Whither Gun Control?
>
>Saturday, May 22, 2004
>
>By John R. Lott, Jr.
>
>What is happening to the gun control movement?
>
>This month, the Million Mom March in Washington drew an anemic
>showing of only 2,000 people, while this year, all of the
>Democratic presidential candidates however unenthusiastically
>spoke of Americans? Second Amendment right to own guns. These
>are just a few of the signs that the facts finally seem to be
>catching up to the movement. The future for the movement looks
>even worse.
>
>Whether the subject is concealed handgun laws or bans on
>semi-automatic so-called assault weapons, gun control debates
>have been filled with apocalyptic claims about what will happen
>if gun control is not adopted. One common prediction is that laws
>allowing the carrying of a concealed weapon will result in crime
>waves, or permit holders shooting others. However, with 37 states
>now having right-to-carry laws , and another nine states letting
>some citizens carry, permit holders have continually shown
>themselves to be extremely law-abiding. It is becoming more and
>more difficult to attack those laws.
>
>Disarray among gun controllers is becoming common, even on one
>cornerstone of the gun control movement ? the semi-automatic gun
>ban. Take the statements made on National Public Radio by a
>representative of the Violence Policy Center just one week after
>the assault weapon extension was defeated in the Senate this
>March.
>
>NPR described the VPC as "one of the more aggressive gun groups
>in Washington." Yet the VPC's representative claimed: If the
>existing assault-weapons ban expires, I personally do not believe
>it will make one whit of difference one way or another in terms
>of our objective, which is reducing death and injury and getting
>a particularly lethal class of firearms off the streets. So if it
>doesn?t pass, it doesn?t pass.
>
>The NPR reporter noted: "[the Violence Policy Center's
>representative] says that's all the [assault-weapons ban] brought
>about, minor changes in appearance that didn't alter the function >of these weapons.
>
>Yet, before the Senate vote the VPC had long claimed that it was
>a "myth" that "assault weapons merely look different. The NRA and
>the gun industry today portray assault weapons as misunderstood
>ugly ducklings, no different from other semi-automatic guns. But
>while the actions, or internal mechanisms, of all semi-automatic
>guns are similar, the actions of assault weapons are part of a
>broader design package. The 'ugly' looks of the TEC-9, AR-15,
>AK-47 and similar guns reflect this package of features designed
>to kill people efficiently."
>
>So why the sudden disarray after the Senate defeat? Simply,
>gun-control groups' credibility is on the line and they are
>getting cold feet. With no academic research showing the assault
>weapons ban reduces crime, gun control groups realize that soon
>it will be obvious to everyone that their predicted horror
>stories about "assault weapons" were completely wrong.
>
>Internationally, dramatic gun control victories in countries such
>as England, Australia, and Canada are also unraveling.
>
>? Crime did not fall in England after handguns were banned in
>January 1997. Quite the contrary, crime rose sharply. Yet,
>serious violent crime rates from 1997 to 2002 averaged 29 percent
>higher than 1996; robbery was 24 percent higher; murders 27
>percent higher. Before the law, armed robberies had fallen by 50
>percent from 1993 to 1997, but as soon as handguns were banned,
>the robbery rate shot back up, almost back to their 1993 levels.
>
>? Australia has also seen its violent crime rates soar after its
>Port Arthur gun control measures (search) in late 1996. Violent
>crime rates averaged 32 per cent higher in the six years after
>the law was passed (from 1997 to 2002) than they did the year
>before the law in 1996. The same comparisons for armed robbery
>rates showed increases of 45 percent.
>
>? The 2000 International Crime Victimization Survey, the most
>recent survey done, shows that the violent crime rate in England
>and Australia was twice the rate in the US.
>
>? Canada has not gone anywhere near as far as the United Kingdom
>or Australia. Nevertheless, their gun registration system is
>costing roughly a thousand times more than promised and has grown
>to be extremely unpopular, with only 17 percent of Canadians in a
>poll release this week supporting the system. Nor does the system
>seem to be providing any protection. The Canadian government
>recently admitted that they could not identify even a single
>violent crime that had been solved by registration.
>
>Everyone wants to take guns away from criminals. The problem is
>that if the law-abiding citizens obey the laws and the criminals
>don?t, the rules create sitting ducks who cannot defend
>themselves. While the debate is hardly over, gun control is just
>another example of government planning that hasn?t lived up to
>its billing. And like other types of government planning,
>eventually its failures become too overwhelming to ignore.
>
>John Lott, Jr., is a resident scholar at the American Enterprise
>Institute and is the author of The Bias Against Guns (Regnery
>2004).
>
>
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That rifle hanging on the wall of the working-class flat or labourer's cottage is the symbol of democracy. It is our job to see that it stays there. - George Orwell