Posted by
Dustin on Wednesday, September 05, 2007 4:50:42 PM
I am often surprised by how many times I hear anti-gun folks complain about the "availability" of guns. Yes I can go & buy a gun at a shop after I pass a background check. So can any other American who can pass the background check. What is wrong with that? What do the Brady folks want with more gun laws? Isn't 20,000+ gun laws in the US enough? Especially since all attempts to look at the effects of gun laws have proven that gun laws either increase the crime rate or have no noticeable effect whatsoever, depending on the particular gun law? The simple truth of the matter is that the Brady folks & those fighting with them for more gun laws (such as the Million Moms, Anti-violence groups, etc) are all trying to solve an important problem by going after the wrong source.
It would be like trying to restrict the sale of mops because there are too many irresponsible people who forget to put up the yellow caution sign that says the floor is wet. Even if we were to ban the sale of mops to people who did not pass a background check for past history of forgetting to put up the yellow caution sign, they would still be able to buy illegal mops on the newly created black market.
Just think about it for a while & you'll see what I mean. When has anything we've ever restricted actually been kept out of the hands of those willing to break the law? The great alcohol prohibition comes to mind. Black market alcohol was available to anyone who wanted to pay for it although the ban was US wide. Drug laws come to mind - how hard is it for even kids to get their hands on that awful stuff. Criminals break the law, get used to it. Gun laws only place restrictions on the law abiding.
Here's the correct solution that the anti-gun folks should be working at. Get rid of the repeat Criminals, not the guns. Why are there so many repeat offenders out on the streets these days with long wrap sheets who commit crime over & over again? They go to jail for a short while & are soon released for "good behavior." We need tough 3 strikes your out laws so that we can keep the wrap sheets shorter, and our streets safer. Once they're out (3 strikes), they should be in jail for the rest of their lives. Any thought that 20 or 30 years in the slammer learning about new types of criminal activity from fellow thugs will somehow make the criminals ready to be put back into civilized circulation is ludicrous.
Guns are simply a tool. I use my guns for protection of self & family, as do roughly 144 Million of my fellow Americans in households with guns (based on data from the ATF that estimates roughly 50% of households have at least 1 gun & data from the US Census). Guns are used about 2.5 Million times a year to ward off criminal attack (98% of the time without even needing to fire a shot), which means they're used at least 5 times as often for good purposes by good American citizens as they are used for bad purposes by Criminals.
How do we reduce the criminal use of all tools for their evil deeds (guns, baseball bats, knives, broken bottles, lamp posts, etc)? We lock the criminals up, and we throw away the key.