in can be tracked down and forced to comply, while
being charged with a crime.
The criminals, meanwhile, are largely undeterred by new laws. Why
should they be when they haven't obeyed the old ones? But more laws
make some people feel good, including the criminals who now have
easier pickings in Australia and Great Britain and probably will have in
Canada when new crime figures are available. Maybe the NRA has
been right all along. When guns are outlawed, only outlaws will have
guns. Anyone want to debate that point with facts instead of feelings?
(c) 1999, Los Angeles Times Syndicate
*[original text had 1966 instead of 1996]
[This message has been edited by Mikey (edited November 09, 1999).]
