Ottawa Citizen Column: Gun bans benefit the violent criminal
Date: Sep 22, 2006 8:53 AM
PUBLICATION: The Ottawa Citizen
DATE: 2006.09.22
EDITION: Final
SECTION: News
PNAME: Editorial
PAGE: A14
COLUMN: John Robson
BYLINE: John Robson
SOURCE: The Ottawa Citizen
WORD COUNT: 851

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Gun bans benefit the violent criminal

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Last week I thought it too soon to draw lessons from the shootings at
Dawson College, the shock and grief too fresh. Now I want to try to draw
them using old-fashioned “if/then” reasoning. I feel lonely on both
counts.

So sit down and listen to a story from the Sept. 25 Maclean’s: “Deron
Johnson is in hospital in New York City after allegedly trying to snatch
a gold chain from a wheelchair-bound woman. Margaret Johnson, 56, was on
her way to a shooting range at the time, and when her chain was removed,
Margaret pulled out a .357 pistol. Deron is now being treated for a
gunshot injury and faces a charge of robbery. ‘There’s not much to it,’
Margaret says plainly, ‘Somebody tried to mug me and I shot him.’ “
You
go, girl.

If you successfully ban guns, then life gets a bit scarier for all those
not well-placed to engage in fisticuffs with the young and the ruthless.
It’s not a conclusive argument for concealed-carry laws. But it will not
do to claim that gun bans enhance public safety, then shudder at the
vulgarity of counter-arguments that if every fourth biddy packed heat
then muggers would be more cautious.

A gun ban may have beneficial effects that outweigh such drawbacks. But
to discuss the subject rather than emoting or posturing about it, we
must weigh them. Especially since Johnson versus Johnson is not an
isolated case. In Britain the Blair government’s near-total ban on guns
was followed by a dramatic rise in crime, including gun crime. It may be
possible to argue that the two were unrelated, or related by factors not
present in Canada. But if you refuse to discuss awkward issues then
you’re not actually arguing.

Some believers in gun control do argue that if the Dawson shooter had
three legally registered weapons, including a pistol, then we need a
complete ban because registration isn’t enough. They should have to
address the historical point that when the long-gun registry was brought
in we were promised that it was not a prelude to confiscation. Perhaps
that assurance was ill-advised, as policy or public relations. But if
“It hoodwinked the rubes” is thought advantageous in a policy, then the
country will suffer.

An even bigger problem for gun-ban advocates is the gap between
legislating a ban and enforcing it. And here we must grapple with the
role of incentives. Strict controls make it harder for everyone to
obtain guns. But they also increase the advantages to criminals and
psychos of evading controls. It’s not much fun trying to shoot up a
restaurant full of armed diners (or a school with armed teachers, a
point not lost on Israelis). But if you know they’re helpless … well,
ask Britain’s increasingly brazen burglars.

The requirement for rationality goes both ways. So I admit the United
States has a very high rate of gun ownership and of gun violence. But
since liberals deplore “simplistic” analyses, I ask them why almost
equally well-armed Switzerland is boringly safe. And why has a gun ban
been effective in Japan and tragically futile in Jamaica? Might culture
matter? Indeed, do advocates of gun control believe that many Canadians
are so crazy that they are only prevented from shooting their fellows by
an inability to obtain weapons? If not, then what is the use of a ban?

One interesting recent reply is that guns allow bad or deranged people
to kill a lot of their fellows quickly. But history’s most notorious or
prolific killers, from Jack the Ripper to the Green River Killer,
generally used slower, more hideously intimate methods harder to detect
and stop. If gun bans force evil people to be quieter and more cunning
(which I concede is a very big if) then they might do more harm than
good even in this respect.

Speaking of evil, our discussion must also include my wife Brigitte
Pellerin’s argument on Tuesday on this page that the most notable thing
about the Dawson College shooter is not that he was armed but that he
was wicked. If Canadians, like Americans, have been rodded up for
centuries, yet mass shootings are a recent phenomenon, then maybe we
need moral rearmament, not material disarmament.

Finally, there’s the startling claim in Jeff Snyder’s Nation of Cowards:
Essays on the Ethics of Gun Control that self-defence, including with
firearms, is an inherent human right, not a privilege granted because on
balance it is socially useful. Too weird? Well, how many of you think,
say, that the right to be free from racial discrimination is justified
only by socioeconomic utility and might readily be abrogated if it
failed to satisfy that test?

Probably I am in a minority, among commentators and Canadians, in the
answers I give after weighing such questions. But I shouldn’t be so
alone in attempting to weigh them.

John Robson’s column appears weekly.