Last August, a 57 year old man in Jacksonville, Florida went grocery shopping for his wife at a dollar store. This simple task quickly turned into a life threatening situation as two armed robbers arrived, their guns pointed at the store clerk. Before these thugs could harm anybody, however, one of them was shot by the shopper, who was carrying a concealed weapon. The second quickly fled the store. Innocent lives were saved because of that shopper’s right to bear arms.
In the wake of the horrendous school shooting in Connecticut, in which so many children died, the debate over gun control has passionately resurfaced. Given the opportunity, many would quickly restrict gun ownership or even eliminate the Second Amendment and ask questions later. This is a mistake.
For one, those who are seeking such immediate restrictions are acting on pure emotion, drawn from the Connecticut tragedy, and not taking the time to think through the issue logically. It is the same as someone committing a reckless act in the heat of the moment only to regret it later.
The truth is that a blanket ban on guns is not only completely impractical in the United States, but also potentially dangerous.
Now, a favorite talking point by gun control advocates is the fact that the United Kingdom, with its tight gun restrictions, has far fewer gun deaths then the U.S., which has the world’s largest number of privately held guns. The argument here is that because gun control has reduced gun deaths in the U.K. and other European countries, it would do so in the U.S.
Let us take a closer look at gun control in the U.K. In 1996, 16 young children and a teacher were murdered by a gunman who entered a primary school gymnasium in Dunblane, Scotland.
This massacre incited a passionate discourse on gun control, which culminated in the Firearms Amendment Act of 1997 banning private ownership of handguns. At that time there were an estimated 200,000 legally-registered handguns in the U.K. Authorities began confiscating them.
In the decade after the ban, gun homicides actually increased on the average, peaking in 2004. Only in the past six years has the number consistently begun to decrease. Even now, however, there are an estimated 4,060,000 firearms (of all types) privately owned in the U.K.
Now let us suppose such a strict law is passed in the U.S. I will stick with handguns to keep the point simple. There are an estimated 40-45 million adults who own handguns in the U.S. Compare that with the 200,000 in the U.K. when the ban was passed. Keep in mind also that the U.S. has a total land area of 2,959,064 square miles, compared to the U.K.’s 94,060 square miles. In short, there are way more guns here and more places to hide them.
So we can ban guns, but such an edict would be as cheap as the ink used to write it up. There is no way the authorities would ever come close to confiscating all of those weapons. Earlier I was speaking strictly of handguns, but for those of you who want to ban all guns, you would have to confiscate…wait for it…270 million firearms!
But for the sake of argument, let us suppose that authorities do somehow manage to clear up even half of those guns. Just because something is illegal does not mean people will not acquire it.
Cocaine is illegal in the U.S., yet the drug trade is flourishing. Child prostitution is also illegal, yet there are an estimated 100,000 child prostitutes being abused in the U.S. today. In Illinois, something as silly as fireworks are illegal, yet go outside on July 4 and see how many of your neighbors ignore that law.
So banning guns is completely impractical. “But why not try anyway?” you ask. Simple. It would redistribute the gun owning population. The law abiding citizens would turn their guns into the authorities and sit defenseless as thugs and criminals go about their business as normal. Going back to the story I began with, the two robbers would still have their guns, but the shopper who stopped them would not have his. Sure, the total number of gun deaths might decrease—for criminals. Innocent people would continue getting killed.
Even the U.K. is not immune from this fact. In 2010, a lone gunman killed 12 people in a mass shooting in Cumbria, northern England—it happened despite all of the strict gun laws. In fact, violent crime in the U.K., which includes all violent acts against people, is higher than in the United States. So thinking we can prevent mass shootings and other forms of violence by a gun ban is wishful thinking.
Indeed, criminals could rest assured that they would not be shot by a private citizen protecting his life or property. The school in Connecticut was a “gun free zone.” That pointless phrase did nothing to deter the gunman. It may have actually reassured him.
Here in Chicago we have some of the strictest gun laws in the country. Yet Chicago’s murder rate is four times that of New York and double that of Los Angeles. What more, during the span of the war in Afghanistan, more people have died from gun violence in Chicago then have soldiers on the battlefield!
Banning guns is not the answer to eliminating crime. Should gun owners pass a thorough background check? Of course. Should they prove that they can safely handle a weapon? Naturally. I will even go so far as to say that you can ban certain so-called “assault weapons,” but only if you can actually define what those are. After all, full out machine guns are already basically illegal.
I can understand why many believe that guns make the world a scary place, and I have no doubt that most people who want to see them banned have good intentions. Nevertheless, I contend that it would be much scarier to know that society’s villains remain heavily armed, while you have only a frying pan to protect yourself.
About Post Author
