http://www.netside.com/~lcoble/control.txt

Goldilocks Gun Control

Some guns are “too big” (“assault weapons”); some guns are “too small”
(handguns). Some ammunition penetrates “too much” (armor piercing ammo);
some ammunition penetrates “too little” (“hyperdestructive” hollow point
ammo). Some guns are “too inaccurate” (“Saturday Night Specials”); some guns
are “too accurate” (scoped hunting rifles or “sniper rifles” that don’t give
Bambi “a chance”) — or so the Goldilocks gun banners say.

What the anti-self-defense lobby never tells us in their fairy tale is what
guns and ammunition are “just right” — because, for these extremists, there
is no gun or ammunition that is “just right.” Not target rifles, not hunting
rifles, and certainly not self-defense guns. Goldilocks gun banners attach
some nasty emotion-laden buzzword to whatever class of firearms they are
targeting to ban — moving towards incrementally banning all guns — all the
while ignoring the enormous body of research data showing the net protective
benefit of guns in America.

Having been called last year by the California Assembly to testify on the
research showing the protective benefits of guns (including inexpensive
guns), I saw the false mask of “reasonable gun control” stripped from the
face of the Goldilocks gun ban extremists. State Senator Polanco was
promoting his bill to the California Assembly Public Safety Committee as an
effort to ban “inaccurate” and “unsafe” guns, but he became very flustered
when then-Assemblyman Rainey noted that the gun he carries as our retired
Contra Costa Sheriff would have been banned by Polanco’s bill. Polanco
became more visibly agitated when other Committee members noted that the guns
they carry as retired police and the “back up” guns carried by most street
cops would have been banned by Polanco’s bill (not unlike the recent
embarrassing discovery that the new law preventing domestic violence
misdemeanor offenders from possessing guns may cause thousands of
misdemeanor-convicted police officers to lose their jobs).

Hurriedly Polanco shuffled through his presentation notes, obviously
unprepared for this turn of events. He offered to amend his bill with an
exemption for police officers to carry the guns that only minutes before he
had, pounding the table red-faced, described as “unsafe” and “inaccurate.”

Was the Assembly Committee to believe that Polanco wanted police officers to
carry unsafe or inaccurate guns? Were they to believe that Polanco wanted
unsafe guns to blow up in the face of police officers or to injure innocent
bystanders? or that, in the hands of police officers, the mechanics and
metallurgy of “dangerous” guns magically became “safe”? Not at all. The
Assembly Public Safety Committee saw Polanco’s charade for what it was, the
latest effort to incrementally ban all guns. Polanco and the Committee knew
that no safety issue was involved. The Committee voted down Polanco’s ban on
affordable guns.

Interestingly, today’s efforts to ban inexpensive guns has a historical
parallel. After the Civil War, the recalcitrant racist South enacted the
Black Codes that banned gun ownership by Blacks. After the 14th Amendment
outlawed such explicitly racist laws, the Reconstruction South outlawed all
but the most expensive pistols, calling the inexpensive pistols “Suicide
Specials.” Sound familiar? It should. Historians have noted that today’s
epithet attempting to stigmatize inexpensive pistols as “Saturday Night
Specials” derives from the deplorable racist epithet “******town Saturday
Night.”

The Goldilocks gun banners never mention the 2.5 million Americans every year
who use guns to protect themselves, their families, and their livelihoods.
They close their eyes and ears to the lives saved, injuries prevented,
medical costs averted, and the property protected using guns. The recent
University of Chicago study of FBI crime data in every US county showed that
every category of violent crime is lower in the 31 states that allow
mentally-competent, law-abiding adults to carry concealed guns where they are
most at risk – outside their homes. These benefits dwarf the highly
sensationalized “costs” of guns, inexpensive or otherwise. The research
shows that, if California and the other minority of states would reform their
laws and allow us access to the safest and most effective means of
protection, there would be an annual net savings of about 2,000 lives and an
enormous reduction in other violent crimes — intelligent reasons for
Californians to send the Goldilocks gun banners packing and to put their
prohibitionist fearmongering to rest with the bogeyman.

Edgar A. Suter MD
National Chair
Doctors for Integrity in Policy Research Inc.
(a national non-profit 501c(4) physicians think tank)
5201 Norris Canyon Road #220
San Ramon CA 94583-5405