http://www.seark.net/~jlove/dogma.htm

Thomas Sowell

Facts versus dogma on guns

FOR YEARS, THE TRAGIC
SHOOTING OF
PRESIDENT REAGAN’S
press secretary James Brady
has been exploited politically
by gun-control advocates.
Federal gun-control
legislation has been called
“the Brady bill.” Yet there
was scarcely a peep from the
liberal media when it was
announced recently that the
man who shot Brady — John Hinkley — will be
allowed furloughs from the mental hospital in
which he has been kept.

Unfortunately, this is a classic liberal pattern —
remarkably little concern over those particular
people who actually commit crimes with guns,
combined with ferocious crusades against
law-abiding citizens who own firearms.

Furloughs, parole,
probation or lenient
sentences for violent
criminals do not
alarm the liberals.
What alarms them is the thought that people
who have never shot anybody might be able to
have a gun in their home or business to protect
themselves against the kinds of armed criminals
that liberals allow to walk the streets.

Liberal dogma on gun control is like liberal
dogma on so many other issues: Ordinary people
cannot be trusted to look out for themselves, but
must be put under the thumb of wiser and nobler
people — such as liberals — through strict
government regulations. According to the
gun-control zealots, we will shoot each other in
the heat of arguments if we have guns.

Automobile accidents will lead to gunfire
between the angry drivers. In other words,
innocent people cannot be trusted with firearms.
Far better to leave them helpless against armed
criminals.

It is bad enough that liberals have this vision of
the world. What is worse is that the liberal
media will consistently ignore or suppress any
facts which contradict that vision.

A recently published, massive empirical study
by John Lott of the University of Chicago Law
School shows the direct opposite of virtually
everything in the liberal vision of gun control.
Rising rates of gun ownership in particular
counties across the country have almost
invariably been followed immediately by falling
rates of violent crimes in those counties.

This should not be a surprise to anyone. Violent
criminals prefer helpless victims, not people who
can shoot them full of holes. But where have
you seen this empirical study mentioned in the
media? Its title is “More Guns, Less Crime.”

In those European countries where citizens
almost never have guns, burglaries are far more
common than in the United States, and the
burglars do not spend nearly as much time
casing the place before breaking in. Similarly, in
those American communities where liberal
politicians have long had tight control,
law-abiding citizens are similarly disarmed and
similarly vulnerable.

As for the gunplay that would supposedly follow
every fender-bender on the highway, John Lott
has been able to find only one example. Two
truckers had an accident and one was giving a
brutal, bone-breaking beating to the other, until
the second trucker pulled out a gun and opened
fire, probably saving his own life.

Even in counties where a high percentage of the
people are armed, bullets are not flying hither
and yon on the highways — or anywhere else.
There are usually far more shootings in places
where the criminals know that ordinary citizens
are unlikely to be able to shoot back.

Isolated incidents of accidental death from guns
are inevitable in a country of more than a
quarter of a billion people, just as there are
accidental deaths from swimming pools, ski
runs, wild animals and other causes. But only
accidental gunshot deaths are played up big in
the media.

The larger number of lives saved by armed
citizens protecting themselves and their families
are seldom reported, much less weighed against
the isolated gunshot accidents. If our concern is
for the safety of decent, law-abiding people,
then all the facts need to be considered. But
nothing that undermines the gun-controllers’
vision is likely to be reported when the mass
media show more concern for protecting liberal
dogma than for protecting people.

In the media, it is all presented as a story of
humanitarian efforts by the good guys to save
lives against the evil resistance of the National
Rifle Association. In the media, James Brady is
repeatedly put on the screen when the issue
comes up. Meanwhile, the man who shot Brady
gets furloughs and nobody cares.