Currently, America’s population is becoming more and more polarized regarding the issue of firearms. With the recent adoption of Missouri’s first concealed carry law, the debate over regulation of guns has once again been brought to the forefront. The danger of losing more personal liberties and inherent rights is present more than ever before. Those who favor gun control must be presented with a clear message: gun control is effective only in suppressing the rights of law-abiding citizens, and is not the proper resolution to crime.
In order to understand the dynamics of the gun control issue, one must first understand the different forms of gun control currently advocated by its proponents. There are several types of control, but only currently implemented or proposed methods shall be considered relevant for the purposes of this paper.
One of the most common types of gun control currently in place in many cities and states is the mandatory waiting period. The basic idea of this approach is to delay the purchase of a firearm for period of time (usually three to seven days) in the hopes of discouraging impulsive gun purchases for the purpose of committing a crime. An often-used argument for waiting periods is that if someone was angry with someone else and wished to harm him or her, that person could do so more easily if they had a readily available source of firearms. With the waiting period, the argument goes, they are more likely to cool off and reconsider their actions. This argument is not very effective. Have you ever heard of a murderer deciding not to kill someone just because he has a to wait a week? If the person was really in that big of a hurry to commit a crime, they would simply illegally acquire a weapon. Some may argue that the average citizen does not know where to get an illegal gun, only career-criminals do. But these same people use the argument that gun control must be implemented because guns are so readily available to criminals. And waiting periods do not deter crime. The potential criminal in the previous example could always be patient, and just wait a week and murder the person later. They could acquire an illegal gun, or simply use a totally different kind of weapon altogether. In fact, there is very little evidence that waiting periods play any role in reducing the amount of crime:
Under a very sophisticated statistical study, Lott and Landes found that
gun waiting periods, background checks, and “one gun a month”
restrictions had no effect on mass murder rates and no effect on ordinary
murder rates (LaPierre, 73).
The liberals’ motives for advocating waiting periods are based far more on economics. As a general rule, people tend to be impulse buyers. They feel that by forcing a waiting period, many people will change their minds about buying a gun during the wait, and thus they will accomplish their ultimate goal: fewer citizens will be armed.
Left-Wing activists commonly claim that the waiting periods on firearms are meant to be used in conjunction with background checks. Such background checks are supposedly intended to filter out those with prior criminal records, those with a history of mental illness, etc. While it all sounds nice, in reality, background checks are of little practical use, as evidenced by Lott and Landes' study (LaPierre, 73). Those who have existing criminal records will most likely purchase illegal weapons, rather than go through legal channels. To complicate matters, a critical flaw in background checks has always existed: in order to process the check in a timely manner, a limited amount of data is able to be searched. So it is quite possible for a criminal to pass a background check because of inaccurate or incomplete records. Again, the true motivation for suggesting background checks is the same as waiting periods—hoping to dissuade on-the-fence buyers from purchasing by forcing them to wait longer to buy. To make things worse, these type of buyers aren’t the violent offenders that everyone is afraid to give access to guns; instead, they are the average law-abiding citizen.
“You have to get a license to drive a car, why shouldn’t you have to have one to use a gun?” gun control lobbies ask. Clearly, however, their efforts to promote gun safety are simply thinly veiled attempts to implement a nation-wide gun registration program. Their surface argument is that if the government knows who has guns, they will be able to track their use, and therefore more effectively solve and prevent crimes. However, their real intention is to be able to keep a running list of all the law-abiding citizens who own guns, for use in the eventual seizure of all firearms. The argument for registration falls apart when you consider the fact that none of the criminals using illegal guns will be registered. Nor are those who purchased weapons before the registration was implemented. To make matters worse, those who fear government seizure of guns are often considered paranoid, and not taken seriously. This is particularly disturbing when one looks to history, and Nazi Germany. During World War II, the Nazis were able to control the people of the countries which they invaded by first disarming them. And how did they do this? Through the use of gun registration.
...the Nazis merely made sure everybody knew they had the registration
records and ordered all citizens to turn in their guns. The penalty for
failure to do so was death. Most of the European populations complied
with the order, especially after a few exemplary executions (Weir, 160).
There is also a certain amount of irony in the argument for registration. In 1968, the Supreme Court ruled that mandatory gun registration was, in certain circumstances, a violation of the 5th Amendment. Earlier that year, a convicted felon named Miles Haynes was arrested for being in possession of an unregistered shotgun with a shortened barrel. Haynes claimed that if he had registered the gun, as he was legally required to, he would be admitting to breaking federal law, which makes possession of firearms illegal for convicted felons. By registering the gun, he would be incriminating himself, and
therefore, the mandatory registration was unconstitutional under the 5th Amendment. The Supreme Court upheld Haynes' case overwhelmingly. This decision effectively made felons exempt from laws requiring them to register their firearms, which would be inherently illegal. (LaPierre, 162) Therefore, “only those who commit no crime can be punished under registration and licensing systems, which cannot apply to criminals” (LaPierre, 162). It is difficult to understand how one can argue for such a system.
Those who support gun control do not always mask their true intentions. They sometimes simply say that they do not believe civilians should own guns at all. They support this view by pointing to the United States Constitution, claiming that it does not give anyone the right to own guns. They interpret the Second Amendment to mean that those who are in the military are allowed to have firearms, and everyone else is not. It is unclear exactly how they arrive at this conclusion. The Second Amendment states, "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." The word "militia" does not refer to the military. According to Webster's Dictionary, a "militia" is "a body of citizen soldiers, called out only in emergencies.' (432). The key word there is "citizen." According to the same dictionary, a synonym for citizen is "civilian' (130) And the proper use of the word "civilian"? "One engaged in civil, not military, pursuit," (131). So by definition, a militia is made up of people not in the military, who are ordinary citizens. Substituting this definition into the Second Amendment yields the following: "A well regulated body of citizens, being necessary to the security of a free state, the right of the people to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed." It is clear therefore, that the purpose of the Second Amendment was indeed to guarantee that all people have the right to own firearms, not just those in the military.
But even faced with such evidence, anti-gun activists claim that the Constitution makes no reference to the types of guns one can own. They frequently cite what they consider to be "assault weapons". This term is often used to describe any kind of military-style firearm, regardless of its practical function. Attempts to ban such weapons have been tried time and time again, unfortunately, sometimes with success. Such laws can be passed using the premise that so-called assault weapons have no practical use outside of the military, and only terrorists and criminals would want them. Sadly, much of the information currently cited regarding “assault weapons” is false. For example, fully automatic weapons (guns that will fire multiple rounds as long as the trigger is depressed) have been illegal since the National Firearms Act of 1935 (LaPierre, 39). For the majority of the population, semi-automatic firearms (that only fire a singe shot each time the trigger is pulled) are the only legally available guns. And the fact is, civilian versions of fully automatic military weapons are not much different than the common rifles sold at Wal-Mart. The killing power of a Remington hunting rifle is just as dangerous as that of a semi-automatic AK-47. True, most military weapons will shoot longer distances and hold more rounds than some hunting guns, but that does not make them a danger to society. You will be just as dead if you get shot with the Remington as you will from the AK-47. In fact, often military weapons are not as powerful as those designed for hunting. Because the civilian versions of military rifles are based on the same design as the original, they are subject to the same limitations. In order to be effective, a portable rifle capable of firing in a fully-automatic mode must use lower-powered rounds, to prevent the barrel from raising too drastically when multiple shots are fired in automatic mode (Weir, 183). Because the civilian versions of these military weapons are designed to use the same cartridges, they too are less powerful than a standard semi-automatic-only designed rifle. “Assault Weapons” are simply named as such because of their tendency to resemble military weapons, and therefore, appear menacing. They present no more danger (and in some circumstances, less danger), than traditional hunting rifles.
Of course, when one uses the above argument to someone who favors gun control, they simply respond by again asking why people need guns at all. After all, do people really need to hunt for their food anymore? And do they really need to be able to protect themselves? They claim that the police will protect you against criminals, and the government must assist them by keeping guns out of those criminals' hands. But who will protect us against the government? The purpose of the second amendment was not to ensure the individual’s right to go deer hunting. It was to guarantee the ability of law-abiding citizens to defend themselves from an oppressive government. When the Bill of Rights was written, the founding fathers were afraid that the newly formed United States would become just as tyrannical as England if there were not checks and balances. One such check was allowing the citizens to arm themselves, thus limiting the ability of a government to oppress its people. Gun control takes this power away, and gives it to an ever-growing central government. As Benjamin Franklin once said, “Those that give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety, deserve neither liberty, nor safety” (Mauser, 8).
Another popular argument for the elimination of guns are gun-related accidents. Often, liberals cite statistics claiming that an alarming number of children are killed each year in gun accidents. They often suggest mandatory gun locks, or other devices that will supposedly keep guns out of the hands of kids. But what is not mentioned is that the most effective way to prevent firearm accidents, especially among children, is proper gun education, not prohibition. A gun that is owned for the sole purpose of self-defense is useless with a trigger-lock installed, as one would likely not have time to remove such a device in time to utilize the weapon in a real emergency. Thus, mandatory trigger-lock laws are essentially prohibiting owning a weapon for self-defense. How can one protect their children and still keep a defensive firearm in the home? The answer is simple: education. Children that are taught to fear guns and stay away from them are far more likely to do exactly the opposite, and when their curiosity causes them to locate and play with their parents' guns, accidents can happen. By exposing a child to guns under controlled, supervised conditions, and by teaching them proper use and safety techniques, accidents can be avoided.
Liberals also occasionally suggest that guns should be outlawed because they are often used in suicides. The moral issues regarding one's right to kill oneself aside, this argument is flawed. While it is true that people often choose guns to kill themselves with because of the high probability for success, few could successfully argue that guns cause people to commit suicide. It is also interesting to note that the suicide rate in the United States (about 12 per hundred thousand) is lower than that of Japan (about 14 per hundred thousand), where guns are almost totally unavailable (Weir, 120). It is likely, then, that no connection exists between the availability of guns, and the number of people committing suicide, and so banning guns would do little to change this number. Gun Control simply isn't the solution to crime. Murder is often the crime that liberal activists claims gun control helps prevent. According the the F.B.I's Uniform Crime Reports, about 66% of all murders in 2002 were committed with firearms. This may seem like a lot, but this figure does not stand alone. Consider that according to the same report, almost 24% of the 2002 murders were committed with knives, clubs (or other blunt objects), or personal weapons such as the hands or feet. That means that almost a fourth of the murders took place using weapons commonly found in the average American household. Would banning steak knives and baseball bats be a plausible solution? I think not. What is interesting is that firearm related murders accounted for only 0.0065% of all violent crimes that occurred in 2002 (U.C.R.). That is far less than one percent. One's chances of being murdered by someone with a gun is quite slim.
Crime will always exist. So will murder. It isn’t going away, no matter what laws are passed or what measures are taken. Criminals will continue to ignore the law, and will not limit themselves to function within the confines of any legislation. The only people who will do so are law-abiding citizens, and such people are not the problem. Taking away weapons from the innocent only leaves the power in the hands of those who would abuse it- both the criminals, and the government.
Works Cited:
LaPierre, Wayne. Guns, Freedom, and Terrorism. Nashville: Thomas Nelson, Inc., 2003.
Mauser, Gary. Firearm Registration and the Slippery Slope in Canada. The Fraser
Forum, The Fraser Institute, Vancouver, BC. (March 2001), p. 8-10.
Morehead, Albert, and Loy Morehead, ed. The New American Webster Handy College
Dictionary. New York: Signet, 1995.
Weir, William. A Well Regulated Militia: The Battle Over Gun Control. North Haven:
The Shoe String Press, Inc., 1997.
Uniform Crime Statistics. Federal Bureau of Investigation.
<http://www.fbi.gov/ucr/02cius.htm>