For everyone who thinks we should legislate gun control,
there are a dozen reasons not to. If guns are outlawed, only outlaws
will have guns. This is a case in point that was brought home to
former Washington D.C. mayor Marion Barry. The gun control proponent
and convicted criminal cocaine user was robbed at gunpoint by two
youths who were, reported Barry, offering to carry his groceries
into his apartment for a tip. He said that they returned ten minutes
later and knocked on his door which he then opened. He was then robbed
at gunpoint. (Could it be a cocaine deal gone south? Or was it really
just as he said?)
Almost thirty years ago, local politicians in the District of Columbia
thumbed their noses at Congress, the 14th Amendment’s guarantee
of “equal protection of the laws,” and the rest of the
United States, and began conducting a social experiment of their
own design, against the city’s law-abiding residents. The experiment,
unlike anything known elsewhere in America, took the form of the
multi-faceted Firearms Control Regulations Act, imposed by the D.C.
Council in 1976. The measure prohibits the possession of a handgun
that was not registered with city police prior to Sept. 24, 1976
and re-registered by Feb. 5, 1977. It also requires the registration
of all privately owned firearms and that firearms kept at home be
rendered useless for protection by being “unloaded, disassembled,
or bound by a trigger lock or similar device.”
The results of the experiment have been catastrophic. Hundreds of
innocent lives have been lost, including many who might have been
able to defend themselves if only allowed to. District neighborhoods
have been subjected to a degree of crime-inspired terror unheard
of almost anywhere in our country. According to the FBI and Metropolitan
Police of the District of Columbia records, homicide had been declining
in DC before the ban.
In 2004, Rep. Mark Edward Souder (R-Ind.) said House Republican leaders
have promised him a vote before the Nov. 2 election on his proposed
D.C. Personal Protection Act, which would end a ban on handguns in
the nation’s capital; remove a prohibition against semiautomatic
weapons; lift registration requirements for ammunition and other
firearms; and cancel criminal penalties for possessing unregistered
firearms and carrying a handgun in one’s home or work-place.
The District’s homicide rate climbed 200 percent from 1976
to 2001, while the national rate grew 12 percent, Souder said. “No
one can argue this law’s effectiveness,” he said. “For
the 14th time in 15 years, they have the murder capital of the world
title. At some point you say, ‘This isn’t working.’ “ The
bill passed in the House, but the end result of this effort was a
defeat in the Senate. Last year Senator Kay Bailey Hutchison (R-TX),
Vice Chairman of the Senate Republican Conference, introduced the
District of Columbia Personal Protection Act of 2005 – legislation
to repeal the District of Columbia gun ban and restore to District
residents the Constitutionally guaranteed right to protect themselves.
“The rights guaranteed by the Constitution do not end at the borders of
Washington, D.C.,” said Sen. Hutchison, former Chairman of the Appropriations
Subcommittee on the District of Columbia. “Residents of the District should
not have to choose between protecting themselves and obeying a law that shreds
the Constitution.”
The District of Columbia – which enacted the Firearms and Control Regulations
Act in 1975 – has some of the most restrictive gun control laws in the
nation. The Mayor and D.C. Council have the authority to pass laws that regulate
sales of hand guns, but they do not have the authority to pass laws that undermine
the Constitution. Prior to the gun ban’s implementation, the murder rate
in the District was on the decline. Following the ban, the murder rate began
to rise and had tripled by 1991, while violent crime was decreasing nationally.
Councilman Barry, himself a convicted felon, says he does not want to prosecute
the perpetrators (if they are ever caught,) but also says that he will push the
city council to pass a bill he introduced that would increase penalties for carrying
a gun in the District! Such is the contradictory logic of the ex-mayor. Pass
more gun laws, and don’t enforce existing ones.
“The murder rate in D.C. today is eight times higher than the rest of the
country, even though violent crime has decreased to a 27-year low nationwide,” Sen.
Hutchison said. “It is clear this gun ban is not reducing the rate of violent
crime in the District. In fact, new violent crime records have been set since
the ban was put in place.”
Sen. Hutchison’s legislation, which has already garnered support of more
than 20 bipartisan cosponsors, makes D.C. gun laws consistent with federal law.
It recognizes that current law denies citizens access to firearms, which is an
infringement on their Second Amendment rights. It also clarifies that the D.C.
City Council does not have the authority to prohibit private ownership of firearms
but will maintain power to regulate machine guns and firearms according to the
National Firearms Act.
On the same topic, the Australian government enacted similar legislation in 1999
and the first year results are as follows: Australia-wide, homicides are up 3.2
percent, Australia-wide, assaults are up 8.6 percent; Australia-wide, armed robberies
are up 44 percent. In the state of Victoria alone, homicides with firearms are
now up 300 percent. (Note that while the law-abiding citizens turned them in,
the criminals did not and criminals still possess their guns!)
While figures over the previous 25 years showed a steady decrease
in armed robbery with firearms, this has changed drastically upward
in the past 12 months, since the criminals now are guaranteed that
their prey is unarmed.
There has also been a dramatic increase in break-ins and assaults
of the elderly. Australian politicians are at a loss to explain how
public safety has decreased, after such monumental effort and expense
was expended in “successfully ridding Australian society of
guns.”
At the time of the ban, the continent had an annual murder-by-firearm
rate of about 1.8 per 100,000 persons, but such low rates of crime
and rare shootings did not deter then-Prime Minister John Howard
from calling for and supporting the weapons ban.
Since the ban has been in effect, membership in the Australian Sporting
Shooters Association has climbed to about 112,000 -- a 200 percent
increase.
In an interview with World Net Daily, Larry Pratt, executive director
of Gun Owners of America, said the situation in Australia reminds
him of Great Britain, where English lawmakers have passed similar
restrictive gun control laws.
Pratt said he is in favor of allowing teachers to carry weapons to
protect themselves and their students on campus. He pointed to the
example of a Pearl, Mississippi teacher who, in 1997, armed with
his own handgun, was able to blunt the killing spree of Luke Woodham. “By
making schools and even entire communities ‘gun free zones,’ you’re
basically telling the criminal element that you’re unarmed
and extremely vulnerable,” Pratt said.
Pratt also warned against falling into the gun registration trap. “Governments
will ask you to trust them to allow gun registration, then use those
registration lists to later confiscate the firearms,” he said. “It’s
happened countless times throughout history.”
In an article by Canada’s National Post columnist, David Frum
revealed that “Canada’s overall crime rate is now 50
percent higher than the crime rate in the United States.” Moreover, “Since
the early 1990s, crime rates have dropped in 48 of the 50 states
and 80 percent of American cities. Over that same period, crime rates
have risen in six of the 10 Canadian provinces and in seven of Canada’s
10 biggest cities.” the most recent complete data available
from both countries that shows that in 2003, the violent crime rate
in the United States was 475 per 100,000 people; while up north,
there were 963 violent crimes per 100,000 people. The figure for
sexual assault in Canada per 100,000 people was more than double
that of the United States: 74 as opposed to 32.1; and the assault
rate in Canada was also more than twice that of the states: 746 to
America’s 295. Also, in 2005, Toronto had 78 murders; that’s
a 28 percent increase in homicides since 1995.
Great Britain hasn’t fared any better since the gun ban. A
CBS News report proclaimed Great Britain “one of the most violent
urban societies in the Western world.” Declared Dan Rather: “This
summer, thousands of Americans will travel to Britain expecting a
civilized island free from crime and ugliness ... [but now] the U.K.
has a crime problem ... worse than ours.”
Not surprisingly to many observers, the violent crime rate has risen
dramatically and steadily since gun bans have been instituted. That’s
a trend seen wherever strict gun control laws have been implemented,
and that’s the part of the story British officials have tried
to keep under wraps.
A headline in the London Daily Telegraph back on April 1, 1996, said it all: “Crime
Figures a Sham, Say Police.” The story noted that “pressure to convince
the public that police were winning the fight against crime had resulted in a
long list of ruses to ‘massage’ statistics,” and “the
recorded crime level bore no resemblance to the actual amount of crime being
committed.”
For example, where a series of homes were burgled, they were regularly recorded
as one crime. If a burglar hit 15 or 20 flats, only one crime was added to the
statistics. Britain’s justice officials have also kept crime totals down
by being careful about what to count.
A 2000 report from the Inspectorate of Constabulary charges Britain’s 43
police departments with systemic under-classification of crime – for example,
by recording burglary as “vandalism.” The report lays much of the
blame on the police’s desire to avoid the extra paperwork associated with
more serious crimes.
“American homicide rates are based on initial data, but British homicide
rates are based on the final disposition.” Suppose that three men kill
a woman during an argument outside a bar. They are arrested for murder, but because
of problems with identification (the main witness is dead), charges are eventually
dropped. In American crime statistics, the event counts as a three-person homicide,
but in British statistics it counts as nothing at all. “With such differences
in reporting criteria, comparisons of U.S. homicide rates with British homicide
rates is a sham,” the report concludes.
Another “common practice,” according to one retired Scotland Yard
senior officer, is “falsifying clear-up rates by gaining false confessions
from criminals already in prison.” (Britain has far fewer protections against
abusive police interrogations than does the United States.) As a result, thousands
of crimes in Great Britain have been “solved” by coercing prisoners
to confess to crimes they never committed. During the 19th century, and most
of the 20th, Britain enjoyed a well-deserved reputation as an unusually safe
and crime-free nation, compared to the United States or continental Europe. No
longer.
