PUBLICATION: The Toronto Sun
DATE:
2004.01.09
EDITION:
Final
SECTION:
Editorial/Opinion
PAGE:
16
BYLINE:
PETER WORTHINGTON
COLUMN:
Write Stuff
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MAYBE
OUR PROBLEM'S NOT ENOUGH GUNS
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Arguably,
the most useless boondoggle ever implemented by a Canadian government is gun
registration - a step towards confiscation.
It's
not the horrendous cost of nearly $1 billion (so far) that's the scandal -
shucks, governments waste that all the time, witness our submarines that leak.
It's that gun control may actually increase violent crime. The feds already
fudge figures to pretend it works.
A
new book in the U.S. by Richard Poe, The Seven Myths of Gun Control - is concise
and powerful and should be required reading.
Poe
has amassed impressive evidence that lack of guns among the public - in any
country - increases burglaries and the criminal use of guns. Britain and
Australia have already experienced this.
In
the U.S., "hot burglaries" (when the house is occupied) account for
13% of all burglaries, while in Britain hot burglaries are 50% because criminals
know there will be no gun in the home.
In
the U.S., states that allow law-abiding citizens to carry concealed weapons have
cut down random gun crimes and shootings - which is the goal of states with
stringent gun-control laws.
A
problem with gun registration is that it applies only to people who don't plan
to use guns for illegal purposes.
Criminals
break the law, and are unlikely to register guns before using them. That's a
reality firearm abolitionists discount.
Another
disquieting aspect of Poe's book - widely suspected but uncomfortable to mention
- is that overwhelmingly, violent crime in the U.S. is blacks versus blacks.
Mfume
blamed guns, and said he intended to sue gun manufacturers for "negligent
marketing." Of course, this would do nothing to solve the question of why
young black males kill one another. It's like banning cars because 50,000 people
die on the roads every year.
According
to FBI crime reports, blacks, who comprise 13% of the population, commit 42% of
all violent crimes in the U.S. Young black males between 14 and 24 years old,
who comprise 1% of the population, annually commit 30% of murders. These figures
indicate a major social crisis.
As
for murders, the U.S. Justice Department reported in 1992 that white Americans
committed murder at a rate of 5.1 per 100,000 (roughly twice Canada's homicide
rate) while black Americans killed at a rate of 43.4 per 100,000 - eight times
that of whites. Over 90% of homicides against blacks are committed by other
blacks. In other words, blacks are the greatest victims of violent crime as
well.
To
blame murders on guns is a copout. People do the killing - a point ignored by
the Canadian government in its dementia to register and someday perhaps remove
all firearms from the public.
Right
now, law-abiding Canadians who have not complied with a law that cannot succeed
in its goal, are deemed criminals.
As
Poe points out, when only governments are armed, only people whom the government
favours are protected.
A
two-page foreword by David Horowitz to this provocative book says it all, and
illustrates the essential folly of gun control legislation in Canada, and
proposed legislation in the U.S., as favoured by the lib-left, the media, and
academics.
Horowitz
tells of a six-year-old in 1999 who walked into a Michigan classroom with a
loaded handgun and shot and killed five-year-old Kayla Robbins.
In
the ensuing public outcry against "gun violence," President Clinton
held a press conference deploring the tragedy and called for mandatory
trigger-locks on all handguns.
"In
the fantasy world of liberal gun-control advocates, Kayla Robbins might be alive
today if a trigger-lock requirement had been added to the 20,000-plus gun laws
already on the books," wrote Horowitz.
"In
the real world, the little boy who shot Kayla Robbins lived in a crack house run
by his uncle who was a career criminal with three outstanding warrants for his
arrest. He was living with his criminal uncle because his father was in jail and
his drug-addicted mother was out of the picture. Is there any law the government
can design that this 'family' would feel compelled to obey?"
This
six-year-old did not buy the murder weapon at a gun show to avoid loopholes in
existing laws. He did not buy the gun at all. He picked it up, already loaded,
from a bed in the crack house where he lived.
These
realities refute the idea that a trigger-lock would have saved Kayla Robbins'
life.
Adds
Horowitz: "In the fantasy world, guns cause violence and laws are obeyed.
In the real world, individuals pull the triggers and it's they who cause
violence ... Gun control is really about controlling law-abiding citizens ...
(of) disarming law-abiding citizens in the face of those who would do them
harm."
Need any more be said?