This primitive pistol can only be legally used on a pistol club range!!!
TEN MYTHS ABOUT GUN CONTROL
Table of Contents
MYTH 1 -- Public opinion polls
MYTH 2 -- The purpose of a handgun
MYTH 3 -- Armed citizens don't deter crime
MYTH 4 -- Licensing and registration
MYTH 5 -- Foreign gun control works
MYTH 6 -- Crimes of passion and guns
MYTH 7 -- Semi-autos should be banned
MYTH 8 -- No `right' to own a gun
MYTH 9 -- Concealed carry laws are dangerous
MYTH 10 -- Gun control reduces crime
Ten Myths About Gun Control
"We will never fully solve our nation's horrific
problem of gun violence unless we ban the manufacture and sale of handguns and
semi-automatic assault weapons." --USA Today, December 29, 1993
"Why should America adopt a policy of near-zero
tolerance for private gun ownership?. .. (W)ho can still argue compellingly
that Americans can be trusted to handle guns safely? We think the time has come
for Americans to tell the truth about guns. They are not for us, we cannot
handle them." --Los Angeles Times, December 28, 1993
These editorial opinions expressed by two of the nations
most widely read newspapers represent the absolute extreme in the firearms
controversy: that no citizen can be trusted to own a firearm. It is the product
of a series of myths which--through incessant repetition--have been mistaken
for truth. These myths are being exploited to generate fear and mistrust of the
60-65 million decent and responsible Americans who own firearms. Yet, as this
document proves, none of these myths will stand up under the cold light of
fact.
MYTH 1:"The majority of Americans favor strict new
additional federal gun controls."
Polls can be slanted by carefully worded questions to
achieve any desired outcome. It is a fact that most people do not know what
laws currently exist; thus, it is meaningless to assert that people favor
"stricter" laws when they do not know how "strict" the laws
are in the first place. Asking about a waiting period for a police background
check presumes, incorrectly, that police can and will actually conduct a check
during the wait. Similarly, it is meaningless to infer anything from support of
a 7- or 5-day waiting period when respondents live in a state with a 15-day
wait or a 1-6 month permit scheme in place. Asked whether they favor making any
particular law "stricter," however, most people do not. Unbiased,
scientific polls have consistently shown that most people:
Oppose costly registration of firearms.
Oppose giving police power to decide who should own guns.
Do not believe that stricter gun laws would prevent
criminals from illegally obtaining guns.
In 1993, Luntz Weber Research and Strategic Services
found that only 9% of the American people believe "gun control" to be
the most important thing that could be done to reduce crime. By a margin of
almost 3-1, respondents said mandatory prison would reduce crime more than
"gun control." This poll, unlike many others, allowed respondents to
answer more honestly by using open ended questions without leading
introductions. The result was an honest appraisal of the attitude of the
American people: "gun control" is not crime control.
One clear example of a poll done which used biased
questions and flawed procedures was conducted by Louis Harris Research Inc.
(LHRI) in the summer of 1993. The poll reported unprecedented levels of gun
abuse by high school students. However, after examining the poll, Professor
Gary Kleck of Florida State University, the nation's leading scholar on crime
and firearms, called the findings "...implausible, being inconsistent with
more sophisticated prior research." Prof. Kleck found the Harris findings
of students who had been shot at or who had actually shot at someone to be
insupportable by crime and victimization statistics as reported by the
Department of Justice: "Even if the percent of handgun crime victimization
had doubled from the average for the 1979-1987 period, the LHRI results would
still be overstated by a factor of 100." In the end, he labeled the LHRI
poll "advocacy polling."1
A more direct measure of the public's attitude on
"gun control" comes when the electorate has a chance to speak on the
issue. Public opinion polls do not form public policy, but individual actions
by hundreds of thousands of citizens do. For example, in 1993, the voters of
Madison, Wisconsin, were presented with a referendum calling for a ban on
handgun ownership in that city. Pollsters predicted an overwhelming win for the
gun banners. When Second Amendment rights activists rallied opposition and
educated the electorate on the facts about gun ownership, the referendum was
defeated. In the 1993 gubernatorial elections, the incumbent governor in New
Jersey and the front-runner in Virginia made "gun control" a central
theme of their campaigns. Both candidates lost to opponents who stressed real
criminal justice reforms, not "gun control." In November 1982,
Californians rejected, by a 63-37% margin, a statewide handgun initiative that
called for the registration of all handguns and a "freeze" on the
number of handguns allowed in the state. Again, pre-elect ion pollsters
reported support for the measure. That initiative was also opposed by the
majority of California's law enforcement community. Fifty-one of the state's 58
working sheriffs opposed Proposition 15, as did 101 chiefs of police. Nine law
enforcement organizations, speaking for rank-and-file police, went on record
against the initiative.
Increasingly, the American people are voicing support for
reform of the criminal justice system. The NRA also actively supports
initiatives calling for mandatory jail time for violent criminals. In 1982, the
residents of Washington, D.C., enacted an NRA-endorsed mandatory penalty bill,
actively opposed by the anti-gun D.C. City Council, that severely punishes
those who use firearms to commit a violent crime . In 1988, the residents of
Oregon approved, by a 78-22% margin, an NRA-supported initiative mandating
prison sentences for repeat offenders after the state legislature and governor
failed to act on the issue. In 1993, the residents of Washington state
overwhelmingly approved the "three strikes you're out" initiative
calling for life sentences without parole for anyone convicted of a third
serious crime. NRA's Crime Strike program was instrumental in collecting the
needed signatures to put that question on the ballot.
In 1993, the Southern States Police Benevolent
Association conducted a scientific poll of its members. Sixty-five percent of
the respondents identified "gun control" as the least effective
method of combating violent crime. Only 1% identified guns as a cause of
violent crime, while 48% selected drug abuse, and 21% said the failure of the
criminal justice system was the most pressing cause. The officers also revealed
that 97% support the right of the people to own firearms, and 90% said they
believed the Constitution guarantees that right.
The SSPBA findings affirmed a series of polls conducted
by the National Association of Chiefs of Police of every chief and sheriff in
the country, representing over 15,000 departments. In 1991 the poll discovered
for the third year in a row that law enforcement officers overwhelmingly agree
that "gun control" measures have no effect on crime. A clear majority
of 93% of the respondents said that banning firearms would not reduce a
criminal's ability to get firearms, while 89% said that the banning of
semi-automatic firearms would not reduce criminal access to such firearms.
Ninety-two percent felt that criminals obtain their firearms from illegal
sources; 90% agreed that the banning of private ownership of firearms would not
result in fewer crimes. Seventy-three percent felt that a national waiting
period would have no effect on criminals getting firearms. An overwhelming 90%
felt that such a scheme would instead make agencies less effective against
crime by reducing their manpower and only serve to open them up to liability
lawsuits.
These are the only national polls of law enforcement
officers in the country, with the leadership of most other major groups
adamantly refusing to poll their membership on firearms issues.
1 Kleck, "Reasons for Skepticism on the Results from
a New Poll on: The Incidence of Gun Violence Among Young People," The
Public Perspective, Sept./Oct. 1993.
MYTH 2: "The only purpose of a handgun is to
kill people."
This often repeated statement is patently untrue, but to
those Americans whose only knowledge of firearms comes from the nightly
violence on television, it might seem believable. When anti-gun researcher
James Wright, then of the University of Massachusetts, studied all the
available literature on firearms, he concluded: "Even the most casual and
passing familiarity with this literature is therefore sufficient to believe the
contention that handguns have `no legitimate sport or recreational use.' "
There are an estimated 65-70 million privately owned
handguns in the United States that are used for hunting, target shooting,
protection of families and businesses, and other legitimate and lawful
purposes. By comparison, handguns were used in an estimated 13,200 homicides in
1992 --less than 0.02% (two hundredths of 1%) of the handguns in America. Many
of these reported homicides (1,500-2,800) were self-defense or justifiable and,
therefore, not criminal. That fact alone renders the myth about the "only
purpose" of handguns absurd, for more than 99% of all handguns are used
for no criminal purpose.
By far the most commonly cited reason for owning a
handgun is protection against criminals. At least one-half of handgun owners in
America own handguns for protection and security. A handgun's function is one
of insurance as well as defense. A handgun in the home is a contingency, based
on the knowledge that if there ever comes a time when it is needed, no
substitute will do. Certainly no violent intent is implied, any more than a
purchaser of life insurance intends to die soon.
MYTH 3:"Since a gun in a home is many times more
likely to kill a family member than to stop a criminal, armed citizens are not
a deterrent to crime."
This myth, stemming from a superficial "study"
of firearm accidents in the Cleveland, Ohio, area, represents a comparison of
148 accidental deaths (including suicides) to the deaths of 23 intruders killed
by home owners over a 16-year period. 2
Gross errors in this and similar
"studies"--with even greater claimed ratios of harm to good--include:
the assumption that a gun hasn't been used for protection unless an assailant
dies; no distinction is made between handgun and long gun deaths; all
accidental firearm fatalities were counted whether the deceased was part of the
"family" or not; all accidents were counted whether they occurred in
the home or not, while self-defense outside the home was excluded; almost half
the self-defense uses of guns in the home were excluded on the grounds that the
criminal intruder killed may not have been a total stranger to the home
defender; suicides were sometimes counted and some self-defense shootings
misclassified. Cleveland's experience with crime and accidents during the study
period was atypical of the nation as a whole and of Cleveland since the
mid-1970s. Moreover, in a later study, the same researchers noted that roughly
10% of killings by civilians are justifiable homicides. 3
The "guns in the home" myth has been repeated
time and again by the media, and anti-gun academics continue to build on it. In
1993, Dr. Arthur Kellermann of Emory University and a number of colleagues
presented a study that claimed to show that a home with a gun was much more
likely to experience a homicide.4 However, Dr. Kellermann selected for his
study only homes where homicides had taken place--ignoring the millions of
homes with firearms where no harm is done--and a control group that was not
representative of American households. By only looking at homes where homicides
had occurred and failing to control for more pertinent variables, such as prior
criminal record or histories of violence, Kellermann et al. skewed the results
of this study. Prof. Kleck wrote that with the methodology used by Kellermann,
one could prove that since diabetics are much more likely to possess insulin than
non-diabetics, possession of insulin is a risk factor for diabetes. Even Dr.
Kellermann admitted this in his study: "It is possible that reverse
causation accounted for some of the association we observed between gun
ownership and homicide." Law Professor Daniel D. Polsby went further,
"Indeed the point is stronger than that: 'reverse causation' may account
for most of the association between gun ownership and homicide. Kellermann's
data simply do not allow one to draw any conclusion."5
Research conducted by Professors James Wright and Peter
Rossi,6 for a landmark study funded by the U.S. Department of Justice, points
to the armed citizen as possibly the most effective deterrent to crime in the
nation. Wright and Rossi questioned over 1,800 felons serving time in prisons
across the nation and found:
81% agreed the "smart criminal" will try to
find out if a potential victim is armed.
74% felt that burglars avoided occupied dwellings for
fear of being shot.
80% of "handgun predators" had encountered
armed citizens.
40% did not commit a specific crime for fear that the
victim was armed.
34% of "handgun predators" were scared off or
shot at by armed victims.
57% felt that the typical criminal feared being shot by
citizens more than he feared being shot by police.
Professor Kleck estimates that annually 1,500-2,800
felons are legally killed in "excusable self-defense" or
"justifiable" shootings by civilians, and 8,000-16,000 criminals are
wounded. This compares to 300-600 justifiable homicides by police. Yet, in most
instances, civilians used a firearm to threaten, apprehend, shoot at a
criminal, or to fire a warning shot without injuring anyone.
Based on his extensive independent survey research, Kleck
estimates that each year Americans use guns for protection from criminals more
than 2.5 million times annually. 7 U.S. Department of Justice victimization
surveys show that protective use of a gun lessens the chance that robberies,
rapes, and assaults will be successfully completed while also reducing the
likelihood of victim injury. Clearly, criminals fear armed citizens.
2 Rushforth, et al., "Accidental Firearm Fatalities
in a Metropolitan County, " 100 American Journal of Epidemiology 499
(1975).
3 Rushforth, et al., "Violent Death in a
Metropolitan County," 297 New England Journal of Medicine 531, 533 (1977).
4 Kellermann, et al., "Gun Ownership as a Risk
Factor for Homicide in the Home," New England Journal of Medicine 467
(1993).
5 Polsby, "The False Promise of Gun Control,"
The Atlantic Monthly, March 1994.
6 Wright and Rossi, Armed and Considered Dangerous: A
Survey of Felons and Their Firearms (N.Y.: Aldine de Gruyter, 1986).
7 Kleck, interview, Orange County Register,Sept. 19,
1993.
MYTH 4:"Honest citizens have nothing to fear from
gun registration and licensing which will curb crime by disarming
criminals."
"Gun control" proponents tout automobile
registration and licensing as model schemes for firearm ownership. Yet driving
an automobile on city or state roads is a privilege and, as s uch, can be
regulated, while the individual right to possess firearms is constitutionally
protected from infringement. Registration and licensing do not prevent criminal
misuse nor accidental fatalities involving motor vehicles in America, where
more than 40,000 people die on the nation's highways each year. By contrast,
about 1,400 persons are involved in fatal firearm accidents each year.
Registration and licensing have no effect on crime, as
criminals, by definition, do not obey laws. Indeed, a national survey of
prisoners conducted by Wright and Rossi for the Department of Justice found
that 82% agreed that "gun laws only affect law-abiding citizens; criminals
will always be able to get guns."
Further, felons are constitutionally exempt from a gun
registration requirement. According to the U.S. Supreme Court's decision in
Haynes v. U.S., since felons are prohibited by law from possessing a firearm,
compelling them to register firearms would violate the Fifth Amendment
protection against self-incrimination. 8 Only law-abiding citizens would be
required to comply with registration--citizens who have neither committed crime
nor have any intention of doing so.
Registration and licensing of America's 60-65 million gun
owners and their 200 million firearms would require the creation of a huge
bureaucracy at tremendous cost to the taxpayer, with absolutely no tangible
anti-crime return. Indeed, New Zealand authorities repealed registration in the
1980s after police acknowledged its worthlessness, and a similar recommendation
was made by Australian law enforcement. Law enforcement would be diverted from
its primary responsibility, apprehending and arresting criminals, to
investigating and processing paperwork on law-abiding citizens.
In the U.S., after President Clinton, Attorney General
Reno, and others announced support for registration and licensing, police
response was immediate and non-supportive. Dewey Stokes, President of the
Fraternal Order of Police said ... I don't want to get into a situation where
we have gun registration." Other law enforcement officers responded even
more strongly. Charles Canterbury, President of the South Carolina FOP said,
"On behalf of the South Carolina law enforcement, I can say we are
adamantly opposed to registration of guns." Dennis Martin, President of
the National Association of Chiefs of Police reported, "I have had a lot
of calls from police chiefs and sheriffs who are worried about this. They are
afraid that we're going to create a lot of criminals out of law-abiding people
who don't want to get a license for their gun.
Finally, a national registration/licensing scheme would
violate an individual's right to privacy protected by the Fourth Amendment and
establish a basis upon which gun confiscation could be implemented. More than
60,000 rifles and shotguns were confiscated in April, 1989 from honest citizens
who had dutifully registered their guns with the authorities in Soviet Georgia
(Chicago Sun-Times, April 12, 1989, The Atlanta Journal and Constitution, May
21, 1989). Could that happen in America? Gun prohibitionists in Massachusetts,
Ohio, and Washington, D.C., have already proposed using registration lists for
such purposes. And, since 1991, New York City authorities have used
registration lists to enforce a ban on semi-automatic rifles and shotguns.
Avowed handgun prohibitionist Charles Morgan, as director of the American Civil
Liberties Union's Washington office, in a 1975 hearing before the House
Subcommittee on Crime stated: "I have not one doubt, even if I am in
agreement with the National Rifle Association, that kind of a record-keeping
procedure is the first step to eventual confiscation under one administration
or another."
Reasonable fears of such confis cation lead otherwise
law-abiding citizens to ignore such laws, creating a disrespect for law and a
lessened support for government. In states and cities which recently required
registration of semi-automatic firearms, estimates of compliance range from 5
to 10%.
8 Haynes v. U.S., 309 U.S. 85 (1968).
"Stiff `gun control' laws work as shown by the low
crime rates in England and Japan, while U. S crime rates continue to
soar."
All criminologists studying the firearms issue reject
simple comparisons of violent crime among foreign countries. It is impossible
to draw valid conclusions without taking into account differences in each
nation's collection of crime data, and their political, cultural, racial,
religious, and economic disparities. Such factors are not only hard to compare,
they are rarely, if ever, taken into account by "gun control"
proponents.9
Only one scholar, attorney David Kopel, has attempted to
evaluate the impact of "gun control" on crime in several foreign
countries. In his book The Samurai, The Mountie and The Cowboy: Should America
adopt the gun controls of other democracies?, named a 1992 Book of the Year by
the American Society of Criminology, Kopel examined numerous nations with
varying gun laws, and concluded: "Contrary to the claims of the American
gun control movement, gun control does not deserve credit for the low crime
rates in Britain, Japan, or other nations." He noted that Israel and
Switzerland, with more widespread rates of gunownership, have crime rates
comparable to or lower than the usual foreign examples. And he stated:
"Foreign style gun control is doomed to failure in America. Foreign gun
control comes along with searches and seizures, and with many other
restrictions on civil liberties too intrusive for America. Foreign gun
control...postulates an authoritarian philosophy of government fundamentally at
odds with the individualist and egalitarian American ethos."10
America's high crime rates can be attributed to re
volving-door justice. In a typical year in the U.S., there are 8.1 million
serious crimes like homicide, assault, and burglary. Only 724,000 adults are
arrested and fewer still (193,000) are convicted. Less than 150,000 are
sentenced to prison, with 36,00 0 serving less than a year (U.S. News and World
Report, July 31, 1989). A 1987 National Institute of Justice study found that
the average felon released due to prison overcrowding commits upwards of 187
crimes per year, costing society approximately $430, 000.
Foreign countries are two to six times more effective in
solving crimes and punishing criminals than the U.S. In London, about 20% of
reported robberies end in conviction; in New York City, less than 5% result in
conviction, and in those cases imprisonment is frequently not imposed.
Nonetheless, England annually has twice as many homicides with firearms as it
did before adopting its tough laws. Despite tight licensing procedures, the
handgun-related robbery rate in Britain rose about 200% duri ng the past dozen
years, five times as fast as in the U.S.
Part of Japan's low crime rate is explained by the
efficiency of its criminal justice system, fewer protections of the right to
privacy, and fewer rights for criminal suspects than exist in the United
States. Japanese police routinely search citizens at will and twice a year pay
"home visits" to citizens' residences. Suspect confession rate is 95%
and trial conviction rate is over 99.9%. The Tokyo Bar Association has said
that the Japanese police routinely "...engage in torture or illegal
treatment. Even in cases where suspects claimed to have been tortured and their
bodies bore the physical traces to back their claims, courts have still
accepted their confessions." Neither the powers and secrecy of the police
nor the docility of defense counsel would be acceptable to most Americans. In
addition, the Japanese police understate the amount of crime, particularly
covering up the problem of organized crime, in order to appear more efficient
an d worthy of the respect the citizens have for the police.
Widespread respect for law and order is deeply ingrained
in the Japanese citizenry. This cultural trait has been passed along to their
descendants in the United States where the murder ratef or Japanese-Americans
(who have access to firearms) is similar to that in Japan itself. If gun
availability were a factor in crime rates, one would expect European crime
rates to be related to firearms availability in those countries, but crime rat
es are similar in European countries with high or relatively high gun
ownership, such as Switzerland, Israel, and Norway, and in low availability
countries like England and Germany. Furthermore, one would expect American
violent crime rates to be more sim ilar to European rates in crime where guns
are rarely used, such as rape, than in crimes where guns are often used, such
as homicide. But the reverse is true: American non-gun violent crime rates
exceed those of European countries.
9 Wright, et al ., Under the Gun: Weapons, Crime and
Violence in America (N.Y.: Aldine, 1983).
10 Kopel, "The Samurai, The Mountie, and the Cowboy:
Should America adopt the gun controls of other democracies?' (Buffalo, N.Y.:
Prometheus Books, 1992), 431-32.
MYTH 6: "Most murders are argument-related
`crimes of passion' against a relative, neighbor, friend or acquaintance.
"
The vast majority of murders are committed by persons
with long established patterns of violent criminal behavior. Acc ording to
analyses by the U.S. Senate Subcommittee on Juvenile Delinquency, the FBI, and
the Chicago, New York City, and other police departments, about 70% of
suspected murderers have criminal careers of long standing--as do nearly half
their victims. FBI data show that roughly 47% of murderers are known to their
victims.
The waiting period, or "cooling-off" period, as
some in the "gun control" community call it, is the most often cited
solution to "crimes of passion." However, state crime records show
that in 1992, states with waiting periods and other laws delaying or denying
gun purchases had an overall violent crime rate more than 47% higher and a
homicide rate 19% higher than other states. In the five states that have some
jurisdictions with waiting periods (Georgia, Kansas, Nevada, Ohio and
Virginia), the non-waiting period portions of all five states have far lower
violent crime and homicide rates.
Recent studies by the Justice Department suggest that
persons who live violent lives e xhibit those violent tendencies "both
within their home and among their family and friends and outside their home
among strangers in society." A National Institute of Justice study reveals
that the victims of family violence often suffer repeated problems from the
same person for months or even years, and if not successfully resolved, such
incidents can eventually result in serious injury or death. A study conducted
by the Police Foundation showed that 90% of all homicides, by whatever means
committed, in volving family members, had been preceded by some other violent
incident serious enough that the police were summoned, with five or more such
calls in half the cases.
Circumstances which might suggest "crimes of
passion" or "spontaneous" arguments, such as a lover's triangle,
arguments over money or property, and alcohol-related brawls, comprise 29% of
criminal homicides, according to FBI data.
Professor James Wright of the University of Massachusetts
describes the typical incident of family violence as "that mythical crime
of passion" and rejects the notion that it is an isolated incident by
otherwise normally placid and loving individuals. His research shows that it is
in fact "the culminating event in a long history of interpersonal viole
nce between the parties."
Wright also speaks to the protective use of handguns.
"Firearms equalize the means of physical terror between men and women. In
denying the wife of an abusive man the right to have a firearm, we may only be
guaranteeing he r husband the right to beat her at his pleasure," says
Wright. 11
11 Wright, "Second Thoughts About Gun Control,"
91 [The] Public Interest, 23 (Spring 1988).
MYTH 7:"Semi-automatic firearms have no legitimate
sporting purpose, are the preferred weapon of choice of criminals, and should
be banned."
Use of this myth by gun prohibitionists is predicated
purely on pragmatism: whichever "buzzword" can produce the most
anti-gun emotionalism--"Saturday Night Special," "assault
weapons," and "plastic guns"--will be utilized in efforts to
generate support for a ban on entire classes of firearms.
Examples of this anti-gun legislative history abound. A
Saturday Night Special" ban bill enacted in Maryland establishes a
politically appointed "Handgun Roster Board" with complete authority
to decide which handguns will be permitted in the so-called "Free
State"-- any handgun could therefore be banned. Federal legislation aimed
at the nonexistent "plastic gun" would have banned mil lions of metal
handguns suitable for personal protection. In the 1994 crime bill, Congress did
ban semi-automatic "assault weapons," based on their cosmetic
appearance. After passage, however, not even the virulently anti-gun Washington
Post pretended the ban would have a crime fighting effect, labeling it
"mainly symbolic."
Criminals and law-abiding citizens both follow the lead
of police and military in choosing a gun. Criminals generally pick as handguns
.38 Spl. and .357 Mag. revolvers, with ba rrels about 4" long and
retailing (an unimportant matter for criminals) at over $200. Only about
one-sixth fit the classic description of the so-called "Saturday Night
Special"--small caliber, short barrel and inexpensive. While criminals are
unconcerned with the cost of a firearm, the law-abiding certainly are. A ban on
inexpensive handguns will have a disproportionate impact on low income
Americans, effectively disarming them. This is particularly unfair, since it is
the poor who more often must live an d work in high crime areas.
As more and more police departments, following the lead
of the military, switch from revolvers to 9 mm semi-auto pistols, criminals and
honest citizens will both follow suit. Indeed, semi-auto pistols have risen
from one -fourth of American handgun manufacturing in the 1970s to
three-fourths today. Criminals rarely use long guns and, when they do, are more
apt to use a sawed-off shot- gun than a semi-automatic rifle, whether military
style or not. In America's larg est and most crime ravaged cities, only about
1/2-3% of "crime guns" are military-style semi-autos. As military
establishments adopted medium-velocity rifles with straight-stock
configuration, target shooters, hunters, and collectors have acquired the sem
i-automatic models of these firearms.
While not all guns incorrectly attacked as
"preferred by criminals" are popular for hunting, many are, but hunting
is not the only valid purpose for owning a firearm. Small handguns, which may
be ill-suited for hunting or long-range target shooting, are useful for
personal protection, where the accuracy range rarely needs to exceed ten feet.
Semi-automatic rifles and shotguns are suitable for hunting a variety of game.
Semi-automatic, military and military-sty le rifles, including the M1 Garand,
Springfield M1A, and the Colt Sporter, are used in thousands of sanctioned
Highpower Tournaments each year and the National Matches at Camp Perry, Ohio.
Hundreds of thousands of individuals use these rifles for recreati onal target
shooting and plinking.
The Second Amendment clearly protects ownership of
firearms which are useful "for the security of a free state" and
semi-automatic versions of military arms are clearly appropriate for that
purpose. It was the cle ar intention of the Framers of our Constitution that
the citizenry possess arms equal or superior to those held by the government.
That was viewed as the best deterrent to tyranny, and it has worked for over
200 years. It was also the intention of the Fou nding Fathers that citizens be
able to protect themselves from criminals, and that doesn't necessarily require
a gun suitable for hunting, target shooting, or plinking. All modern firearms
may be used for such protective purposes.
MYTH 8: "The righ t guaranteed under the Second
Amendment is limited specifically to the arming of a `well-regulated Militia'
that can be compared today to the National Guard."
The Second Amendment reads: "A well-regulated
Militia, being necessary to the se curity of a free State, the right of the
People to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed." In contrast to
other portions of the Constitution, this Amendment contains no qualifiers, no
"buts" or "excepts." It is a straightforward statement
affirming t he people's right to possess firearms.
The perception that the Second Amendment guarantees a
"collective right" or a "right of states to form militias"
rather than an individual right is a wholly inaccurate 20th-century invention.
Historically, the term "militia" refers to the people at large, armed
and ready to defend their homeland and their freedom with arms supplied by
themselves (U.S. v. Miller, 1939). Federal law (Title 10, Section 311 of the
U.S. Code) states:
"The militia of the Unit ed States consists of all
able-bodied males at least 17 years of age...." Moreover, historical
records, including Constitutional Convention debates and the Federalist Papers,
clearly indicate that the purpose of the Second Amendment was to guard against
t he tyranny that the Framers of the Constitution feared could be perpetrated
by any professional armed body of government. The arms, records and ultimate
control of the National Guard today lie with the Federal Government, so that it
clearly is not the "mi litia" protected from the federal government.
The Supreme Court recently affirmed this virtually
unlimited control of the Guard by the federal government in the case of Perpich
v. Department of Defense (1990). The Court held that the power of Congr ess
over the National Guard is plenary (entire, absolute, unlimited) and such power
is not restricted by the Constitution's Militia Clause. The Second Amendment
was not even mentioned by the Court, undoubtedly because it does not serve as a
source of powe r for a state to have a National Guard.
In The Federalist No. 29, Alexander Hamilton argued that
the army would always be a "select corps of moderate size" and that
the "people at large (were) properly armed" to serve as a fundamental
check against the standing army, the most dreaded of institutions. James
Madison, in The Federalist No. 46, noted that unlike the governments of Europe
which were "afraid to trust the people with arms," the American people
would continue under the new Constitution to possess "the advantage of
being armed," and thereby would continually be able to form the militia
when needed as a "barrier against the enterprises of despotic
ambition."
A 1990 Supreme Court decision regarding searches and
seizures confirmed that the right to keep and bear arms was an individual
right, held by "the people"--a term of art employed in the Preamble
and the First, Second, Fourth, Ninth, and Tenth Amendments referring to all
"persons who are part of a national community" (U.S. v. Verdu
go-Urquidez, 1990).
The case of U.S. v. Miller (1939) is frequently, though
erroneously, cited as the definitive ruling that the right to keep and bear
arms is a "collective" right, protecting the right of states to keep
a militia rather than the i ndividual right to possess arms. But that was not
the issue in Miller, and no such ruling was made; the word
"collective" is not used any place in the court's decision.
While such a decision was sought by the Justice
Department, the Court decided o nly that the National Firearms Act of 1934 was
constitutional in the absence of evidence to the contrary. The case hinged on
the narrow question of whether a sawed-off shotgun was suitable for militia
use, and its ownership by individuals thus protected b y the Second Amendment.
The Court ruled that: "In the absence of (the
presentation of) any evidence tending to show that possession or use of a
`shotgun having a barrel of less than eighteen inches in length' at this time
has some reasonable relati onship to the preservation or efficiency of a
well-regulated militia, we cannot say that the Second Amendment guarantees the
right to keep and bear such an instrument. Certainly it is not within judicial
notice--common knowledge, that need not be proven i n court--that this weapon
is any part of the military equipment or that its use could contribute to the
common defense."
Because no evidence or argument was presented except by
the federal government, the Court was not made aware that some 30,000 short-barreled
shotguns were used as "trench guns" during World War I.
The Supreme Court has ruled on only three other cases
relating to the Second Amendment--all during the last half of the nineteenth
century. In each of these cases, the Court held that the Second Amendment only
restricted actions of the federal government, not of private individuals (U.S.
v. Cruikshank, 1876) or state governments (Presser v. Illinois, 1886, and
Miller v. Texas, 1894). The Court also held, in Presser, that the Firs t Amendment
guarantee of freedom of assembly did not apply to the states; and in Miller v.
Texas, it held that the Fourth Amendment guarantee against unreasonable search
and seizure did not apply to the states, since the Court believed that all the
amendm ents comprising the Bill of Rights were limitations solely on the powers
of Congress, not upon the powers of the states.
It was not until two generations later that the Court
began to rule, through the Fourteenth Amendment, that the First, Fourth, and
other provisions of the Bill of Rights limited both Congress and state
legislatures. No similar decision concerning the Second Amendment has ever been
made in spite of contemporary scholarship proving that the purpose of the
Fourteenth Amendment was t o apply all of the rights in the Bill of Rights to
the states.12 That research proves that the Fourteenth Amendment was made a
part of the Constitution to prevent states from depriving the newly freed
slaves of the rights guaranteed in the Bill of Rights , including what the
Supreme Court's Dred Scott decision referred to as one of the rights of
citizens, the right "to keep and carry arms wherever they went."
The only significance of the Supreme Court's refusal to
hear a challenge to the hand- gun ban imposed by Morton Grove, Illinois, is
that the Court will still not rush to apply the Second Amendment to the states.
The refusal to hear the case has no legal significance and, indeed, it would
have been very unusual for the Court to make a decision involving the U.S. Constitution
when the Illinois courts had not yet decided if Morton Grove's ban conflicted
with the state's constitution.
12 Halbrook, That Every Man Be Armed: The Evolution of a
Constitutional Right (Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press, 1984).
MYTH 9: "A person in a public place with a gun
is looking for trouble."
Gun prohibitionists use this myth to oppose legislative
proposals to allow law-abiding citizens to obtain permits to carry concealed
firear ms. In spite of this opposition, numerous states have adopted favorable
concealed carry laws over the past few years. In each case, anti-gun activists
and politicians predicted that allowing law-abiding people to carry firearms
would result in more deaths and injuries as people would resort to gunfire to settle
minor disputes. Shoot-outs over fender-benders and Wild-West lawlessness were
predicted in an effort to stir up public fear of reasonable laws.
This tactic--seeking to frighten people into s upporting
desired positions--is employed more and more frequently by gun prohibitionists.
Prof. Gary Kleck explains the reasoning thus: "Battered by a decade of
research contradicting the central factual premises underlying gun control,
advocates have apparently decided to fight more exclusively on an emotional battlefield,
where one terrorizes one's targets into submission rather than honestly
persuading them with credible evidence."13
When the concealed carry laws were passed and put into
pract ice, the result was completely different from the hysterical claims of
the gun prohibitionists. In Florida, since the concealed carry law was changed
in 1987, the homicide rate has dropped 21%, while the national rate has risen
12%. Across the nation, states with favorable concealed carry laws have a 33%
lower homicide rate overall and 37% lower robbery rate than states that allow
little or no concealed carry.
Gun prohibitionists have also acted to penalize and
discourage gun ownership by imposing mandatory prison terms on persons carrying
or possessing firearms without a license or permit, a license or permit they
have also made impossible or very difficult to obtain. Massachusetts'
Bartley-Fox Law and New York's Koch-Carey Law are premier exampl es of this
"gun control" strategy. Such legislation is detrimental only to peaceful
citizens, not to criminals.
By the terms of such a mandatory or increased sentence
proposal, the unlicensed carrying of a firearm--no matter how innocent the
circum stances--is penalized by a six-to-twelve month jail sentence. It is
imposed on otherwise law-abiding citizens although in many areas it is
virtually impossible for persons to obtain a carry permit. It is easy to see
circumstances in which an otherwise law -abiding person would run afoul of this
law: fear of crime, arbitrary denial of authorization, red-tape delay in
obtaining official permission to carry a firearm, or misunderstanding of the
numerous and vague laws governing the transportation of firearms.
The potential for unknowingly or unwittingly committing a
technical violation of a licensing law is enormous. Myriad legal definitions of
"carrying" vary from state to state and city to city, including most
transportation of firearms--accessible o r not, loaded or not, in a trunk or
case. And out-of-state travelers are exceedingly vulnerable because of these
various definitions.
One need only examine the first persons arrested under
the Massachusetts and New York City "mandatory penalty" law s for
proof that such laws are misdirected: an elderly woman passing out religious
pamphlets in a dangerous section of Boston and an Ohio truck driver coming to
the aid of a woman apparently being kidnapped in New York City.
In New York City--prior to the enactment of the
Koch-Carey mandatory sentence for possession law--the bureaucratic logjam in
the licensing division, combined with a soaring crime rate, forced law-abiding
citizens to obtain guns illegally for self-protection. In effect, citizens
admitted that they would rather risk a mandatory penalty for illegally owning a
firearm than risk their lives and property at the hands of New York's violent,
uncontrolled criminals. Honest citizens feared the streets more than the
courtrooms.
By contrast, the city's criminal element faces no similar
threat of punishment. A report carried in the March 1, 1984, issue of the New
York Times says it all: "Conviction on felony charges is rare. Because of
plea-bargaining, the vast majority of those arrested on felony charges are
tried on lesser, misdemeanor charges." In one year, according to the
Times, there were 106,171 felony arrests in New York City, but only 25,987
cases received felony indictments and only 20,641 resulted in convictions, with
impr isonment a rarity. This condition persists, the New York Times reported
again on June 23, 1991: in 1990 felony indictments were resolved by plea
bargains in over 83% of cases. Only 5.7% of cases ended with a trial verdict,
with only 3.8% ending in convict ion. Not surprisingly, with just 3% of the
nation's population, in 1992 New York City accounted for 12% of the nation's
homicides.
In championing New York's tough Koch-Carey Law, then
Mayor Ed Koch said contemptuously of gun owners, "Nice guys who own guns
aren't nice guys." No such rancor was expressed about the city's
revolving-door criminal justice system where the chances of hardened criminals
being arrested on felony charges are one in one hundred. Later, the Police
Foundation study of New Yor k's Koch- Carey Law found that it failed to reduce
the number of guns on the street and did not reduce gun use in rape, robbery or
assault.
Such legislation invites police to routinely stop and
frisk people randomly on the street on suspicion of fi rearms possession. In
fact, the Police Foundation has called for the random use of metal detectors on
the streets to apprehend people carrying firearms without authorization. In
disregarding the constitutionally guaranteed right to privacy and against unreasonable searches and seizures, police would be empowered under the Police
Foundation's blueprint for disarmament to "systematically stop a certain
percentage of people on the streets... in business neighborhoods and run the
detectors by them, just as yo u do at the airport. If the detectors produce
some noise then that might establish probable cause for a search."
While admitting that such "police state"
tactics would require "methods... that liberals instinctively
dislike," government researchers James Q. Wilson and Mark H. Moore called
for more aggressive police patrolling in public places, saying: "To inhibit
the carrying of handguns, the police should become more aggressive in stopping
suspicious people and, where they have reasonable grounds for their suspicions,
frisking (i.e. patting down) those stopped to obtain guns. Hand-held
magnetometers, of the sort used by airport security guards, might make the
street frisks easier and less obtrusive. All this can be done without changing
the law." (The Washington Post, April 1, 1981) Note, they said
"people," not criminals.
13 Kleck, "Reasons for Skepticism on the Results
from a New Poll on: The Incidence of Gun Violence Among Young People," The
Public Perspective, Sept./Oct. 1993.
MYTH 10: "Gun control reduces crime."
This is perhaps, the greatest myth that is perpetrated
today by national gun ban groups. No empirical study of the effectiveness of
gun laws has shown any positive effect on crime. To the dismay of the prohibitionists, such studies have shown a negative effect. That is, in areas
having greatest restrictions on private firearms ownership, crime rates are
typically higher, because criminals are aware that their intended victims are
less likely to have the me ans with which to defend themselves.
If gun laws worked, the proponents of such laws would
gleefully cite examples of reduced crime. Instead, they uniformly blame the absence
of tougher or wider spread measures for the failures of the laws they
advocated. Or they cite denials of applications for permission to buy a firearm as
evidence the law is doing something beyond preventing honest citizens from
being able legally to acquire firearms. They cite Washington, D.C., as a
jurisdiction where gun laws are "working." Yet crime in Washington
has risen dramatically since 1976, the year before its handgun ban took effect.
Washington, D.C., now has outrageously higher crime rates than any of the
states (D.C. 1992 violent crime rate: 2832.8 per 100,000 resi dents; U.S. rate:
757.5), with a homicide rate 8 times the national rate (1992 rate 75.4 per
100,000 for D.C., 9.3 nationally.) No wonder former D.C. Police Chief Maurice
Turner said, "What has the gun control law done to keep criminals from
gettin g guns? Absolutely nothing... [City residents] ought to have the
opportunity to have a handgun."
Criminals in Washington have no trouble getting either
prohibited drugs or prohibited handguns, resulting in a skyrocketing of the
city's murder rate. D.C.'s 1991 homicide rate of 80.6 per 100,000 population
was the highest ever recorded by an American big city, and marked a 200% rise
in homicide since banning handguns, while the nation's homicide rate rose just
11%. Since 1991, the homicide rate has remained near 75 per 100,000, while the
national rate hovers around 9-10.
Clearly, criminals do not bother with the niceties of
obeying laws--for a criminal is, by definition, someone who disobeys laws.
Those who enforce the law agree.
In addition, restrictive gun laws create a
"Catch-22" for victims of violent crime. Under court decisions, the
police have no legal obligation to protect any particular individual. This
concept has been tested numerous times including cases as recent as 1993. In
each case the courts have ruled that the police are responsible for protecting
society as a whole, not any individual. This means that under restrictive gun
laws, people may be unable to protect themselves or their family from violent
criminals.
T he evidence that restrictive gun laws create scofflaws
is evident to anyone willing to look. In New York City, there are only about
70,000 legally-owned handguns, yet survey research suggests that there are at
least 750,000 handguns in the city, mostly in the hands of otherwise
law-abiding citizens. In Chicago, a recent mandatory registration law has
resulted in compliance by only a fraction of those who had previously
registered their guns. The rate of compliance with the registration requirement
of Cali fornia's and New Jersey's semi- automatic bans have been very low. The
same massive noncompliance--not by criminals, whom no one expects will comply,
but by people fearful of repression--is evident wherever stringent gun laws are
enacted.
FACTS WE CAN ALL LIVE WITH
Laws aimed at criminal misuse of firearms are proven
crime deterrents. After adopting a mandatory penalty for using a firearm in the
commission of a violent crime in 1975, Virginia's murder rate dropped 23% and
robbery 1 1% in 15 years. South Carolina recorded a 24% murder rate decline
between 1975 and 1990 with a similar law. Other impressive declines were
recorded in other states using mandatory penalties, such as Florida (homicide
rate down 33% in 17 years), Delaware ( homicide rate down 33% in 19 years),
Montana (down 42% 1976-1992) and New Hampshire (homicide rate down 50%
1977-1992).
The solution to violent crime lies in the promise, not
the mere threat, of swift, certain punishment.
Our challenge: To reform and strengthen our federal and
state criminal justice systems. We must bring about a sharp reversal in the
trend toward undue leniency and "revolving door justice." We must
insist upon speedier trials and upon punishments which are commensurate with
crimes. Rehabilitation should be tempered with a realization that not all can
be rehabilitated, and that prisons cost society less than the crime of active
predatory criminals. NRA is meeting that challenge with its CrimeStrike
division, establish ed to advance real solutions to the crime problem while
protecting the rights of all honest citizens. Working in states across the
nation, Crime Strike has worked for passage of "truth in sentencing
laws" which require that criminals actually serve at leas t 85% of time
sentenced, "Victim's Bill of Rights" constitutional amendments, and
"Three Strikes You're Out" laws. The job ahead will not be an easy
one . The longer "gun control" advocates distract the nation from
this task by embracing that single siren song, the longer it will take and the
more difficult our job will be. Beginning is the hardest step, and the NRA's
Institute for Legislative Action has taken it.
Join the NRA. Support ILA. Work with us. We need your
help.
FINAL WORDS FROM THE FOUNDING FATHERS ON THE RIGHT TO
KEEP AND BEAR ARMS
"I ask, sir, what is the militia? It is the whole
people.... To disarm the people is the best and most effectual way to enslave
them.... " --George Mason
"No free man shall ever be debarred the use of arms.
" --Thomas Jefferson
"Arms in the hands of citizens may be used at
individual discretion . . . in private self-defense. " --John Adams
"The Constitution s hall never be construed to
prevent the people of the United States who are peaceable citizens from keeping
their own arms. " --Samuel Adams
" . . arms discourage and keep invader and plunderer
in awe, and preserve order in the world as well as property. ... Horrid
mischief would ensue were [the law-abiding] deprived of the use of them. "
--Thomas Paine
"[The Constitution preserves] the advantage of being
armed which Americans possess over the people of almost every other
nation...[where] the government s are afraid to trust the people with
arms." --James Madison
"A militia, when properly formed, are in fact the
people themselves...and include all men capable of bearing arms...To preserve
liberty it is essential that the whole body of the people always possess arms
and be taught alike...how to use them." --Richard Henry Lee
"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." --Amendment II, Constitution of the United States
Copyright October 1994, NRA Institute for Legislative
Action. This is the electronic version of the "10 Myths of Gun
Control" brochure distributed by NRA. To obtain paper copies of this
brochure, please call NRA Grassroots at 800/392-8683.
