Gun Bans Don't Work

[Bobcat]

Gun bans don't work-Washington Times-10-07-2003

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention released a study last week that states there is no evidence to prove gun-control laws are effective in preventing violence. No kidding. There always has been substance to the cliche that guns don't kill people, people do. Correlative to that rule is that the criminals who use guns to kill usually possess their weapons illegally. These serial lawbreakers are not deterred by statutes prohibiting or regulating gun ownership. They will continue to use guns to commit violent crimes even if the rest of the population of sitting ducks are disarmed.
In the exhaustive brief, the CDC analyzed scientific evidence regarding "bans on specified firearms and ammunition, restrictions on firearm acquisition [including waiting periods], firearm registration and licensing, concealed-carry laws, child-access-prevention laws, zero-tolerance laws for firearms in schools and combinations of firearms laws." The verdict? "The Task Force found insufficient evidence to determine the effectiveness of any of the firearms laws or combinations of laws reviewed on violent outcomes." The task force also concluded that "firearms-related injuries in the United States have declined since 1993" despite the fact that "approximately 4.5 million new firearms are sold each year."
The CDC maintains that the above conclusions are actually inconclusive, and that more research in needed. Given that a task force of 14 experts spent three years to review 51 different studies to come up with the findings, the only justification for the CDC's equivocation is that the authorities want to continue to research the issue until they reach findings that can be stretched to justify more government regulation.
All the taxpayer funds spent on this exercise are a waste of cash. Last year, the CDC spent $400,000 on gun reports. That isn't much compared to the $2.6 million they spent on gun studies in 1995 during the Clinton administration. We don't need expensive government studies to convince us that gun-control laws don't make communities safer. When taking away law-abiding citizens' right to defend themselves, it has always been obvious that the only people who become more safe are criminals who mug, rape, carjack and break into our homes. However, many of these same thugs will think twice before victimizing someone who might be packing heat.
It is offensive when liberals blanketly suggest that the average American isn't responsible enough to own a gun, and that increased gun control is needed to stop gun violence. Crimes committed by those who own guns legally are a statistical blip. The same goes for accidents. The new CDC report is welcome in that it confirms what has long been known: There is no proof that gun-control laws prevent violence. Now, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention should get back to the honorable mission of stopping communicable diseases.

[ICMCumin]

Outstanding post, Bob. This confirms what a lot of us knew already.

Unfortunately, on this board, you're singing to the choir......

[Bobcat]

I know where most of us stand, but knowledge is power. The better informed we are, the more effective we can be.

Here is a follow-up:

Fewer guns, more death
Posted: October 10, 2003
1:00 a.m. Eastern
© 2003 WorldNetDaily.com

Gun-control enthusiasts in the United States and western Europe have a lot to answer for on the heels of two reports last week that prove, beyond a doubt, the barbaric lunacy of ensuring citizens are defenseless against armed criminal threats.

In the first, a British paper reported authorities have seen a 35 percent increase in gun violence in 2002 – not so ironically, in the sixth year since Parliament passed a law banning personal ownership of most firearms.

So bad is the violence now that police say it has "spread like a cancer" across the whole of the country, the Observer reported. To put the level of violence in perspective, more British subjects are dying from gun violence now than before idiots in Parliament banned virtually all firearms.

"Handgun crime has soared past levels last seen before the Dunblane massacre of 1996 and the ban on ownership of handguns introduced the year after Thomas Hamilton, an amateur shooting enthusiast, shot dead 16 schoolchildren, their teacher and himself in the Perthshire town," the paper reported.

"It was hoped the measure would reduce the number of handguns available to criminals. Now handgun crime is at its highest since 1993," said the Observer. "New laws that make carrying a firearm an offence with a mandatory five-year sentence have won little favor with officers on the street. 'It changes nothing,' said one drug squad detective who asked to remain anonymous."

Meanwhile, here in the States, a Centers for Disease Control and Prevention study released last week found no conclusive evidence gun-control laws curb violent crime, suicides by firearms or firearms-related accidents.

The study found "inconclusive evidence" that gun-control laws, which include entire bans of certain classes of weapons, have any appreciable effect on gun-related violence.

Interestingly enough, where gun control is the staunchest – New York City, Washington, D.C., Los Angeles, and other major urban centers – Britain-like handgun and rifle bans, some analyses contend, are doing little more than filling morgues with innocent, unprotected, law-abiding citizens.

"The sale of assault rifles has been outlawed. However, this has done little to reduce crime," says an analysis by National Issues, a non-partisan research site on the Internet.

What has helped reduce violent crime in our society? Criminals' fear of dying, that's what.

For example, on the issue of concealed-carry laws in the U.S. and their effect on crime, Jeffrey Snyder, a New York attorney writing for the CATO Institute, a libertarian think tank, said initially "many people feared [such laws] would quickly lead to disaster: blood would literally be running in the streets."

But, after more than a decade since Florida broke ranks in 1987 and passed one of the nation's first liberal concealed-carry laws, "it is safe to say that those dire predictions were completely unfounded."

"Indeed," Snyder writes, "the debate today over concealed-carry laws centers on the extent to which such laws can actually reduce the crime rate."

I recall throughout the 1990s, as more states were passing concealed-carry laws, the FBI consistently reported reductions in violent crime. The anti-gun Clinton administration hailed this data as "proof" federal gun-control laws such as background checks and assault-weapons bans were working. Interestingly, not once did the FBI gauge the effect of state-level concealed-carry laws on violent crime. If the bureau studied the issue, they didn't make their findings public, but maybe that's because such information isn't politically useful to a regime bent on banning guns.

Despite the truth about an armed populace's effect on criminal activity, the "conventional wisdom" among our power elite remains that we the people should be as disarmed and as powerless as possible. It's almost as if our elected leaders fear an armed populace almost as much as criminals do.

But it's past time for Americans truly concerned about public safety to reject this authoritarian viewpoint. Armed criminals don't fear unarmed victims – all too often, the crime statistics now overwhelmingly indicate, they kill them instead.

Any elected representative who supports a continuation of laws aimed at depriving Americans of their constitutional right to a firearm for self-defense deserves to be arrested, charged and convicted of murder. Their "fewer guns" approach to crime is responsible for more deaths than if we the people had been "allowed" the means to protect ourselves all along.

Jon E. Dougherty is a staff reporter and columnist for WorldNetDaily.

[Bofire]

I have long thought that if a "gun magnate" could be passed over the world and remove all of them that within minutes gangs of thugs would be running the streets doing anything they wanted. I see no problem with a good, one on one, fist fight, but the criminal cowards are smarter than us and would not do that, and we are too bound by a sense of fairness to fight them the way they should be fought. Hunt them down and kill them.
There has never been a Ban of anything, that worked. Like the"recreational drugs" do you really think the penny ante drug smugglers that we catch are the problem? No way, the amount of drugs in this country must be financed by the elite and rich, otherwise there is no way they would still be here. The reason the laws are passed is because the real dopers, the wealthy, the politically connected, the goverment, are mad cause they pennyante are stealing some of the profit.
Darn, I sound real radical, but, I beleive it.
Carl
Ya know?? maybe the govt. is scared of us.

[jdickey]

"....FROM MY COLD DEAD HANDS"

[BozoWise]

I have always been a firm supporter of gun rights. If there was a total ban on firearms in the US I believe we would have a second civil war. I know that I would have to give the government all of my ammunition before they stole my firearms ;-0 I can't understand the people in countries that line up to watch their firearms cut with chop saws.

My favortite ban of all is the assault weapons and high cap ban. I think a wal-mart winchester special is a much better killing machine then an AK. Plus as a law enforcement officer myself I have never heard of a drive my bayoneting ;-)