COLUMN: Gun Control Means Using Both Hands
Imagine it is late at night and you are watching the news. One of the subjects being discussed is the rising crime rate in your area. It appears violent crime has been increasing in your neighborhood, as it has been for the last two years. Though it has been prohibited in your country for private individuals to own firearms for many years, the shootings continue to dot the 11 o’clock news. As you wonder how this is possible, the glass window on the front door shatters. Your heart sinks in fear as the intruder enters your home.
Though it sounds like something out of a Hollywood suspense thriller, this story is reality for much of the world. Those who comply with anti-gun laws quickly become the victims of criminals who do not. Those at risk are law-abiding citizens who turned in their guns as instructed, happily accepting the promise of safety they were to obtain. Instead, all they received was disadvantage in the face of armed bandits.
“Guns kill many children every year,” many will say. All we seem to hear from the liberal news media is that guns are bad. However, far more children are killed every year by drowning than by guns (Dr. John Lott, “More Guns, Less Crime”). Anybody want to outlaw swimming pools? How about cars? Many more people are killed in automobiles than by guns (Larry Elder, “The Ten Things you Can’t Say in America”). The key to keeping children safe around guns is the same as it is for swimming pools and cars: education.
The right to keep and bear arms comes right after the first amendment, which guarantees the rights of freedom of speech, assembly, religion and press. Many who vehemently defend first amendment rights would deny others their Second Amendment rights.
Organizations like the ACLU will spend millions to take God out of our schools, but they have never supported the right to keep and bear arms. Don’t those rights need protecting as well? Guns are used to protect lives almost 2 million times per year. Shouldn’t someone protect that?
Many will say the Second Amendment was meant (note the preference for personal interpretation over the actual language of the Amendment) to protect the right of states to raise militias, and that it is a collective right, not an individual one. An activist Supreme Court has in the past, upheld this view. The tide is, however, beginning to turn.
October 16, 2001, the United States Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals ruled that the right to keep and bear arms is a constitutionally protected right. This decision represents a victory for freedom in America. The court moved to protect the rights of self-defense against the onslaught of crime and degradation that assails America these days.
Many foreign countries, such as Great Britain, have abolished private ownership of firearms. Such countries have violent crime rates that are increasing at a much higher rate than in the United States. I have lived in Mexico, another nation that prohibits gun ownership. Mexico’s crime rate is atrocious. This is not all due to gun restrictions, but many of these crimes could be deterred if the perpetrator knew he might be shot in the attempt.
Criminals do not obey the laws restricting guns anyway. Thus, by taking guns away from law-abiding citizens, we leave them powerless to defend themselves. They are easy picking. Even gun control advocates know this. How can I be so sure, you ask? Well, many leaders of that movement have applied for concealed weapons permits recently and employ some form of armed bodyguards. So they feel safer with a loaded gun close at hand. I guess if we take the example of the gun control lobby, guns can’t really be so bad after all.
Gabriel White
GKW@cc.usu.edu