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).

http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,120638,00.html


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