Six Lies About Guns Disarmed

News/Current Events Editorial News Keywords: GUNS
Source: St Louis Post Dispatch
Published: 22 Mar 00 Author: Michael Gordinier
Posted on 03/22/2000 14:58:33 PST by WhiteKnight

COMMENTARY : Six lies disarmed

By Michael Gordinier

GUNS

LIE NO. 1: Guns only kill

Each day 5,000 to 7,000 innocent victims of crime save their lives and the lives of their children with firearms, often without firing a shot. That’s about 2 million lives saved a year. Every year.

Firearms, aka implements of defense and deterrence, save 60 times more lives than they take due to criminal activity. That’s a net positive to society that no amount of soccer mom hand-wringing and bad accounting can change.

Guns save lives.

LIE NO. 2: Guns cause crime. If guns cause crime, from 1965 to 1995, when firearm ownership increased by 188 percent, from 80 million to 230 million, why did firearm accidents and crime decline by 42 percent?

It’s a sign of mental illness to believe that firearms contain evil spirits that will compel normal people to kill. If guns truly have this power, wouldn’t it be logical to disarm our police for fear that they may become possessed?

Let’s start laughing at irrational, superstitious fools who blame inanimate objects for the pathological behavior of criminals.

If guns cause crime, matches cause arson.

LIE NO. 3: We need more laws. To advocate more laws is a tacit admission that the 20,000 firearm laws already in place have been failures. What good will one more law do?

To believe, as our critics must, that criminals will finally start behaving if we get one more law indicates that their understanding of the criminal mind is fatally flawed.

Where does the real negligence lie for the deplorable state of crime in America? Not with gun owners.

The National Instant Check System claims to have prevented 100,000 people from legally getting a gun. Less than 0.2 percent have been prosecuted.

Supporters of the Brady Law claim that 470,000 people (72 percent of which are known felons) have been stopped from purchasing a firearm. Fewer than 100 of these felons have been prosecuted.

Lack of laws aren’t the problem. The anti’s catch-and-release criminal justice system is the problem.

LIE NO. 4: If guns were banned our world would be safer.

Everywhere gun prohibitions have been put into effect, from Washington, D.C., to New York city, from England to Australia, criminals rejoice that their prey can no longer hurt them and crime gets worse.

What’s so moral about a group of zealots who support prohibitionist policies that would condemn millions of women, the weak and the aged to certain injury and death at the hands of predatory criminals?

Guns aren’t the problem. Our human life and cheap culture are the problems.

What the anti-freedom bigots are really trying to do with the gun ploy is avoid facing the truth that the violent and valueless society that they are complaining about today is precisely the society that they have been trying to create for the last 40 years.

Shame on them for trying to blame gun owners for their social engineering failures.

LIE NO. 5: Gun prohibitionists care about children, and gun owners don’t.

Most reasonable people believe that educating children about sex and drugs is the best way to prevent tragedies. Ignorance isn’t bliss, knowledge is power.

So sex and drug education are good . . . but firearms safety education is bad?

The anti’s think so.

Twelve-million children have been educated about firearm safety since 1988 via the Eddie Eagle program in classrooms, summer camps and day-care centers all across this nation.

In 1996, it was awarded the National Safety Council’s Award of Merit for Outstanding Community Service. It’s been recognized by state governors, police officials and school administrators as being one of the most effective safety programs in existence.

In May 1998, the Eddie Eagle resolution (HCR10) was passed by the Missouri General Assembly but has not been implemented. Why can’t we get this important safety program into our schools?

Because groups like Missourians Against Handgun Violence have opposed it.

By ignoring programs that work, the anti’s demonstrate that they are willing to let children die on an altar of political correctness rather than to admit that gun-safety education works.

How many lives could have been saved if these agenda-driven extremists hadn’t prevented the implementation of this time tested educational program?

LIE NO. 6: Technology is the answer to the firearms problem.

In seeking hardware solutions to training problems, the anti’s demonstrate their profound ignorance of firearms and the efficacy of basic firearm safety training.

If people are forced by law to use trigger locks, a critical piece of safety equipment, their firearm, will not be readily available when they need it the most. Result: Hundreds of people per day will be killed by this feel-good legislation in a misguided attempt to save a few. Talk about unintended consequences!

There are more effective solutions. And responsible gun owners already use them.

In summary, the lies of the victim disarmament crowd and its fellow travelers in the media are aimed at one long-range goal. That goal has nothing to do with crime or kids and everything to do with creating an incremental march towards firearm registration and ultimately confiscation. We ignore, at our peril, a lot of world history if we fail to see through their thinly disguised deceptions.

Michael Gordinier is a lecturer in business statistics at Washington University.