Reprinted with permission from Guns Magazine, September 2000.
(C)opyrighted 2000 by Guns Magazine; All rights reserved.

<A HREF=”http://www.gunsmagazine.com”www.gunsmagazine.com</A

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THE MYTH OF BLACK MARKET GUNS

by Dr. Paul Gallant and Dr. Joanne Eisen

On November 5, 1999, Reuters carried a story headlined
“Colorado Residents Want Stricter Gun Laws”. According to the
item, “Though we may not be able to stop Honolulu or Seattle”,
said Denver Mayor Wellington Webb referring to that week’s spate
of workplace violence, “we need to have regulations…to lessen
the proliferation of guns on the street”.

Sound familiar? It ought to. “Proliferation of guns” and its
constant companion, “easy availability”, are the latest buzzwords
of the anti-self-defense lobby. It’s nearly impossible to pick
up a paper or watch the news without hearing the demand for more
gun laws that, we are promised, will reduce firearm-related
violence.

The mental picture we’re asked to paint is one of truckloads
of Uzis rolling down the streets of America in broad daylight,
and guns handed out like free samples at the local supermarket.

But “proliferation of guns” and “easy availability” are code
words used to disguise the existence of the black market, and the
failure of more than 20,000 gun control laws already on the
books.

In all of today’s rhetoric, one key fact is almost always
ignored: this “easy availability” or “proliferation” of guns is
true only when it pertains to the black market in firearms. And
that black market is a direct result of previous laws which, we
were also promised, would reduce the criminal use of guns.

Cracking the secret code used to hide the truth is simple.
Just substitute “black market” every time one of these phrases is
uttered. For example, writing on “The Epidemic in Youth
Violence”, anti-gun researcher Philip Cook observed that “gun
possession was much more widespread among violence-prone youths
in the early 1990s than in the early 1980s…Gun use may be
driven in part by the availability of guns on the street…”

Or, take Mayor Webb’s words and make the substitution: “we
need to have regulations…to lessen black market guns on the
street”.

These statements point to the fatal flaw in schemes to
regulate or ban firearms: restrict legal channels, and all that
will change is the pattern of their availability.

The purpose of this deliberate deception is easy to see. By
diverting the real blame away from juvenile offenders, guilty
politicians, and politically-motivated researchers – and onto
peaceable gun-owners, instead – it sets the stage to justify
harsh new restrictions.

Deadly Neighborhoods

Spawned from a glitch in U.S. crime data, the so-called
“epidemic” of juvenile violence derives from a single fact:
between 1984 and 1993, the rate at which homicides were committed
by adolescents aged 13 to 17 quadrupled. And that increase is
accounted for, almost exactly, by the increase in homicides
committed with guns.

But it is the crime confined to geographically narrow
inner-city neighborhood areas – often just “a small number of
city blocks”, according to the U.S. Department of Justice – that
has been driving the entire youth homicide rate.

The recent spate of U.S. school shootings played right into
the hands of the firearm-prohibitionists, by allowing them to
paint a counterfeit picture of juvenile “gun-violence” sweeping
across all the streets of America.

Their antidote was predictable, and spelled out, in no
uncertain terms, by Michael Tonry and Mark Moore in “Youth
Violence”, a 1998 U.S. Department of Justice compendium of
articles on the subject: “[We must]…treat the availability of
weapons as a key contributing factor…If the availability of
guns could…be suppressed, the extent and virulence of the
epidemic [of juvenile violence] could be stemmed…this could,
arguably, hold out the hope that we need not succeed in the
expensive, arduous, chancy, long-run task of keeping youths on
healthy developmental trajectories to prevent youth violence.”

One can hear a deep sigh of relief from Tonry and Moore as
they declare a new war on guns, in an attempt to wash their hands
of the mess they helped create. But they’re all guilty, as
charged, and deserve no sympathy, for they know, full well, what
the policies they’ve championed have wrought.

They know, too, that the “logic” connecting the problem, its
cause, and the proposed solution are flawed. For what they don’t
bother telling us is that the “epidemic” of juvenile violence is
limited to areas where decades of restrictive gun regulations
have rendered lawful firearm ownership virtually impossible, with
an outcome exactly opposite to what we were promised.

Witness the fact that “the St. Louis youth gang homicide rate
is [now] 1,000 times higher than the [overall] U.S. homicide
rate”, according to U.S. Department of Justice statistics. And
all of this was accomplished with guns from the black market.

Failing Better

In November 1999, Dr. Alan Lizotte presented the findings of
an ongoing study on juvenile delinquency in Rochester, N.Y., to
the American Society of Criminology. Lizotte noted that
“obtaining a pistol permit in New York is no easy matter,” and
characterized the state’s law as “tough”.

Nevertheless, Lizotte’s conclusion ran true to the familiar
pattern of false promise followed by abject failure, the
signature of every gun law: “There is nearly universal
non-compliance with New York’s strict handgun licensing
law…illegal handguns are easy to obtain”.

Lizotte never once mentioned “black market”. He didn’t have
to. His references to the “underground economy” told what most of
us already know, and what people like Tonry and Moore do, also.

Underscoring that point, in New York City, where requirements
for ownership of firearms of all types are far more stringent
than throughout the rest of the state, and licensing is required
for possession of both handguns and long guns, current estimates
peg the number of “unlicensed” firearms at 2 million, or more,
out of a population of 7 million.

Another “tough” gun law was enacted on November 30, 1998.
This time it was a federal law. Under the National Instant-Check
System, every firearm transaction in America involving a licensed
dealer is now subject to government scrutiny and approval.

Just like with past laws, NICS was supposed to finally close
the “loopholes” which allow criminals access to guns. It was a
fraud, of course, because the stated goal is simply beyond reach.

The New York Connection

Barely one year after the advent of NICS, Sen. Charles
Schumer (D-N.Y.) and his cronies set about to perpetrate yet
another fraud. In November 1999, Schumer announced his next
“new” solution: federal legislation to eliminate private
transfers of all firearms, including gifts between family
members. Bill Clinton, in his final State of the Union address on
January 27, 2000, went even further, calling for the licensing of
all handgun owners.

Canada already tried that. The day after NICS went into
effect, it implemented a “tough” gun law of its own, the Firearms
Act. The reality of Canada’s new system of national firearm
registration was summed up by journalist Lorne Gunter in the
October 31, 1999 edition of the Edmonton Journal:

“Thanks to Justice Minister Anne McLellan’s hysterically
rigid insistence that each and every gun sale, even these
neighbour-to-neighbour sales, be approved by her department in
advance, nearly all these sales are now so-called black market
sales…In the nearly 11 months since the Liberals imposed their
universal registry… black market gun sales have boomed.”

More restrictions mean only one thing – more business on the
black market, and even easier access for criminals. The equation
is simple: if people want something badly enough, someone will
supply it for a profit.

For many of America’s firearm-prohibitionists, the real goal
has never been a safer society. To them, success is achieved,
not by reducing crime, but by enacting a law which is certain to
fail. Of course, when it does, we’ll need a new remedy, won’t
we?

And when it comes to firearms, their next new “remedy” is not
hard to imagine.

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About the Authors:

Dr. Joanne D. Eisen is engaged in the private practice of Family
Dentistry. She is President, Association of Dentists for Accuracy
in Scientific Media (ADASM), a national organization of dentists
concerned with preserving the integrity of the professional
dental literature, against the politicization which has corrupted
America’s medical literature.

Dr. Paul Gallant is engaged in the private practice of Family
Optometry, Wesley Hills, NY. He is Chairman, Committee for
Law-Abiding Gun-Owners, Rockland (LAGR), a 2nd Amendment
grassroots group, based in Rockland County, NY.

FOR MORE INFORMATION CONTACT: LAGR P.O. Box 354 Thiells, NY
10984-0354 </HTML>