> April 6, 2000, 10:27AM
> Gun control but no self-control
> By CAL THOMAS
> Los Angeles Times Syndicate
>
> Maryland has the dubious distinction of being the first state to pass a
law
> mandating handgun locks. It does not matter that Gov. Parris Glendening
> couldn’t free a locked handgun without assistance at a news conference
> called to demonstrate the supposed logic of the law he backs. (A videotape
> of his failed struggle to unlock the gun is now running as a National
Rifle
> Association commercial aimed at proving the NRA’s point that someone
intent
> on doing harm won’t be waiting for a nervous or frustrated gun owner to
> unlock a legal weapon before firing his own lock-less illegal gun in the
> commission of a crime.) Nor does it matter that, according to noted Yale
> University researcher John R. Lott, the Clinton administration has vastly
> overstated the supposed benefits of the Brady law that seeks to keep guns
> out of the hands of people with criminal records, or that claims on the
> number of children who die “every day” from guns are wrong, as are claims
> that more children are killed by guns in America than the combined total
of
> the next 25 industrial nations.
>
> It matters only that politicians are seen as “doing something” about the
> “problem of guns” to help “protect our children.” Feelings and perception
> triumph over logic and facts.
>
> A major reason why laws like the one in Maryland are passed, even over the
> disapproval of many Democratic legislators who saw it as flawed but voted
> for it anyway because of the politics, is that stories about the abuse of
> guns overwhelm stories about how guns have saved lives and defeated
> criminals. How far would big government get with its ravenous appetite for
> new laws and more power if the public heard the other side?
>
> Consider this report from the Feb. 2 edition of The Tribune newspaper in
> Mesa, Ariz. A woman named Bricie Tribble heard a strange noise in her home
> shortly after midnight and decided to investigate. She was accompanied by
> her .45-caliber handgun. Tribble discovered a man rummaging through her
> purse. According to police, the intruder told her: “I’m going to kill
> everyone in this house, including you.” Tribble fired at least one shot,
> killing the man. Police said he had abducted a woman earlier that evening
at
> a nearby Wal-Mart, drove her to a secluded location, raped and shot her.
The
> victim lived and gave police a description of her assailant.
>
> Reports like this, which are recounted on the NRA’s Web page but are
rarely
> mentioned on the TV networks, would bring more balance and understanding
to
> the “gun control” debate. Suppose Tribble was so nervous she couldn’t get
> the trigger lock off her legal gun and became a victim like the other
woman
> who was assaulted earlier in the evening? Would more gun laws have saved
> her? Laws already on the books — most of which are not enforced — did
not
> deter the assailant from raping and shooting the other woman. Only a gun
> used to fight crime, not commit crime, stopped him.
>
> The problem has never been the gun, the knife or the automobile. It is the
> intent of the person in possession of the gun or knife or behind the wheel
> of the automobile that causes tragedy when the car or weapons are used
> illegally. In the matter of sex education, studies reveal that teaching
> abstinence prevents the unwanted consequences of premarital sex and that
the
> sex equivalent of trigger locks (condoms, the Pill, abortion and cultural
> lessons about promiscuity) do not.
>
> As with sex, our failure to produce the results we say we want has
resulted
> from a lack of self-control, not a deficiency in laws imposing external
> controls. The concepts of right and wrong and respect for life and
property
> that were taught in previous generations have been abandoned in pursuit of
> profit, pleasure and greed in this generation. The moral anarchy that has
> predictably followed — of which gun violence is only a symptom — will
> never be reversed through law alone, or even mainly. The solution is to
> focus again on teaching virtue. Gun laws don’t deter criminals. But they
can
> increase crime if government restricts the rights of the law-abiding while
> doing little to restrain the lawbreakers.
>