wowie 17 guns, im sure you are on a list somewhere thats enough weapons to start a small war, good work solider.

I wonder if the number of murders/accidental deaths by firearms reduced when the UK banned guns. I don't think so.
But then they went the whole way, in another hysterical act they banned.....
wait for it....
SHARP KNIVES!!!!!
But that wasn't enough, they had to write impossible to decipher rulesets that defined what constituted a dangerous knife.
It came down to the fact that a 10 inch kitchen knife was less dangerous than an 8 inch hunting style knife. But then added that the kitchen knife must be wielded in a threatening manner! But you only have to possess a hunting knife to be naughty.

All this from your elected officials.
Good grief.

At least here in the US you KNOW you have the best government money can buy.

Yeah, but you're just arguing semantics, really. The idea that killing something is rewarding in and of itself is heinous, IMHO. I mean, it's not as if these people must kill (directly) to survive. They go out in the woods and shoot something because the killing rewards them, no matter what kind of satisfaction it is. If they were out there just for the sake of the hunt, they could just as easily take pictures as fire a bullet (or arrow, or whatever).

(Again, I recognize that most of us, myself included, rely on the deaths of animals to survive, but we don't have to be, and, IMHO, shouldn't be, proud of it or take pleasure in it.)

FABLE I: A gun in the home makes the home less safe.
Firearms are used far more often to stop crimes than to commit them. In spite of this, anti-firearm activists insist that the very act of keeping a firearm in the home puts family members at risk, often claiming that a gun in the home is 43 times more likely to be used to kill a family member than an intruder.

The 43:1 claim is derived from a study of firearm-related deaths in homes in King County (Seattle), Washington.1 Although Arthur Kellermann and Donald Reay originally warned that their study was of a single non-representative county, and noted that they failed to consider protective uses of firearms that did not result in criminals being killed, anti-firearm groups and activists use the "43 times" claim without explaining the limitations of the study, or how the ratio was derived.

To produce the misleading ratio from the study, the only defensive or protective uses of firearms that were counted were those in which criminals were killed by would-be crime victims. This is the most serious of the study's flaws, since fatal shootings of criminals occur in only a fraction of 1% of protective firearm uses nationwide. Survey research by award-winning criminologist Gary Kleck, of Florida State University, has shown that firearms are used for protection against criminals as many as 2.5 million times annually.2 This is three to five times the estimated number of violent crimes committed with firearms annually.3

It should come as no surprise that Kleck's findings are reflexively dismissed by anti-firearm activist groups, but a leading anti-gun criminologist was honest enough to acknowledge their validity. "I am as strong a gun-control advocate as can be found among the criminologists in this country," wrote the late Marvin E. Wolfgang. "I would eliminate all guns from the civilian population and maybe even from the police. . . . What troubles me is the article by Gary Kleck and Marc Gertz. The reason I am troubled is that they have provided an almost clear-cut case of methodologically sound research in support of something I have theoretically opposed for years, namely, the use of a gun in defense against a criminal perpetrator. . . . I do not like their conclusions that having a gun can be useful, but I cannot fault their methodology."4

While the 43:1 claim is commonly used to suggest that murders and accidents are likely to occur with guns kept at home, suicides accounted for 37 of every 43 firearm-related deaths in the King County study. Nationwide, 54% of firearm-related deaths are suicides.5 Gun control advocates would have the public believe that armed citizens often accidentally kill family members, mistaking them for criminals. But such incidents constitute less than 2% of fatal firearms accidents, or about one for every 90,000 defensive gun uses.6

In spite of the demonstrated flaws in his research, Kellermann has continued to promote the idea that a gun is inherently dangerous to own. In 1993, he and a number of colleagues presented a study that claimed to show that a home with a gun was much more likely to experience a homicide.7

This study, too, was seriously flawed. Kellermann studied only homes where homicides had taken placeÐignoring the millions of homes with firearms where no harm is doneÐand used a control group unrepresentative of American households. By looking only at homes where homicides had occurred and failing to control for more pertinent variables, such as prior criminal record or histories of violence, Kellermann et al. skewed the results of this study. After reviewing their work, Prof. Kleck noted that Kellermann's methodology could prove that since diabetics are much more likely to possess insulin than non-diabetics, possession of insulin is a risk factor for diabetes. Even Dr. Kellermann admitted that: "It is possible that reverse causation accounted for some of the association we observed between gun ownership and homicide." Northwestern University Law Professor Daniel D. Polsby went further, writing "Indeed the point is stronger than that: 'reverse causation' may account for most of the association between gun ownership and homicide. Kellermann's data simply do not allow one to draw any conclusion."8

FABLE IV: "Gun control" laws prevent crime.
So overwhelming is the evidence against this myth, that it borders on the absurd for anti-gun groups to try to perpetuate it.

There are tens of thousands of federal, state and local gun laws. The Gun Control Act of 1968 (Public Law 90-618, 18 U.S.C. Chapter 44) alone prohibits persons convicted of, or under indictment for, crimes punishable by more than a year in prison, fugitives, illegal drug users, illegal aliens, mental incompetents and certain other classes of people from purchasing or possessing firearms. It prohibits mail order sales of firearms, prohibits sales of firearms between residents of other states who are not dealers, prohibits retail sales of handguns to persons under age 21 and rifles and shotguns to persons under age 18 and prohibits the importation of firearms "not generally recognized as particularly suitable for or readily adaptable to sporting purposes." It also established the current firearms dealer licensing system. Consider the following gun control failures.

Unless otherwise noted, crime data are from the FBI Uniform Crime Reports.

Washington, D.C.'s ban on handgun sales took effect in 1977 and by the 1990s the city's homicide rate had tripled. During the years following the ban, most murders, and all firearm murders, in the city were committed with handguns.1

Chicago imposed handgun registration in 1968, and homicides with handguns continued to rise. Chicago imposed a D.C.-style handgun ban in 1982 and over the next decade the annual number of handgun-related homicides doubled.2

California increased its waiting period on retail and private sales of handguns from five to 15 days in 1975 (reduced to 10 days in 1996), outlawed "assault weapons" in 1989, and subjected rifles and shotguns to the waiting period in 1990. Yet since 1975, the state's annual homicide rate has averaged 34% higher than the rate for the rest of the country.

Maryland has imposed a waiting period and a gun purchase limit, banned several small handguns, restricted "assault weapons," and regulated private transfers of firearms even between family members and friends, yet its homicide rate is 46% higher than the rate for the rest of the country.

The overall homicide rate in the jurisdictions that have the most severe restrictions on firearms purchase and ownership -- California, Illinois, Maryland, New Jersey, New York and Washington, D.C. is 23% higher than the rate for the rest of the country.

New York has had a handgun licensing law since 1911, yet until the New York City Police Department began a massive crackdown on crime in the mid-1990s, New York City's violent crime rate was among the highest of U.S. cities.

The federal Gun Control Act of 1968 imposed unprecedented restrictions relating to firearms, nationwide. Yet, compared to the five years before the law, the national homicide rate averaged 50% higher during the five years after the law, 75% higher during the next five years, and 81% higher during the five years after that.

States upon whom the Brady Act's waiting period was imposed had worse violent crime trends than other states. Other failures of the federal waiting period law are noted in Fable V: "It is because of the Brady Act's five-day waiting period and the "assault weapons" law that crime has decreased," which follows.

The record is clear: gun control primarily impacts upon upstanding citizens, not criminals. Crime is reduced by holding criminals accountable for their actions.

Increasing incarceration rates -- Between 1980-1994, the 10 states with the greatest increases in prison population experienced an average decrease of 13% in violent crime, while the 10 states with the smallest increases in prison population experienced an average 55% increase in violent crime.3

Put violent criminals behind bars and keep them there -- In 1991, 162,000 criminals placed on probation instead of being imprisoned committed 44,000 violent crimes during their probation. In 1991, criminals released on parole committed 46,000 violent crimes while under supervision in the community an average of 13 months.4 Twenty-one percent of persons involved in the felonious killings of law enforcement officers during the last decade were on probation or parole at the time of the officers' killings.5

Enforce the law against criminals with guns -- The success of Richmond, Virginia's Project Exile, strongly supported by NRA, has grabbed the attention of the Administration, Members of Congress, big city mayors, and criminologists. Project Exile is a federal, state and local effort led by the U.S. Attorney's Office in Richmond, that sentences felons convicted of possessing guns to a minimum of five years in prison. Following the implementation of Project Exile, the city's firearm homicide rate has been cut by nearly 40%.6 Recognizing the program's success, Congress in 1998 approved $2.3 million to implement Project Exile in Philadelphia, Pa., and Camden County, N.J.

FABLE V: It is because of the Brady Act's five-day waiting period and the "assault weapons" law that crime has decreased.
Anti-gun groups and the Clinton-Gore Administration have tried to credit those two laws and, thus, themselves, with the decrease. However, violent crime began declining nationally during 1992,1 and the Brady Act didn't take effect until Feb. 28, 1994, the "assault weapons" law until Sept. 13, 1994.

Crime in America declined for several other reasons. New York City, which accounted for 9% of all violent crimes in the U.S. during 1991, has cut violent crimes by 42%,2 with most of the decrease attributed to the New York City Police Department's widely-acclaimed crackdown on a broad range of crimes and its implementation of new police strategies.3 The incarceration rate has increased 62% nationally since 1991.4 And criminologists note that during the 1990s the U.S. population, and most notably the membership of drug gangs, has aged and become less prone to violence.5

The "assault weapon" law has been irrelevant to the drop in crime. Not only did that law take effect well after the decrease began, "assault weapons" were and are used in only a very small percentage of violent crime.6 "Assault weapons" are still widely available on the commercial market, because of increased production before the federal law ceased their manufacture. Further, the law permits the manufacture of firearms that are identical to "assault weapons" but for one or more essentially cosmetic features.7

The Brady Act's waiting period was never imposed on many high-crime states and cities, but instead was imposed on mostly low-crime states. Eighteen states and the District of Columbia were always exempt from the waiting period,8 because they already had more restrictive gun laws when the Brady Act took effect.9 Those areas account for 60% of all the murders and other violent crimes in the U.S.10 Furthermore, during the five years the waiting period was in effect, more than a dozen other states became "Brady-exempt" as well, by adopting NRA-backed instant check laws or modifying pre-existing purchase regulations.

Even in states where the Brady Act's waiting period was in effect, criminals were not prevented from obtaining handguns. Only 7% of armed career criminals and 7% of "handgun predators" obtain firearms from licensed gun shops.11 Eighty-five percent of police chiefs say that the Brady Act's waiting period did not stop criminals from obtaining handguns.12 According to the Bureau of Justice Statistics (BJS), handgun purchase denial statistics often cited by President Clinton and Handgun Control, Inc., "do not indicate whether rejected purchasers later obtained a firearm through other means."13

Summarizing the waiting period's failure, New York University Professors James M. Jacobs and Kimberley A. Potter wrote: "It is hard to see the Brady law, heralded by many politicians, the media, and Handgun Control, Inc. as an important step toward keeping handguns out of the hands of dangerous and irresponsible persons, as anything more than a sop to the widespread fear of crime."14

Waiting periods and other laws delaying handgun purchases have never reduced crime. Historically, most states with such laws have had higher violent crime rates than other states, and have been more likely to have violent crime and murder rates higher than national rates. Despite a 15-day waiting period (reduced to 10 days in 1996) and a ban on "assault weapons," California's violent crime and murder rates have averaged 51% and 38% higher than the rest of the country during the 1990s.15 When Congress approved the Brady bill, eight of the 12 states that had violent crime rates higher than the national rate, and nine of the 16 states that had murder rates higher than the national rate, were states that delayed handgun purchases.16

In Brady's first two years, the overall murder rate in states subject to its waiting period compared unfavorably to other states, declining 9% versus 17% in the other states.17 Even anti-gun researcher David McDowell has written that "waiting periods have no influence on either gun homicides or gun suicides."18 And Handgun Control's Sarah Brady has admitted that a waiting period "is not a panacea. It's not going to stop crimes of passion or drug-related crimes."19

The Brady Act waiting period also led to fewer arrests of prohibited purchasers, compared to NRA-backed instant check systems. For example, between November 1989 and August 1998, Virginia's instant check system led to the arrests of 3,380 individuals, including 475 wanted persons.20 The General Accounting Office (GAO) found that during the Brady Act's first 17 months, only seven individuals were convicted of illegal attempts to buy handguns.21 The Dept. of Justice, citing statistics from the Executive Office of United States Attorneys, stated that during Fiscal Years 1994-1997 only 599 individuals were convicted of providing false information on either federal forms 4473 (used to document retail firearms purchases) or Brady handgun purchase application forms.22

The vast majority of persons who applied to buy handguns under the Brady Act's waiting period were law-abiding citizens. The GAO reported that during the Act's first year, 95.2% of handgun purchase applicants were approved without a hitch. Of the denials, nearly half were due to traffic tickets or administrative problems with application forms (including sending forms to the wrong law enforcement agency). Law-abiding citizens were often incorrectly denied as "criminals," because their names or other identifying information were similar to those of criminals, and triggered "false hits" during records checks. GAO noted that denials reported by BATF in its one-year study of the Brady Act, "do not reflect the fact that some of the initially denied applications were subsequently approved, following administrative or other appeal procedures."23

Due to NRA-backed amendments that were made to the Brady bill before its passage in 1993, the Brady Act's waiting period was replaced in November 1998 by the nationwide instant check system.24 However, in June 1998, President Clinton and the anti-gun lobby announced their desire for the waiting period to continue permanently along with the instant check. White House senior advisor Rahm Emanuel falsely claimed on June 14, 1998, that "The five-day waiting period was established for a cooling off period for crimes of passion."25

As the inclusion of its instant check amendment made clear, however, the Brady Act was imposed not for a "cooling off period," but for a records check obstacle to firearm purchases by felons, fugitives and other prohibited persons. Furthermore, during congressional hearings on the Brady bill on Sept. 30, 1993, Assistant Attorney General Eleanor Acheson testified for the Department of Justice that there were no statistics to support claims that handguns were often used in crimes soon after being purchased.26

Emanuel also claimed that, "Based on police research, 20% of the guns purchased that are used in murder are purchased within the week of the murder." But this was an exaggeration typical of anti-gun advocates: BATF reports the average time between the purchase of a gun and its trace in a murder investigation is more than six years.27

The Clinton-Gore Administration and anti-gun groups want the waiting period, because it complicates the process of buying a gun and therefore may dissuade some potential gun buyers. A waiting period also can prevent a person who needs a gun for protection from acquiring one quickly, but Handgun Control opposes the use of firearms for protection, claiming "the only reason for guns in civilian hands is for sporting purposes"28 and self-defense is "not a federally guaranteed constitutional right."29

FABLE VI: Since firearm accidents are a large and growing problem, we need laws mandating how people store their firearms.
To the contrary, fatal firearm accidents in the United States have been decreasing dramatically from year to year, decade to decade.1 Today they're at an all-time low among the entire population and among children in particular, and account for only 1% of fatal accidents. More common are fatal accidents involving, or due to, motor vehicles, falls, fires, poisoning, drowning, choking on ingested objects, and admitted mistakes during medical care.2 Since 1930, the U.S. population has more than doubled, the number of privately owned firearms has more than quadrupled, and the annual number of fatal firearm accidents has declined by 65%.3 Among children, fatal firearm accidents declined 24% during 1997 and 75% since 1975.4

Anti-gun activists exaggerate the number of firearm-related deaths among children more than 500%, by counting deaths among persons under the age of 20 as deaths of "children."5 In some instances, they have pretended that persons under the age of 25 were children, and Handgun Control, Inc., on at least one occasion, pretended that anyone under the age of 35 was a "child."6

When anti-gun activists misrepresent accident and other statistics and still fail to frighten people into not keeping guns in their homes, they turn to gun storage. "Mandatory storage" laws (to require all gun owners to store their firearms unloaded and locked away) and "triggerlock" laws (to require some sort of locking device to be provided with every gun sold) are designed to prohibit or, at least, discourage people from keeping their firearms ready for protection against criminals, the most common reason many people buy firearms today.

NRA opposes such laws because it would be unreasonable and potentially dangerous to set one storage requirement for all gun owners to meet. Individual gun owners have different factors to consider when determining how best to store their guns. That decision is made best in the home, not in a legislature. Gun safes and trigger locking devices have been on the market for years, of course, and remain so, available to those who decide that purchasing them fits their individual needs.

Storage and triggerlock laws could also give people the false impression that it is safe to rely upon mechanical devices, rather than upon proper firearm handling procedures. Mechanical devices can fail and many trigger locking devices pose a danger when installed on loaded firearms.

Mandatory storage laws also would be virtually impossible to enforce without violating the Fourth Amendment's protection against unreasonable searches. American gun owners and civil libertarians are keenly aware that in Great Britain, a mandatory storage law was a precursor to that country's prohibition on handgun ownership.

Most states provide penalties for reckless endangerment, under which an adult found grossly negligent in the storage of a firearm can be prosecuted for a criminal offense. Responsible gun owners already store their firearms safely, in accordance with their personal needs. Irresponsible persons are not likely to undergo a character change because of a law that restates their inherent responsibilities.

NRA recognizes that education has been the key to the decline in firearm accidents. NRA's network of 39,000 Certified Instructors and Coaches nationwide trains hundreds of thousands of gun owners each year. Separately, NRA's award-winning Eddie Eagle® Gun Safety Education program for children pre-K through 6th grade has reached more than 12 million youngsters nationwide. Our Home Firearm Safety Manual advises that: "The proper storage of firearms is the responsibility of all gun owners," and that gun owners should "store guns so they are not accessible to untrained or unauthorized persons."

FABLE VII: Allowing people to carry guns for protection will lead to more violence and injuries.
Anti-gun rhetoric is its most outlandish when the subject turns to right-to-carry laws, under which people obtain permits to carry firearms concealed for protection against criminals. For years, gun control supporters have tried to convince the public that the average person is neither smart enough, nor safe and responsible enough, to be trusted with firearms, especially where using firearms for protection is concerned.

In his book More Guns, Less Crime, Prof. John R. Lott, Jr., (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1998), provides the most comprehensive study of firearms and crime ever conducted, and completely debunks such claims.

Lott examined, with an economist's eye, a Mount Everest of data, ranging from gun ownership polls to FBI crime rate data for each of the nation's 3,045 counties over an 18-year period. He included in his analysis many variables that might explain the level of crime--factors such as income, poverty, unemployment, population density, arrest rates, conviction rates and length of prison sentences.

With 54,000 observations and hundreds of variables available over the 1977 to 1994 period, Lott's research amounts to the largest data set that has ever been put together for any study of crime, let alone for the study of gun control. And, unlike many gun control advocates who masquerade as researchers, Lott willingly made his complete data set available to any academic who requested it.

"Many factors influence crime," Lott writes, "with arrest and conviction rates being the most important. However, nondiscretionary concealed-handgun laws are also important, and they are the most cost-effective means of reducing crime."

Nondiscretionary or "shall-issue" carry permit laws reduce violent crime for two reasons. They reduce the number of attempted crimes because criminals can't tell which potential victims are armed and can defend themselves. Secondly, national crime victimization surveys show that victims who use firearms to defend themselves are statistically less likely to be injured. In short, concealed carry laws deter crime, because they increase the criminal's risk of doing business.

Lott's research shows that states with the largest increases in gun ownership also have the largest decreases in violent crime. And, it is high-crime, urban areas, and neighborhoods with large minority populations that experience the greatest reductions in violent crime when law-abiding citizens are allowed to carry concealed handguns.

Lott found "a strong negative relationship between the number of law-abiding citizens with permits and the crime rate--as more people obtain permits there is a greater decline in violent crime rates." Further, he found that the value of carry laws increases over time. "For each additional year that a concealed handgun law is in effect the murder rate declines by 3%, rape by 2% and robberies by over 2%," Lott writes.

"Murder rates decline when either more women or more men carry concealed handguns, but the effect is especially pronounced for women," Lott notes. "An additional woman carrying a concealed handgun reduces the murder rate for women by about three to four times more than an additional man carrying a concealed handgun reduces the murder rate for men."

While right-to-carry laws lead to fewer people being murdered (Lott finds an equal deterrent effect for murders committed with and without guns), the increased presence of concealed handguns "does not raise the number of accidental deaths or suicides from handguns."

The benefits of concealed handguns are not limited to those who carry them. Others "get a 'free ride' from the crime fighting efforts of their fellow citizens," Lott finds. And the benefits are "not limited to people who share the characteristics of those who carry the guns." The most obvious example of what Lott calls this "halo" effect, is "the drop in murders of children following the adoption of nondiscretionary laws. Arming older people not only may provide direct protection to these children, but also causes criminals to leave the area."

How compelling is John Lott's message? How threatening is his research to those who would disarm the American people? He devotes an entire chapter of More Guns, Less Crime rebutting attacks leveled at his research and at him personally. He recalls how Susan Glick, of the anti-gun Violence Policy Center, publicly denounced his research as "flawed" without reading the first word of it.

This type of unfounded and unethical attack unfortunately is not uncommon. Criminologist Gary Kleck explains why: "Battered by a decade of research contradicting the central factual premises underlying gun control, advocates have apparently decided to fight more exclusively on an emotional battlefield, where one terrorizes one's targets into submission rather than honestly persuading them with credible evidence."1

Law professor and firearms issue researcher David Kopel notes, "Whenever a state legislature first considers a concealed-carry bill, opponents typically warn of horrible consequences. Permit-holders will slaughter each other in traffic disputes, while would-be Rambos shoot bystanders in incompetent attempts to thwart crime. But within a year of passage, the issue usually drops off the news media's radar screen, while gun-control advocates in the legislature conclude that the law wasn't so bad after all."2

Thirty-one states now have right-to-carry laws. Half the U.S. population, including 60% of handgun owners, live in right-to-carry states. Twenty-two states have adopted right-to-carry in the last decade, 11 in the last two years. In each case, anti-gun activists and politicians predicted that allowing law-abiding people to carry firearms would result in more violence. Typical of this sort of propaganda, Florida State Rep. Michael Friedman said, "We'll have calamity and carnage, the body count will go up and we'll see more and more people trying to act like supercops."3 Similarly, Broward County Sheriff Nick Navarro said, "This could set us back 100 years to the time of the wild west."4 But since Florida adopted right-to-carry in 1987, its homicide rate has decreased 40%, while nationwide the homicide rate has decreased 21%.5

Less than two one-hundredths of 1% of Florida carry licenses have been revoked because of firearm crimes committed by licensees, according to the Florida Dept. of State.

Contrary to the picture painted by anti-gun groups, evidence supporting the value of right-to-carry laws and the high standard of conduct among persons who carry firearms lawfully is over-whelming and continues to mount.

FABLE VIII: We should ban all firearms that have no legitimate, sporting purpose.

Gun control activists pretend that there are such things as "illegitimate" and "legitimate" guns, then claim to be "reasonable" in wanting to outlaw only the former group--those that they, the national media and cynical politicians demonize as "assault weapons," "Saturday Night Specials" or "junk guns."

The pretense has an obvious flaw: any firearm, regardless of type, size, caliber, cost or appearance, can be, and is most often by far, used for legitimate purposes. Despite the powerful images cast by nightly news broadcasts and violence-oriented TV programs, guns of all sorts are put to good use far more often than they are misused, because there are many more upstanding gun owners than evil or irresponsible ones. And despite protestations to the contrary by anti-gun groups, there is no gun or type of gun that criminals generally prefer.1

One long-time gun control supporter, criminologist Philip Cook, has rejected the "illegitimate" gun theory. "Indeed, it seems doubtful that there are any guns that are 'useless' to legitimate owners, yet useful to criminals," Cook wrote. "Any gun that can be used in self-defense has a legitimate purpose, and therefore is not 'useless.' Similarly, any gun that can be used in crime can also be used in self-defense."2

Why do today's anti-gun groups campaign to outlaw only certain, often arbitrarily defined groups of guns? Because they have seen the incremental approach to civilian disarmament work in other countries, such as Australia and England.

First targeted were handguns, portrayed as the guns of criminals, versus rifles and shotguns, portrayed as the guns of sportsmen. (This is despite the widespread use of handguns for personal protection and sports.) Failing in their attack upon all handguns, anti-gun activists later focused upon compact, small-caliber handguns, which they labeled "Saturday Night Specials."

Then, in the late 1980s, the leader of one anti-gun group called upon his peers to downplay handguns in favor of a new target of opportunity. "[T]he issue of handgun restriction consistently remains a non-issue with the vast majority of legislators, the press and public," wrote anti-gun crusader Josh Sugarmann. Assault weapons "are a new topic. The weapons' menacing looks, coupled with the public's confusion over fully-automatic machine guns versus semi-automatic assault weapons--anything that looks like a machine gun is presumed to be a machine gun--can only increase the chance of public support for restrictions on these weapons. . . . Efforts to restrict assault weapons are more likely to succeed than those to restrict handguns."(Emphasis in the original.)3

Sugarmann noted that gun control groups get a boost when "something truly horrible happens." Then, in 1989, a drifter who had slipped through the criminal justice system numerous times used a semi-automatic rifle in a multiple shooting in Stockton, California. Anti-gun activists, politicians, and reporters put handguns on the back burner and launched a campaign against "assault weapons."

Putting their "illegitimate" gun theory into practice, anti-gunners claimed that semi-automatic rifles were the "weapons of choice" of criminals, despite reports from state and local law enforcement agencies showing that such guns were used in very small percentages of violent crime.

President Clinton signed the "assault weapons" ban into effect in September 1994, prohibiting manufacturers from including features such as bayonet mounts and flash suppressors on various semi-automatic rifles, with similar restrictions on shotguns and handguns. Considering that there had been no crimes committed previously with bayonets affixed to rifles, and criminals in no way benefit from any of the features prohibited by the law, the law was purely political in motivation and consequence.

With the "assault weapons" law on the books, gun control advocates who since 1989 had claimed that those guns were the "weapons of choice" among criminals changed their tune overnight. The began claiming, as they had during the early and mid-1980s, that compact handguns were the "weapons of choice." The "Saturday Night Special" term, with its racist roots,4 was dropped in favor of "junk guns," implying that the next guns targeted for prohibition were only the least expensive, poorly made handguns. In fact, their proposals would ban compact handguns irrespective of price or quality.

Criminologists on both sides of the gun control debate have rejected the notion that compact handguns are the weapon of choice of criminals and that they have no legitimate purpose. Early in the debate, The Police Foundation reported that the "evidence clearly indicates that the belief that so-called 'Saturday Night Specials' (inexpensive handguns) are used to commit the great majority of these felonies is misleading and counterproductive" and "seems to contradict the widespread notion that so-called 'Saturday Night Specials' are the favorite crime weapon."5

More recently, criminologist Gary Kleck observed that "most SNSs are not owned or used for criminal purposes. Instead, most are probably owned by poor people for protection." Laws directed specifically at SNSs, Kleck says, "would have their greatest impact in reducing the availability of defensive handguns to low income people."6

Refuting the idea that compact handguns are somehow useless for protection, James J. Fotis, Executive Director of the 65,000-member Law Enforcement Alliance of America has said, "Small-caliber handguns have been carried by law enforcement officers for years, often as backups to their primary handguns. These handguns are useful for protective purposes because of their concealability and serve the primary function of 'backup' if a disarming occurs or if you have no time to reload. There is no reason to believe that small-caliber handguns are any less useful for protection when in the hands of other law-abiding citizens."7

Aside from other objections to prohibiting certain kinds of guns, there is also the issue of the futility of such a policy. As a study for the National Institute of Justice concluded, "There is no evidence anywhere to show that reducing the availability of firearms in general likewise reduces their availability to persons with criminal intent, or that persons with criminal intent would not be able to arm themselves under any set of general restrictions on firearms."8 Additionally, a law restricting certain guns, even if successful, might be counter-productive. As Gary Kleck has noted, criminals deprived of specific guns would merely switch to other, perhaps more effective, guns.9

FABLE XII: Hunting and the "gun culture" teach our kids to be violent.
After several isolated firearm crimes committed by children on school grounds during the late 1990s, anti-gun activists falsely suggested that such crimes were common and attributable not only to guns, but to hunting and the so-called "gun culture." They even faulted the "Southern culture" in particular, for a shooting in Arkansas, until it was reported that the primary suspect in the crime had been raised in a Northern state.

Several recent studies conducted for the federal government tell a different story than one hears from those who spin the news to promote gun control. Among the findings: Boys who learn about firearms and their legitimate uses from family members and who own firearms legally have much lower rates of delinquency than those who own firearms illegally and those who do not own firearms.1 Only 2% of school administrators consider guns a serious problem on school grounds.2 Ninety percent of schools had no serious violent crimes during 1996-1997 and 43% had no crime at all. The overall school crime rate dropped 22% from 1993 to 1996, and murders and suicides rarely occur in or near schools, leading the Secretary of Education, Richard Riley, to conclude, "the vast majority of America's schools are still among the safest places for youngsters to be."3

Many factors have been identified as contributing to the likelihood of homicides, including poverty and unemployment, as well as population size, density, age, and the percentage of people living in urban areas. Merely being in the South, however, is a statistically insignificant factor.4 And while persons who live in rural areas are more likely to be hunters, the total violent crime rate and murder rate in rural counties are 69% and 42% lower, respectively, than those found in metropolitan areas.5

False stereotypes of gun owners have been an article of faith in some anti-gun circles for years. Professor William R. Tonso, head of the Department of Sociology, Criminal Justice, and Anthropology at the University of Evansville, Indiana, attributed the on-going clash over gun ownership to a cultural conflict between people who, by virtue of their upbringing and lifestyle, have little knowledge of firearms and their legitimate uses, and people who are familiar with firearms and associate them with freedom, security and recreation.6

Those whose loathing of guns stems from a fear of the unknown might have a change of heart if they knew that hunting not only teaches youngsters how to be safe with firearms, it provides them valuable character-building lessons that will serve them throughout their lives. Hunting has a longstanding code of ethics built upon respect for the rights of others. And hunters, more than any other group, are responsible for protecting wildlife and their natural habitat through a variety of conservation programs they fund.

Additionally, NRA has been the nation's leader in firearm safety training and hunter education for decades. Our 39,000 Certified Instructors and Coaches train hundreds of thousands of people each year in a variety of programs of study. Additionally, the Eddie Eagle® GunSafe Program, which does not use guns, teaches children in grades pre-K through 6th that if they encounter a gun while unsupervised, they should "STOP! Don't touch. Leave the area. Tell an adult." The award-winning program, used by 10,000 police departments and schools, has been provided to more than 12 million children during the last decade.

FABLE XIII: Foreign countries such as England and Japan have much less crime than the U.S. because of their more severe gun laws.
Actually, crime rates are the same in Switzerland, Israel and Norway, where gun laws are relatively mild, as they are in England, Italy and Japan, where guns are almost entirely prohibited.

In Switzerland, most citizens are members of the national defense force and are issued fully-automatic rifles and ammunition, to be kept at home, ready to be put into use in a national emergency. Outside their formal military duties, the Swiss expend about 60 million rounds of ammunition with the guns each year, mostly for target practice. Crimes with the guns are virtually unheard of. By comparison, "Italy's gun law, 'the most restrictive in Europe,' had left her southern provinces alone with a thousand firearm murders a year, thirty times Switzerland's total."1

England annually has twice as many homicides with firearms as it did before imposing its tough laws. Furthermore, "crime rates for robbery, assault, burglary, and motor vehicle theft are higher in England (including Wales) than in the United States." And while U.S. crime rates have been declining significantly, the reverse is true in England and Wales.

According to a late 1998 study by the Bureau of Justice Statistics, "For most U.S. crimes . . . the latest crime rates (1996) are the lowest recorded in the 16-year period from 1981 to 1996. By comparison, English crime rates as measured in both victim surveys and police statistics have all risen since 1981." The murder rate is higher in the U.S. than in England and Wales, but the U.S. rate has been declining, while the rate in England and Wales has remained unchanged.2

Ironically, it is because Japan's crime rates are rising despite its severe gun control laws, that that country is trying to lead a call for worldwide gun control through the United Nations. But, as law professor David Kopel noted in a work voted 1992 Book of the Year award by the American Society of Criminology's Division of International Criminology. Japanese-style gun control requires measures that could not be imposed in the U.S.

In Japan, citizens have fewer protections of the right to privacy, and fewer rights for criminal suspects, than in the United States. Japanese police routinely search citizens at will and twice a year pay "home visits" to citizens' residences. Suspect confession rate is 95% and trial conviction rate is more than 99.9%.

The Tokyo Bar Association has said that the Japanese police routinely engage in torture or illegal treatment. Even in cases where suspects claimed to have been tortured and their bodies bore the physical traces to back their claims, courts have still accepted their confessions. Amnesty International, Kopel noted, calls Japan's police custody system "a flagrant violation of United Nations human rights principles."

But, Kopel wrote, "Without abrogating the Bill of Rights, America could not give its police and prosecutors extensive Japanese-style powers to enforce severe gun laws effectively. Unlike the Japanese, Americans are not already secure from crime, and are therefore less likely to surrender their personal means of defense. More importantly, America has no tradition like Japan's of civil disarmament, of submission to authority, or of trust in the government." Thus, "Foreign style gun control is doomed to failure in America. Foreign gun control comes along with searches and seizures, and with many other restrictions on civil liberties too intrusive for America. . . . It postulates an authoritarian philosophy of government and society fundamentally at odds with the individualist and egalitarian American ethos."3

Perhaps Don. B. Kates, a noted civil rights lawyer, best put the international comparison myth in perspective, writing, "In any society, truly violent people are only a small minority. We know that law-abiding citizens do not commit violent crimes. We know that criminals will neither obey gun bans nor refrain from turning other deadly instruments to their nefarious purposes. . . . In sum, peaceful societies do not need general gun bans and violent societies do not benefit from them."4

Enjoy.

Or, you could have just posted the link.. http://2ndamendment.freeservers.com/myths.htm

That was all in response to my post for what reason?

the guns that kill people or at least 90% of them are obtained illegally.. taking away my right to own a gun won't solve anyone's problems. see NYC

Yeah the UK sure got it right, make guns illegal so only criminals end up having them.

I've lived in the UK all my life.

Nobody I know owns a gun
Nobody I know has ever been shot
Nobody I know has ever been threatened with a gun
I've never seen an unholstered gun in a public place
I've never witnessed any crime involving a gun

That's the way I like it.

Rob

In reply to:

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Nobody I know owns a gun

---

Maybe because you don't know any criminals?

In reply to:

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Nobody I know has ever been shot
Nobody I know has ever been threatened with a gun
I've never seen an unholstered gun in a public place
I've never witnessed any crime involving a gun
That's the way I like it.

---

Funny how my life is the same yet guns are not illegal here.

I wish Detroit was like that... there is so much of that crap all the time.

I live in NY (albeit Rochester not NYC). But, All those are true for me as well.

Also, you know the number of children under the age of 5 accidentally killed with a firearm last year? Ready? 4.

Just that every time it happens, it gets national coverage.

An article from the National Review. Couple of years back.

"We really have to have mandatory child safety trigger locks, and photo license IDs for the purchase of new handguns," Al Gore told a Democratic fundraising audience, as he broke the news of Monday’s shooting at the National Zoo in Washington, DC.


Who is Al Gore kidding? The District of Columbia already has much more gun control than "photo license IDs for the purchase of new handguns." You can’t buy new handguns in DC; you can’t even bring one into the District if you move there. If you live in DC, you can’t legally buy a handgun anywhere else.

All other firearms must be registered, and either stored disassembled, or locked up and therefore inaccessible for home defense. DC already has gun control laws far more severe than any Gore claims he wants at the national level.

Gore asserts that the National Zoo shooting proves the case for "mandatory child safety trigger locks." If there is an argument for "mandatory child safety trigger locks," it would be that they prevent a child from finding a loaded gun, playing with it, and unintentionally killing himself or another child. But there aren’t as many such accidents as you think.

In 1997, the National Center for Health Statistics reported a total of 21 accidental handgun deaths for children through age 14. No, that’s not a typo: 21 deaths.

Even the 15-19 year olds only add another 34 handgun accidental deaths in the entire United States. Don’t believe us? Check it out yourself. Look under ICD 922.0 for handgun accidental deaths.

What about the supposed 12/13/15/17 children a day that are killed by gunfire in the United States? That includes "children" who are 19 years old, suicides, murders, hunting accidents, a very large number of gang members killing other gang members, and both police and civilians shooting "children" who are engaged in rape, armed robbery, and attempted murder.

There is a real problem with violence in the U.S. (and not just gun violence), but almost all of it is intentional misuse of a gun. The "mandatory child safety trigger locks" aren’t going to make a difference for intentional misuses.

Can trigger locks reduce handgun suicides by kids? Well, perhaps if there are no workshop tools in the house, since many gun locks can be pried off with a screwdriver in five minutes, or destroyed with a power drill even quicker.

Like handgun accidental deaths, child handgun suicide in the U.S. is a problem that is larger in the popular conception than in reality. The National Center for Health Statistics reports 32 suicides by handguns for children 0-14 in 1997. Yes, just 32 for the whole country. Throw in the 15-19 year olds, and you get 179 more. (That's ICD 955.0 for handgun suicides, if you want to check our figures.)

These are still tragedies, but it’s hard to really believe that trigger locks are going to make much of a dent in those suicides, especially as long as drills are in the same house with the children, and high bridges, rope, and automobile exhaust remain readily available to depressed kids.

Certainly there are many gun control advocates who are sincere but honestly mistaken or misinformed. But when you see Al Gore claim that trigger locks and photo ID gun licenses will stop thugs like the one at the National Zoo from carrying guns and using them viciously, one has to conclude that Gore is either dishonest, or astonishingly stupid. Whichever he is, he is dancing in the blood of innocents, grotesquely trying to move his poll numbers, while distracting attention from the very serious problem of teen criminal violence.

and in case anyone's interested:

http://www.cdc.gov/nchs/datawh/statab/unpubd/mortabs/gmwki.htm

all deaths and their causes.

Many of those "Myths" have problems of their own. They don't provide enough actual data. Sure, New Your and California have high rates, but tie in numbers like urban density to see some interesting stats. And also, no numbers are posted about the incidents in Chicago and Washington DC. Did the number of crimes, or the percentage based off population?

Any stats game will never have a clear winner. This can be seen in the gun battles, in benchmarking wars with PCs, and many other things in general, because almost noone collects enough stats and finds good ways to tie them togther. Proof of this is that those myths try to shread the origional stats to pieces, while not providing decent stats of their own.

Yes guns have their problems. Yes, a gun is unsafe when used by an untrained person/family. And that same saying applies to many things. But the biggest problem is that guns are weapons plain and simple. There is no secondary use of guns beyond being used as a weapon, where as a car is a mode of transportation first, but can be used as a weapon.

If somehow we could elliminate every single gun on the planet at the same time, the world would be a bit safer. But any solution short of that will have problems. And I'm not saying that this is the answer either. Murders would still occur, crime would still exist. We need to address the root problems, clean up the urban areas, and start all teaching our kids better. Only then will things get better many years from now. Elliminating one problem will not help. And the "gun problem" falls under this.

hey, don't forget the sharp knives now.
Maybe they will have pointy sticks as the next thing to legislate against.

As a point about gun ownership in the UK.
I have one relative and several friends who are police officers in the UK.
ALL of whom have encountered guns, guns unholstered, used in crimes etc.
Guess what, all of these encounters involved criminals, no big surprise.
The point is, that no amount of lawmaking reduces the number of guns availble to criminals.
Last point, Ireland has the same gun laws as England, now try to explain to the IRA about handing guns over.... still waiting.... and yes, I do have friends who served in Northern Ireland. Gun laws did not save some of their friends.

End, (for me)
I love this board, who said techies where introverted?

"Any stats game will never have a clear winner"

True, it's too easy to lie with statistics, even if the statistics are true. Besides 72.6% of all statistics are made up.

"But the biggest problem is that guns are weapons plain and simple. There is no secondary use of guns beyond being used as a weapon."

Exactly. A gun is a weapon. And you nor anyone else has the right to tell me I can't arm myself. Passing gun control laws will only disarm law-abiding citizens who have no intention to commit a crime. Do you really think a criminal who goes and commits armed robbery every Friday night is gonna think, "Oh gee, guns are illegal now, I better stop holding up these Stop n' Robs. I guess I better give up my evil ways, throw away my gun, get a job, start voting, and become a productive citizen."??? No, he's gonna start laughing and think, "Ha, now it'll be even easier to commit my weekly robberies."

"If somehow we could elliminate every single gun on the planet at the same time, the world would be a bit safer. "

Perhaps. But that won't happen, so you can't lopside the equilibrium by taking weapons away from the good people, while anyone who wanted to illegally get one, could. And what about the woman who keeps a gun in her purse late at night? Would she be safer without it? Criminals use guns offensively. So you gotta use one defensively, or you'll get shot.

"And I'm not saying that this is the answer either. Murders would still occur, crime would still exist. We need to address the root problems, clean up the urban areas, and start all teaching our kids better. Only then will things get better many years from now. "

Exactly. Guns are not the cause of any of the evil that goes on in the world. When someone shoots themselves in the head you don't think, "Oh must've been a really depressed gun" or when someone gets murdered you don't think, "That must've been one angry gun." Face it, people are the cause of their own actions.

The trouble with guns stems from the fact that 1) only a portion of the population is armed and 2) only a portion of the armed population can be trusted.

There are two solutions, train and arm everyone or take away arms from everyone.

What if every single person on the planet were allowed to carry a concealed firearm, and was required to be fully trained on the proper use of such a weapon. You could argue that the world would be much safer as well. Consider the futility of hijacking a plane or robbing a bank when every citizen can fight back. There are two polar opposites here. If nobody has a gun, and if everyone has a gun.

Calvin

How many children below the age of 19?

Calvin

Your statistics are pretty convincing. Your link points to about 10,000 pages of evidence so I didn't actually read them to see if your stats are true. If they are they're pretty surprising to me.

Calvin

There are two solutions, train and arm everyone or take away arms from everyone.

True enough, but neither end is ever going to occur.

Although, arming everyone might just help evolution act a bit faster on the human race...

"There are two solutions, train and arm everyone or take away arms from everyone"

I say neither. Give people the choice.