FW: GUN CONTROL ISN’T THE ANSWER

—–Original Message—–
To: KATES EMAIL GROUP
Subject: GUN CONTROL ISN’T THE ANSWER

“It would be constitutionally suspect and politically impossible to
confiscate hundreds of millions of weapons. You can declare a place
gun-free, as Virginia Tech had done, and guns will still be brought
there.”

Gun control isn’t the answer
Why one reaction to Virginia Tech shouldn’t be tightening firearm laws.
By James Q. Wilson
Professor of Public policy professor at Pepperdine University
He previously taught at UCLA and Harvard University.
April 20, 2007
<http://www.latimes.com/news/opinion/la-oe-wilson20apr20,0,4514008.story?col
l=la-opinion-underdog>

THE TRAGEDY at Virginia Tech may tell us something about how a young man
could be driven to commit terrible actions, but it does not teach us
very much about gun control.

So far, not many prominent Americans have tried to use the college
rampage as an argument for gun control. One reason is that we are in the
midst of a presidential race in which leading Democratic candidates are
aware that endorsing gun control can cost them votes.

This concern has not prevented the New York Times from editorializing in
favor of “stronger controls over the lethal weapons that cause such
wasteful carnage.” Nor has it stopped the European press from beating up
on us unmercifully.

Leading British, French, German, Italian and Spanish newspapers have
blamed the United States for listening to Charlton Heston and the
National Rifle Assn. Many of their claims are a little strange. At least
two papers said we should ban semiautomatic assault weapons (even though
the killer did not use one); another said that buying a machine gun is
easier than getting a driver’s license (even though no one can legally
buy a machine gun); a third wrote that gun violence is becoming more
common (when in fact the U.S. homicide rate has fallen dramatically over
the last dozen years).

Let’s take a deep breath and think about what we know about gun violence
and gun control.

First: There is no doubt that the existence of some 260 million guns (of
which perhaps 60 million are handguns) increases the death rate in this
country. We do not have drive-by poisonings or drive-by knifings, but we
do have drive-by shootings. Easy access to guns makes deadly violence
more common in drug deals, gang fights and street corner brawls.

However, there is no way to extinguish this supply of guns. It would be
constitutionally suspect and politically impossible to confiscate
hundreds of millions of weapons. You can declare a place gun-free, as
Virginia Tech had done, and guns will still be brought there.

If we want to guess by how much the U.S. murder rate would fall if
civilians had no guns, we should begin by realizing – as criminologists
Franklin Zimring and Gordon Hawkins have shown – that the non-gun
homicide rate in this country is three times higher than the non-gun
homicide rate in England. For historical and cultural reasons, Americans
are a more violent people than the English, even when they can’t use a
gun. This fact sets a floor below which the murder rate won’t be reduced
even if, by some constitutional or political miracle, we became gun-free.

There are federally required background checks on purchasing weapons;
many states (including Virginia) limit gun purchases to one a month, and
juveniles may not buy them at all. But even if there were even tougher
limits, access to guns would remain relatively easy. Not the least
because, as is true today, many would be stolen and others would be
obtained through straw purchases made by a willing confederate. It is
virtually impossible to use new background check or waiting-period laws
to prevent dangerous people from getting guns. Those that they cannot
buy, they will steal or borrow.

It’s also important to note that guns play an important role in
selfdefense. Estimates differ as to how common this is, but the numbers
are not trivial. Somewhere between 100,000 and more than 2 million cases
of self-defense occur every year.

There are many compelling cases. In one Mississippi high school, an
armed administrator apprehended a school shooter. In a Pennsylvania high
school, an armed merchant prevented further deaths. Would an armed
teacher have prevented some of the deaths at Virginia Tech? We cannot
know, but it is not unlikely.

AS FOR THE European disdain for our criminal culture, many of those
countries should not spend too much time congratulating themselves. In
2000, the rate at which people were robbed or assaulted was higher in
England, Scotland, Finland, Poland, Denmark and Sweden than it was in
the United States. The assault rate in England was twice that in the
United States. In the decade since England banned all private possession
of handguns, the BBC reported that the number of gun crimes has gone up
sharply.

Some of the worst examples of mass gun violence have also occurred in
Europe. In recent years, 17 students and teachers were killed by a
shooter in one incident at a German public school; 14 legislators were
shot to death in Switzerland, and eight city council members were shot
to death near Paris.

The main lesson that should emerge from the Virginia Tech killings is
that we need to work harder to identify and cope with dangerously
unstable personalities.

It is a problem for Europeans as well as Americans, one for which there
are no easy solutions – such as passing more gun control laws.

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The Second Amendment IS Homeland Security !