

From the Radio Free Michigan archives



ftp://141.209.3.26/pub/patriot



If you have any other files you'd like to contribute, e-mail them to

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------------------------------------------------



     Probably one of the most well articulated articles on the

pro-gun side of the gun control issue was written by David B.

Kopel, a former District Attorney in Manhattan, now living in

Colorado. The article is entitled "CATO Institute Policy Analysis

No. 109" and is presented in the next 17 messages. Yes, it is a

bit long but I believe that this is an article that pro-gun

advocates should have available to them.



     In the unlikely event that you should fail to receive one of

the seventeen parts to this message, you may log onto the Combat

Arms BBS at no charge and capture it from one of the bulletins.

The BBS phone number is (415) 538-6544. Again, you need only call

that number if you fail to get all 17 parts of this excellent

work. Thank you.

 



-- Charles Butler Has Additional Comments --



    These posts have factual information on the discussion on

gun control that we have been having.  It includes info on

Bob's 'collective right', Rich's 'armed citizen vs criminal',

the militia issue, and others we haven't discussed such as

discrimination, feminism, and effects on civil liberties.

Hopefully, everyone will find it as informative as I did.

The only change I have made is to add a 0 in titles to

provide for a better subject sort.



             CATO Institute Policy Analysis No. 109

                          July 11, 1988



         TRUST THE PEOPLE: THE CASE AGAINST GUN CONTROL



                               by



                         David B. Kopel







          Men by their constitutions are naturally

          divided into two parties: 1) Those who fear

          and distrust the people . . . . 2) Those who

          identify themselves with the people, have

          confidence in them, cherish and consider them

          as the most honest and safe . . . depository

          of the public interest.



          Thomas Jefferson





     Few public policy debates have been as dominated by emotion

and misinformation as the one on gun control. Perhaps this debate

is so highly charged because it involves such fundamental issue.

The calls for more gun restrictions or for bans on some or all

guns are calls for significant change in our social and

constitutional systems.



     Gun control is based on the faulty notion that ordinary

American citizens are too clumsy and ill-tempered to be trusted

with weapons. Only through the blatant abrogation of explicit

constitutional rights is gun control even possible. It must be

enforced with such violations of individual rights as intrusive

search and seizure. It most severely victimizes those who most

need weapons for self-defense, such as blacks and women.



     The various gun control proposals on today's agenda--

including licensing, waiting periods, and bans on so-called

Saturday night specials--are of little, if any, value as crime-

fighting measures. Banning guns to reduce crime makes as much

sense as banning alcohol to reduce drunk driving. Indeed,

persuasive evidence shows that civilian gun ownership can be a

powerful deterrent to crime.



     The gun control debate poses the basic question: Who is more

trustworthy, the government or the people?



                            ________



     David B. Kopel, formerly an assistant district attorney

     in Manhattan, is an attorney in Colorado.



                          -=-=-=-=-=-=-



                         GUNS AND CRIME



GUNS AS A CAUSE OF CRIME



     Gun control advocates--those who favor additional legal

restrictions on the availability of guns or who want to outlaw

certain types of guns--argue that the more guns there are, the

more crime there will be. As a Detroit narcotics officer put it,

"Drugs are X; the number of guns in our society is Y; the number

of kids in possession of drugs is Z. X plus Y plus Z equals an

increase in murders." But there is no simple statistical

correlation between gun ownership and homicide or other violent

crimes. In the first 30 years of this century, U.S. per capita

handgun ownership remained stable, but the homicide rate rose

tenfold. Subsequently, between 1937 and 1963, handgun ownership

rose by 250 percent, but the homicide rate fell by 35.7 percent.



     Switzerland, through its militia system, distributes both

pistols and fully automatic assault rifles to all adult males and

requires them to store their weapons at home. Further, civilian

long-gun purchases are essentially unregulated, and handguns are

available to any adult without a criminal record or mental

defect. Nevertheless, Switzerland suffers far less crime per

capita than the United States and almost no gun crime.



     Allowing for important differences between Switzerland and

the United States, it seems clear that there is no direct link

between the level of citizen gun ownership and the level of gun

misuse. Instead of simplistically assuming that the fewer guns

there are, the safer society will be, one should analyze the

particular costs and benefits of gun ownership and gun control

and consider which groups gain and lose from particular policies.



GUNS AS A TOOL AGAINST CRIME



     Several years ago the National Institute of Justice offered

a grant to the former president of the American Sociological

Association to survey the field of research on gun control. Peter

Rossi began his work convinced of the need for strict national

gun control. After looking at the data, however, Rossi and his

University of Massachusetts colleagues James Wright and Kathleen

Daly concluded that there was no convincing proof that gun

control curbs crime. A follow-up study by Wright and Rossi of

serious felons in American prisons provided further evidence that

gun control would not impede determined criminals.



     It also indicated that civilian gun ownership does deter

some crime. Three-fifths of the prisoners studied said that a

criminal would not attack a potential victim who was known to be

armed. Two-fifths of them had decided not to commit a crime

because they thought the victim might have a gun. Criminals in

states with higher civilian gun ownership rates worried the most

about armed victims.



     Real-world experiences validate the sociologists' findings.

In 1966 the police in Orlando, Florida, responded to a rape

epidemic by embarking on a highly publicized program to train

2,500 women in firearm use. The next year rape fell by 88 percent

in Orlando (the only major city to experience a decrease that

year); burglary fell by 25 percent. Not one of the 2,500 women

actually ended up firing her weapon; the deterrent effect of the

publicity sufficed. Five years later Orlando's rape rate was

still 13 percent below the pre-program level, whereas the

surrounding standard metropolitan area had suffered a 308 percent

increase. During a 1974 police strike in Albuquerque armed

citizens patrolled their neighborhoods and shop owners publicly

armed themselves; felonies dropped significantly. In March 1982

Kennesaw, Georgia, enacted a law requiring householders to keep a

gun at home; house burglaries fell from 65 per year to 26, and to

11 the following year. Similar publicized training programs for

gun-toting merchants sharply reduced robberies in stores in

Highland Park, Michigan, and in New Orleans; a grocers

organization's gun clinics produced the same result in Detroit.



     Gun control advocates note that only 2 burglars in 1,000 are

driven off by armed homeowners. However, since a huge

preponderance of burglaries take place when no one is home, the

statistical citation is misleading. Several criminologists

attribute the prevalence of daytime burglary to burglars' fear of

confronting an armed occupant. Indeed, a burglar's chance of

being sent to jail is about the same as his chance of being shot

by a victim if the burglar breaks into an occupied residence (1

to 2 percent in each case).





CAN GUN LAWS BE ENFORCED?



     As Stanford law professor John Kaplan has observed, "When

guns are outlawed, all those who have guns will be outlaws."

Kaplan argued that when a law criminalizes behavior that its

practitioners do not believe improper, the new outlaws lose

respect for society and the law. Kaplan found the problem

especially severe in situations where the numbers of outlaws are

very high, as in the case of alcohol, marijuana, or gun

prohibition.



     Even simple registration laws meet with massive resistance.

In Illinois, for example, a 1977 study showed that compliance

with handgun registration was only about 25 percent. A 1979

survey of Illinois gun owners indicated that 73 percent would not

comply with a gun prohibition. It is evident that New York City's

almost complete prohibition is not voluntarily obeyed; estimates

of the number of illegal handguns in the city range from one

million to two million.



     With more widespread American gun control, the number of new

outlaws would certainly be huge. Prohibition would label as

criminal the millions of otherwise law-abiding citizens who

believe they must possess the means to defend themselves,

regardless of what legislation dictates.



     In addition, strict enforcement of gun prohibition--like our

current marijuana prohibition and our past alcohol prohibition--

would divert enormous police and judicial resources to ferreting

out and prosecuting the commission of private, consensual

possessory offenses. The diversion of resources to the

prosecution of such offenses would mean fewer resources available

to fight other crime.



     Assume half of all current handgun owners would disobey a

prohibition and that 10 percent of them would be caught. Since

the cost of arresting someone for a serious offense is well over

$2,000, the total cost in arrests alone would amount to $5

billion a year. Assuming that the defendants plea-bargained at

the normal rate (an unlikely assumption, since juries would be

more sympathetic to such defendants than to most other

criminals), the cost of prosecution and trial would be at least

$4.5 billion a year. Putting each of the convicted defendants in

jail for a three-day term would cost over $660 million in one-

time prison construction costs, and over $200 million in annual

maintenance, and would require a 10 percent increase in national

prison capacity. Given that the entire American criminal justice

system has a total annual budget of only $45 billion, it is clear

that effective enforcement of a handgun prohibition would simply

be impossible.





DO GUN LAWS DISARM CRIMINALS?



     Although gun control advocates devote much attention to the

alleged evils of guns and gun owners, they devote little

attention to the particulars of devising a workable, enforceable

law. Disarming criminals would be nearly impossible. There are

between 100 and 140 million guns in the United States, a third of

them handguns. The ratio of people who commit handgun crimes each

year to handguns is 1:400, that of handgun homicides to handguns

is 1:3,600. Because the ratio of handguns to handgun criminals is

so high, the criminal supply would continue with barely an

interruption. Even if 90 percent of American handguns

disappeared, there would still be 40 left for every handgun

criminal. In no state in the union can people with recent violent

felony convictions purchase firearms. Yet the National Institute

of Justice survey of prisoners, many of whom were repeat

offenders, showed that 90 percent were able to obtain their last

firearm within a few days. Most obtained it within a few hours.

Three-quarters of the men agreed that they would have "no

trouble" or "only a little trouble" obtaining a gun upon release,

despite the legal barriers to such a purchase.



     Even if the entire American gun stock magically vanished,

resupply for criminals would be easy. If small handguns were

imported in the same physical volume as marijuana, 20 million

would enter the country annually. (Current legal demand for new

handguns is about 2.5 million a year). Bootleg gun manufacture

requires no more than the tools that most Americans have in their

garages. A zip gun can be made from tubing, tape, a pin, a key,

whittle wood, and rubber bands. In fact, using wood fires and

tools inferior to those in the Sears & Roebuck catalogue,

Pakistani and Afghan peasants have been making firearms capable

of firing the Russian AK-47 cartridge. Bootleg ammunition is no

harder to make than bootleg liquor. Although modern smokeless

gunpowder is too complex for backyard production, conventional

black powder is simple to manufacture.



     Apparently, illegal gun production is already common. A 1986

federal government study found that one-fifth of the guns seized

by the police in Washington, D.C., were homemade. Of course,

homemade guns cannot win target-shooting contests, but they

suffice for robbery purposes. Furthermore, the price of bootleg

guns may even be lower than the price of the quality guns

available now (just as, in prohibition days, bootleg gin often

cost less than legal alcohol had).



     Most police officers concur that gun control laws are

ineffective. A 1986 questionnaire sent to every major police

official in the country produced the following results: 97

percent believed that a firearms ownership ban would not reduce

crime or keep criminals from using guns; 89 percent believed that

gun control laws such as those in Chicago, Washington, D.C., and

New York City had no effect on criminals; and 90 percent believed

that if firearms ownership was banned, ordinary citizens would be

more likely to be targets of armed violence.





                  GUNS AND THE ORDINARY CITIZEN



     Some advocates of gun prohibition concede that it will not

disarm criminals, but nevertheless they favor it in the belief

that disarming ordinary citizens would in itself be good. Their

belief seems to rely heavily on newspaper accounts of suicidal or

outlandishly careless gun owners shooting themselves or loved

ones. Such advocates can reel off newspaper stories of children

or adults killing themselves in foolish gun accidents (one

headline: "2 Year-old Boy Shoots Friend, 5") or shooting each

other in moments of temporary frenzy.



     In using argument by anecdote, the advocates are aided by

the media, which sensationalize violence. The sensationalism and

selectivity of the press lead readers to false conclusions. One

poll showed that people believe homicide takes more lives

annually than diabetes, stomach cancer, or stroke; in fact,

strokes alone take 10 times as many lives as homicides.



     Even in the war of anecdotes, however, it is not at all

clear that the gun control advocates have the advantage. Every

month the National Rifle Association's magazines feature a

section called "The Armed Citizen," which collects newspaper

clippings of citizens successfully defending themselves against

crime. For example, one story tells of a man in a wheelchair who

had been beaten and robbed during five break-ins in two months;

when the man heard someone prying at his window with a hatchet,

he fired a shotgun, wounding the burglar and driving him away.



     Anecdotes rarely settle policy disputes, though. A cool-

headed review of the facts debunks the scare tactics of the gun

control advocates.



     Some people with firsthand experience blame guns for

domestic homicides. Said the chief of the homicide section of the

Chicago Police Department, "There was a domestic fight. A gun was

there. And then somebody was dead. If you have described one, you

have described them all." Sociologist R. P. Narlock, though,

believes that "the mere availability of weapons lethal enough to

produce a human mortality bears no major relationship to the

frequency with which this act is completed."



     Guns do not turn ordinary citizens into murderers.

Significantly, fewer than one gun owner in 3,000 commits

homicide; and that one killer is far from a typical gun owner.

Studies have found two-thirds to four-fifths of homicide

offenders have prior arrest records, frequently for violent

felonies. A study by the pro-control Police Foundation of

domestic homicides in Kansas City in 1977 revealed that in 85

percent of homicides among family members, the police had been

called in before to break up violence. In half the cases, the

police had been called in five or more times. Thus, the average

person who kills a family member is not a non-violent solid

citizen who reaches for a weapon in a moment of temporary

insanity. Instead, he has a past record of illegal violence and

trouble with the law. Such people on the fringes of society are

unlikely to be affected by gun control laws. Indeed, since many

killers already had felony convictions, it was already illegal

for them to own a gun, but they found one anyway.



     Of all gun homicide victims, 81 percent are relatives or

acquaintances of the killer. As one might expect of the wives,

companions, and business associates (e.g. drug dealers and

loansharks) of violent felons, the victims are no paragons of

society. In a study of the victims of near-fatal domestic

shootings and stabbings, 78 percent of the victims volunteered a

history of hard-drug use, and 16 percent admitted using heroin

the day of the incident. Many of the handgun homicide victims

might well have been handgun killers, had the conflict turned out

a little differently.



     Finally, many of the domestic killings with guns involve

self-defense. In Detroit, for example, 75 percent of wives who

shot and killed their husbands were not prosecuted, because the

wives were legally defending themselves or their children against

murderous assault. When a gun is fired (or brandished) for legal

self-defense in a home, the criminal attacker is much more likely

to be a relative or acquaintance committing aggravated assault,

rather than a total stranger committing a burglary.



     The "domestic homicide" prong of the gun control argument

demands that we take guns away from law-abiding citizens to

reduce the incidence of felons committing crimes against each

other. Not only is such a policy impossible to implement, it is

morally flawed. To protect a woman who chooses to share a bed and

a rap sheet with a criminal, it is unfair to disarm law abiding

women and men and make them easier targets for the criminal's

rapes and robberies.



     It is often alleged that guns cause huge numbers of fatal

accidents, far outweighing the minimal gain from whatever anti-

crime effects they may have. For example, former U.S. Senate

candidate Mark Green (D-N.Y.) warned that "people with guns in

their homes for protection are six times more likely to die of

gunfire due to accidental discharge than those without them." Of

course, that makes sense; after all, people who own swimming

pools are more likely to die in drowning accidents.



     The actual number of people who die in home handgun

accidents, though, is quite small. Despite press headlines such

as "Pregnant Woman Killed by Own Gun While Making Bed," the

actual death toll is somewhat lower than implied by the press.

Each year roughly 7,000 people commit suicide with handguns and

300 or fewer people die in handgun accidents. People who want to

commit suicide can find many alternatives, and even pro-control

experts agree that gun control has little impact on the suicide

rate. Japan, for example, has strict gun control and a suicide

rate twice the U.S. level. Americans have a high rate of suicide

by shooting for the same reason that Norwegians have a high rate

of suicide by drowning; guns are an important symbol in one

culture, water in the other.



     If a U.S. gun prohibition was actually effective, it could

save the 300 or so handgun victims and 1,400 or so long-gun

accident victims each year. Even one death is too many, but guns

account for only 2 percent of accidental deaths annually.



     Guns are dangerous, but hardly as dangerous as gun control

advocates contend. Three times as many people are accidentally

killed by fire as by firearms. The number of people who die in

gun accidents is about one-third the number who die by drowning.

Although newspapers leave a contrary impression, bicycle

accidents kill many more children than do gun accidents. The

average motor vehicle is 12 times more likely to cause a death

than the average firearm. Further, people involved in gun

accidents are not typical gun owners but self-destructive

individuals who are also "disproportionately involved in other

accidents, violent crime and heavy drinking."



     Moreover, there is little correlation between the number of

guns and the accident rate. The per capita death rate from

firearms accidents has declined by a third in the last two

decades, while the firearms supply has risen over 300 percent. In

part this is because handguns have replaced many long guns as

home protection weapons, and handgun accidents are considerably

less likely to cause death than long-gun accidents. Handguns are

also more difficult for a toddler to accidentally discharge than

are long guns.



     The risks, therefore, of gun ownership by ordinary citizens

are quite low. Accidents can be avoided by buying a trigger lock

and not cleaning a gun while it is loaded. Unless the gun owner

is already a violent thug, he is very unlikely to kill a relative

in a moment of passion. If someone in the house is intent on

suicide, he will kill himself by whatever means are at hand.



     Gun control advocates like to cite a recent article in the

New England Journal of Medicine that argues that for every

intruder killed by a gun, 43 other people die as a result of

gunshot wounds incurred in the home. (Again, most of them are

suicides; many of the rest are assaultive family members killed

in legitimate self-defense.) However, counting the number of

criminal deaths is a bizarre method of measuring anti-crime

utility; no one evaluates police efficacy by tallying the number

of criminals killed. Defensive use of a gun is far more likely to

involve scaring away an attacker by brandishing the gun, or by

firing it without causing death. Even if the numbers of criminal

deaths were the proper measure of anti-crime efficacy, citizens

acting with full legal justification kill at least 30 percent

more criminals than do the police.



     On the whole, citizens are more successful gun users than

are the police. When police shoot, they are 5.5 times more likely

to hit an innocent person than are civilian shooters. Moreover,

civilians use guns effectively against criminals. If a robbery

victim does not defend himself, the robbery will succeed 88

percent of the time, and the victim will be injured 25 percent of

the time. If the victim resists with a gun, the robbery "success"

rate falls to 30 percent, and the victim injury rate falls to 17

percent. No other response to a robbery--from using a knife, to

shouting for help, to fleeing--produces such a low rate of victim

injury and robbery success. In short, virtually all Americans who

use guns do so responsibly and effectively, notwithstanding the

anxieties of gun control advocates.





                       ENFORCING GUN BANS



     Apart from the intrinsic merit (or demerit) of banning or

restricting gun possession, the mechanics of enforcement must

also be considered. Illegal gun ownership is by definition a

possessory offense, like possession of marijuana or bootleg

alcohol. The impossibility of effective enforcement, plus the

civil liberties invasions that necessarily result, are powerful

arguments against gun control.





SEARCH AND SEIZURE



     No civil libertarian needs to be told how the

criminalization of liquor and drugs has led the police into

search and seizure violations. Consensual possessory offenses

cannot be contained any other way. Search-and-seizure violations

are the inevitable result of the criminalization of gun

possession. As Judge David Shields of Chicago's special firearms

court observed:



          "Constitutional search and seizure issues are

          probably more regularly argued in this court

          than anywhere in America."



     The problem has existed for a long time. In 1933, for

example, long before the Warren Court expanded the rights of

suspects, one quarter of all weapons arrests in Detroit were

dismissed because of illegal searches. According to the American

Civil Liberties Union, the St. Louis police have conducted over

25,000 illegal searches under the theory that any black driving a

late-model car must have a handgun.



     The frequency of illegal searches should not be surprising.

The police are ordered to get handguns off the streets, and they

attempt to do their job. It is not their fault that they are told

to enforce a law whose enforcement is impossible within

constitutional limits. Small wonder that the Chicago Police

Department gives an officer a favorable notation in his record

for confiscating a gun, even as the result of an illegal search.

One cannot comply with the Fourth Amendment--which requires that

searches be based upon probable cause--and also effectively

enforce a gun prohibition. Former D.C. Court of Appeals judge

Malcolm Wilkey thus bemoaned the fact that the exclusionary rule,

which bars courtroom use of illegally seized evidence, "has made

unenforceable the gun control laws we now have and will make

ineffective any stricter controls which may be devised." Judge

Abner Mikva, usually on the opposite side of the conservative

Wilkey, joined him in identifying the abolition of the

exclusionary rule as the only way to enforce gun control.



     Abolishing the exclusionary rule is not the only proposal

designed to facilitate searches for illegal guns. Harvard

professor James Q. Wilson, the Police Foundation, and other

commentators propose widespread street use of hand-held

magnetometers and walk-through metal detectors to find illegal

guns. The city attorney of Berkeley, California, has advocated

setting up "weapons checkpoints" (similar to sobriety

checkpoints), where the police would search for weapons all cars

passing through dangerous neighborhoods. School administrators in

New Jersey have begun searching student lockers and purses for

guns and drugs; Bridgeport, Connecticut, is considering a similar

strategy. Detroit temporarily abandoned school searches after a

female student who had passed through a metal detector was given

a manual pat-down by a male security officer, but the city has

resumed the program. New York City is also implementing metal

detectors.



     Searching a teenager's purse, or making her walk through a

metal detector several times a day, is hardly likely to instill

much faith in the importance of civil liberties. Indeed, students

conditioned to searches without probable cause in high school are

unlikely to resist such searches when they become adults.

Additionally, it is unjust for the state to compel a student to

attend school, fail to provide a safe environment at school or on

the way to school, and then prohibit the student from protecting

himself or herself.



     Perhaps the most harmful effect of the metal detectors is

their debilitating message that a community must rely on paid

security guards and their hardware in order to be secure. It does

not take much imagination to figure out how to pass a weapon past

a security guard, with trickery or bribery. Once past the guard,

weapons could simply be stored at school. Instead of relying on

technology at the door, the better solution would be to mobilize

students inside the school. Volunteer student patrols would

change the balance of power in the schoolyard, ending the reign

of terror of outside intruders and gangs. Further, concerted

student action teaches the best lessons of democracy and

community action.



     The majority of people possessing illegal weapons during a

gun prohibition would never carry them on the streets and would

never be caught even by omnipresent metal detectors. Accordingly,

a third of the people who favor a ban on private handguns want

the ban enforced with house-to-house searches. Eroding the Second

Amendment guarantees erosion of the Fourth Amendment.



     Those who propose abolishing the exclusionary rule and

narrowing the Fourth Amendment apparently trust the street

intuition of the police to sort out the true criminals so that

ordinary citizens would not be subject to unjustified intrusions.

However, one-fourth of the guns seized by the police are not

associated with any criminal activity. Our constitutional scheme

explicitly rejects the notion that the police may be allowed to

search at will.





OTHER CIVIL LIBERTIES PROBLEMS



     Although gun control advocates trust the police to know whom

to arrest, the experience of gun control leads one to doubt

police judgment. A Pennsylvania resident was visiting Brooklyn,

New York, to help repair a local church when he spotted a man

looting his truck. The Pennsylvania man fired a warning shot into

the air with his legally registered Pennsylvania gun, scaring off

the thief. The police arrived too late to catch the thief but

arrested the Pennsylvania man for not acquiring a special permit

to bring his gun into New York City. In California a police chief

went to a gun show and read to a machine gun dealer the

revocation of his license; the dealer was immediately arrested

for possessing unlicensed machine guns.



     The Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms has been

particularly outrageous in its prosecutions. Sometimes the BATF's

zeal to inflate its seizure count turns its agents into Keystone

Kops. One year in Iowa, for example, the BATF hauled away an

unregistered cannon from a public war memorial; in California it

pried inoperable machine guns out of a museum's display.



     In the early 1970s changes in the price of sugar made

moonshining unprofitable. To justify its budget, the BATF had to

find a new set of defendants. Small-scale gun dealers and

collectors served perfectly. Often the bureau's tactics against

them are petty and mean. After a defendant's acquittal, for

example, agents may refuse to return his seized gun collection,

even under court order. Valuable museum-quality antique arms may

be damaged when in BATF custody. Part of the explanation for the

refusal to return weapons after an acquittal may lie in BATF

field offices using gun seizures to build their own arsenals.



     The BATF's disregard for fair play harms more than just gun

owners. BATF searches of gun dealers need not be based on

probable cause, or any cause at all. The 1972 Supreme Court

decision allowing these searches, United States v. Biswell, has

since become a watershed in the weakening of the Constitution's

probable cause requirement.



     Lack of criminal intent does not shield a citizen from the

BATF. In United States v. Thomas, the defendant found a 16-inch-

long gun while horseback riding. Taking it to be an antique

pistol, he pawned it. But it turned out to be short-barreled

rifle, which should have been registered before selling. Although

the prosecutor conceded that Thomas lacked criminal intent, he

was convicted of a felony anyway. The Supreme Court's decision in

United States v. Freed declared that criminal intent was not

necessary for a conviction of violation of the Gun Control Act of

1968.



     The strict liability principle has since spread to other

areas and contributed to the erosion of the mens rea (guilty

mind) requirement of criminal culpability. U.S. law prohibits the

possession of unregistered fully automatic weapons (one

continuous trigger squeeze causes repeat fire). Semiautomatic

weapons (which eject the spent shell and load the next cartridge,

but require another trigger squeeze to fire) are legal. If the

sear (the catch that holds the hammer at cock) on a semiautomatic

rifle wears out, the rifle may malfunction and repeat fire.

Accordingly, the BATF recently arrested and prosecuted a small

town Tennessee police chief for possession of an automatic weapon

(actually a semiautomatic with a worn-out sear), even though the

BATF conceded that the police chief had not deliberately altered

the weapon. In March and April of 1988, BATF pressed similar

charges for a worn-out sear against a Pennsylvania state police

sergeant. After a 12-day trial, the federal district judge

directed a verdict of not guilty and called the prosecution "a

severe miscarriage of justice."



     The Police Foundation has proposed that law enforcement

agencies use informers to ferret out illegal gun sales and model

their tactics on methods of drug law enforcement. Taking this

advice to heart, the BATF relies heavily on paid informants and

on entrapment--techniques originated during alcohol prohibition,

developed in modern drug enforcement, and honed to a chilling

perfection in gun control. So that BATF agents can fulfill their

quotas, they concentrate on harassing collectors and their

valuable rifle collections. Undercover agents may entice or

pressure a private gun collector into making a few legal sales

from his personal collection. Once he has made four sales, over a

long period of time, he is arrested and charged with being

"engaged in the business" of gun sales without a license.



     To the consternation of many local police forces, the BATF

is often unwilling to assist in cases involving genuine criminal

activity. Police officials around the nation have complained

about BATF's refusing to prosecute serious gun law violations.



      In 1982 the Senate Subcommittee on the Constitution

investigated the BATF and concluded that the agency had habitual

engaged in



          conduct which borders on the criminal. . . .

          [E]nforcement tactics made possible by

          current firearms laws are constitutionally,

          legally and practically reprehensible. . . .

          [A]pproximately 75 percent of BATF gun

          prosecutions were aimed at ordinary citizens

          who had neither criminal intent nor

          knowledge, but were enticed by agents into

          unknowing technical violations.



     Although public pressure in recent years has made the BATF a

somewhat less lawless agency, it would be a mistake to conclude

that the organization has been permanently reformed.



     One need not like guns to understand that gun control laws

pose a threat to civil liberties. Explained Aryeh Neier, former

director of the American Civil Liberties Union:



          I want the state to take away people's guns.

          But I don't want the state to use methods

          against gun owners that I deplore when used

          against naughty children, sexual minorities,

          drug users, and unsightly drinkers. Since

          such reprehensible police practices are

          probably needed to make anti-gun laws

          effective, my proposal to ban all guns should

          probably be marked a failure before it is

          even tried.





                 GUN CONTROL AND SOCIAL CONTROL



     Gun control cannot coexist with the Fourth Amendment

(probable cause for search and seizure) and has a deleterious

effect on the Fifth Amendment (due process of law). Gun control

is also suspect under the equal protection clause of the

Fourteenth Amendment, for it harms most those groups that have

traditionally been victimized by society's inequities.





RACIAL DISCRIMINATION



     Throughout America's history, white supremacists have

insisted on the importance of prohibiting arms to blacks. In 1640

Virginia's first recorded legislation about blacks barred them

from owning guns. Fear of slave revolts led other Southern

colonies to enact similar laws. The laws preventing blacks from

bearing arms (as well as drinking liquor or traveling) were

enforced by what one historian called a "system of special and

general searches and night patrols of the posse comitatus." In

the 1857 Dred Scott decision, Chief Justice Roger B. Taney

announced that blacks were not citizens; if they were, he warned,

there would be no legal way to deny them firearms.



     Immediately after the Civil War, President Andrew Johnson

permitted several Southern states to return to the Union without

guaranteeing equality to blacks. These states enacted "black

codes," which were designed to keep the ex-slaves in de facto

slavery and submission. For example, in 1865 Mississippi forbade

freedmen to rent farmland, requiring instead that they work under

unbreakable labor contracts, or be sent to jail. White terrorist

organizations attacked freedmen who stepped out of line, and the

black codes ensured that the freedmen could not fight back.

Blacks were, in the words of The Special Report of the Anti-

Slavery Conference of 1867, "forbidden to own or bear firearms

and thus . . . rendered defenseless against assaults" by whites.

In response to the black codes, the Republican Congress passed

the Fourteenth Amendment, guaranteeing to all citizens, freedmen

included, their national constitutional rights, especially the

right to bear arms. Said Rep. Sidney Clarke of Kansas, during the

debate on the Fourteenth Amendment, "I find in the Constitution

of the United States an article which declared that 'the right of

the people to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed.' For

myself, I shall insist that the reconstructed rebels of

Mississippi respect the Constitution in their local laws."



     White supremacy eventually prevailed, though, and the South

became the first region of the United States to institute gun

control. During the Jim Crow era around 1900, when racial

oppression was at its peak, several states enacted handgun

registration and licensing laws. As one Florida judge explained,

the laws were "passed for the purpose of disarming the negro

laborers . . . [and] never intended to be applied to the white

population."



     For several years in the 1970s the American Civil Liberties

Union lobbied for stricter gun control to forestall white

terrorist attacks on minorities. (The ACLU currently does not

work for or against gun control.) Concern over racist shooting

was certainly justified, for during the civil rights era in the

1960s, white supremacist tactics were just as violent as they had

been during Reconstruction. Over 100 civil rights workers were

murdered during that era, and the Department of Justice refused

to intervene to prosecute the Klan or to protect civil rights

workers. Help from the local police was out of the question; Klan

dues were sometimes collected at the local station.



     Blacks and civil rights workers armed for self-defense. John

Salter, a professor at Tougaloo College and NAACP leader during

the early 1960s, wrote "No one knows what kind of massive racist

retaliation would have been directed against grass-roots black

people had the black community not had a healthy measure of

firearms within it." Salter personally had to defend his home and

family several times against attacks by night riders. When Salter

fired back, the night riders, cowards that they were, fled. The

unburned Ku Klux Klan cross in the Smithsonian Institution was

donated by a civil rights worker whose shotgun blast drove

Klansmen away from her driveway.



     Civil rights professionals and the black community generally

viewed nonviolence as a useful tactic for certain situations, not

as a moral injunction to let oneself be murdered on a deserted

road in the middle of the night. Based in local churches, the

Deacons for Defense and Justice set up armed patrol car systems

in cities such as Bogalusa and Jonesboro, Louisiana, and

completely succeeded in deterring Klan and other attacks on civil

rights workers and black residents. Sixty chapters of the Deacons

were formed throughout the South. Of the more than 100 civil

rights workers martyred in the 1960s, almost none were armed.



     Of course civil rights activists were not the only people

who needed to defend themselves against racist violence. Francis

Griffin, a clergyman in Farmville, Virginia, related, "Our last

trouble came when some Klansmen tried to 'get' a black motorist

who had hit a white child. They met blacks with guns, and that

put a stop to that." Moreover, the tendency of Southern blacks to

arm themselves not only deterred white racist violence, it

reduced the incidence of robberies of blacks by drug addicts.



     Lest anyone think that blacks' need to defend themselves

against racist mobs--whom the police cannot or will not control--

is limited to the old South, New York City provides a few

counterexamples. In 1966 a mob burned the headquarters of the

Marxist W. E. B. Du Bois Club while New York City police looked

on. When a club member pulled his pistol to hold off the mob

while he fled from the burning building, the police arrested him

for illegal gun possession. No one in the mob was arrested for

anything.



     In 1976 Ormistan Spencer, a black, moved into the white

neighborhood of Rosedale, Queens. Crowds dumped garbage on his

lawn, his children were abused, and a pipe bomb was thrown

through his window. When he responded to a menacing crowd by

brandishing a gun, the police confiscated the gun and filed

charges against him. The recent mob attack on black pedestrians

in Howard Beach, New York, would not have resulted in the death

of one of the victims if the black victims had been carrying a

gun with which to frighten off or resist the mob.



     In some ways, social conditions have not changed much since

the days when Michigan enacted its handgun controls after

Clarence Darrow's celebrated defense of Ossian Sweet in 1925.

Sweet, a black, had moved into an all-white neighborhood; the

Detroit police failed to restrain a mob threatening his house.

Sweet and his family fired in self-defense, killing one of the

mob. He was charged with murder and acquitted after a lengthy

trial.



     Racially motivated violence is not the only threat to which

blacks are more vulnerable than whites. A black in America has at

least a 40 percent greater chance of being burgled and a 100

percent greater chance of being robbed than a white. Simply put,

blacks need to use deadly force in self-defense far more often

than whites. In California, in 1981, blacks committed 48 percent

of justifiable homicides, whites only 22 percent.



     In addition, although blacks are more exposed to crime, they

are given less protection by the police. In Brooklyn, New York,

for example, 911 callers have allegedly been asked if they are

black or white. Wrote the late Senator Frank Church:



          In the inner cities, where the police cannot

          offer adequate protection, the people will

          provide their own. They will keep handguns at

          home for self-defense, regardless of the

          prohibitions that relatively safe and smug

          inhabitants of the surrounding suburbs would

          impose upon them.



     Judge David Shields of the special firearms court in Chicago

came to the court as an advocate of national handgun prohibition.

Most of the defendants he saw, however, were people with no

criminal record who carried guns because they had been robbed or

raped because the police had arrived too late to protect them.

Explaining why he never sent those defendants to jail, and indeed

ordered their guns returned, the judge wrote that most people:



          would not go into ghetto areas at all except

          in broad daylight under the most optimum

          conditions--surely not at night, alone or on

          foot. But some people have no choice. To live

          or work or have some need to be on this

          "frontier" imposes a fear which is tempered

          by possession of a gun.



     Gun control laws are discriminatorily enforced against

blacks, even more so than other laws. In Chicago the black-to-

white ratio of weapons arrests one year was 7:1 (prostitution,

another favorite for discriminatory enforcement, was the only

other crime to have such a high race ratio). Black litigants have

gone to federal court in Maryland and won permits after proving

that a local police department almost never issues permits to

blacks. General searches for guns can be a nightmare-come-true

for blacks. In 1968, for example, rifles were stolen from a

National Guard armory in New Jersey; the guard ransacked 45 homes

of blacks in warrantless searches for weapons, found none, and

left the houses in shambles.





SEXUAL DISCRIMINATION



     Many of the same arguments about gun possession that apply

to blacks also apply to women. Radical feminist Nikki Craft

worked with an anti-rape group in Dallas. After one horror story

too many, she founded WASP--Women Armed for Self Protection.

Craft explained that she "was opposed to guns, so this was a huge

leap . . . . I was tired of being afraid to open a window at

night for fresh air, and sick of feeling safer when there was a

man in bed with me." One of her posters read, "Men and Women Were

Created Equal . . . And Smith & Wesson Makes Damn Sure It Stays

That Way." Her slogan echoed a gun manufacturer's motto from the

19th century:



               Be not afraid of any man,

               No matter what his size;

               When danger threatens, call on me

               And I will equalize.



     If guns somehow vanished, rapists would suffer little. A

gun-armed rapist succeeds 67 percent of the time, a knife-armed

rapist 51 percent. Only 7 percent of rapists even use guns. Thus,

a fully effective gun ban would disarm only a small fraction of

rapists, and even those rapists could use knives almost as

effectively. In fact, a complete gun ban would make rape all the

easier, with guaranteed unarmed victims. As discussed above, one

of the most effective self-defense programs in modern U.S.

history trained 2,500 Orlando women in firearms use and produced

an 88 percent drop in the rape rate.



     One objection to women arming themselves for self-defense is

that the rapist will take away the gun and use it against the

victim. This argument (like most other arguments about why women

should not resist rape) is based on stereotypes, and proponents

of the argument seem unable to cite any real world examples.

Instead of assuming that all women are incapable of using a

weapon effectively, it would be more appropriate to leave the

decision up to individual women. Certainly the cases of women,

even grandmothers, using firearms to stop rapists are legion. If

a woman is going to resist, she is far better off with a gun than

with her bare hands, Mace, or a knife. Mace fires a pinpoint

stream, not a spray, and the challenge of using it to score a

bull's-eye right on a rapist's cornea would daunt even Annie

Oakley. And it is more difficult to fight a bigger person with

one's hands or with a knife than with a handgun--especially a

small, light handgun that can be deployed quickly, and which has

a barrel that is too short for the attacker to grab.





     THE SECOND AMENDMENT AND THE SOURCES OF POLITICAL POWER



     Regardless of the utility or disutility of guns, laws about

them are circumscribed by the Constitution. The Second Amendment

means what it says: "A well-regulated Militia, being necessary to

the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and

bear Arms, shall not be infringed." If we are to live by the law,

our first step must be to obey the Constitution.





ATTITUDES OF THE FOUNDING FATHERS TOWARD GUNS



     The leaders of the American Revolution and the early

republic were enthusiastic proponents of guns and widespread gun

ownership. The Founding Fathers were unanimous about the

importance of an armed citizenry able to overthrow a despotic

government. Virtually all the political philosophers whose ideas

were known to the Founders--such as Plato, Aristotle, Cicero,

Machiavelli, Montesquieu, Beccaria, Locke, and Sidney--agreed

that a republic could not long endure without an armed citizenry.

Said Patrick Henry, "Guard with jealous attention the public

liberty. Suspect every one who approaches that jewel.

Unfortunately, nothing will preserve it but downright force.

Whenever you give up that force, you are ruined. . . . The great

object is that every man be armed. . . . EverA	            2    L5/    -1    	                                                                -1                           Y1    k2/    C-1                                                                        أ-1              A            t2    	Q4/    ʏ-1    		                                                                A2-1              $            0    	/    -1    
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	                                                                I2-1              $           _0    	/    -1    	                                                                K2-1              $            -0    	/    -1    	                                                                M2-1              $            rL0    	/    -1    (	                                                                O2-1              $            00    	/    -1    )	                                                                Q2-1              $     S       rL0    	/    -1    *	                                                                S2-1              $            rL0    	/    -1    +	                                                                U2-1              $     Y       rL0    	/    -1    ,	                                                                W2-1              $     F      0    	/    -1    -	                                                                Y2-1              $            0    	/    -1    .	                                                                [2-1              $     Y       Z.1    	/    -1    /	                                                                ]2-1              $           rL0    	/    -1    H	                                                                _2-1              $     1      c1    	/    -1    I	                                                                a2-1              $            0    	/    -1    K	                                                                c2-1              $     =      y0    	/    -1    L	                                                                e2-1              $           F0    	/    -1    M	                                                                g2-1              $            sL0    	/    -1    N	                                                                i2-1              $            0    	/    -1    O	                                                                k2-1              $            K0    	/    -1    h	                                                                m2-1              $            u0    	/    -1    i	                                                                o2-1              $     Q      sL0    	/    -1    j	                                                                q2-1              $            sL0    	/    -1    k	                                                                s2-1              $            i0    	/    -1    l	                                                                u2-1              $            ]0    	/    -1    m	                                                                w2-1              $     H       tL0    	/    -1    n	                                                                y2-1              $     Y       tL0    	/    -1    o	                                                                {2-1              $     I      )0    	/    -1    	                                                                }2-1              $           tL0    	/    -1    	                                                                2-1              $     v       tL0    	/    -1    	                                                                2-1              $     X       0    	/    -1    	                                                                2-1              $     D       tL0    	/    -1    	                                                                2-1              $            q0    	/    -1    	                                                                2-1              $           r1    	/    -1    	                                                                2-1              A            2    I0    -1    	                                                                ڣ-1                A            2    k1    k1    	                                                                \-1    U                6      '2    hM/    ؠ-1    	                                                                -1    U                
      2    hM/    ؠ-1    	                                                                -1    U                K      %'2    hM/    ؠ-1    0	                                                                -1    U                      92    hM/    ؠ-1    	                                                                -1    U                      E2    @K1    @K1    	                                                                -1    U                       /2    
Q/    ؠ-1    	                                                                -1    U                N      2    #Q/    ؠ-1    	                                                                -1    U                      2    k}/    ؠ-1    	                                                                -1    U                      E2    1    1    	                                                             
   -1  U           A            2    !	t1    /	t1    6	                                                                -1'  d           A            2    	1    Ϗ-1    7	                                                                -1|   e           A            2    b0    ԏ-1    	                                                                -1|   e           A            2    0    -1    	                                                                -1|   e           A            2    և0    -1    	                                                                e-1|   e           A            2    21    -1    	                                                                Z-1|   e           A            2    
1    -1    	                                                                W-1|   e           A            %2    RY /    ݏ-1    	                                                                -1%  d           A            2    32/    Ǐ-1    	                                                                -1                     
      lv,    lv,    e-1    P	                                                                -1%  d                       
1    
1    -1    S	                                                                -1|   e                       9
2    
1    -1    T	                                                                -1|   e                	       M1    
1    -1    U	                                                                -1|   e                       21    21    -1    V	                                                                -1|   e           t to keep and

bear arms; the freedom from unreasonable searches and seizures"

as part of the "full scope of liberty" guaranteed by the

Constitution.





MODERN UTILITY



     Some gun control advocates argue that the Second Amendment's

goal of an armed citizenry to resist foreign invasion and

domestic tyranny is no longer valid in light of advances in

military technology. Former attorney general Ramsey Clark

contended that "it is no longer realistic to think of an armed

citizenry as a meaningful protection."



     But during World War II, which was fought with essentially

the same types of ground combat weapons that exist today, armed

citizens were considered quite important. After Pearl Harbor the

unorganized militia was called into action. Nazi submarines were

constantly in action off the East Coast. On the West Coast, the

Japanese seized several Alaskan islands, and strategists wondered

if the Japanese might follow up on their dramatic victories in

the Pacific with an invasion of the Alaskan mainland, Hawaii, or

California. Hawaii's governor summoned armed citizens to man

checkpoints and patrol remote beach areas. Maryland's governor

called on "the Maryland Minute Men," consisting mainly of

"members of Rod and Gun Clubs, of Trap Shooting Clubs and similar

organizations," for "repelling invasion forays, parachute raids,

and sabotage uprisings," as well as for patrolling beaches, water

supplies, and railroads. Over 15,000 volunteers brought their own

weapons to duty. Gun owners in Virginia were also summoned into

home service. Americans everywhere armed themselves in case of

invasion. After the National Guard was federalized for overseas

duty, "the unorganized militia proved a successful substitute for

the National Guard," according to a Defense Department study.

Militiamen, providing their own guns, were trained in patrolling,

roadblock techniques, and guerilla warfare. The War Department

distributed a manual recommending that citizens keep "weapons

which a guerilla in civilian clothes can carry without attracting

attention. They must be easily portable and easily concealed.

First among these is the pistol." In Europe, lightly armed

civilian guerrillas were even more important; the U.S. government

supplied anti-Nazi partisans with a $1.75 analogue to the zip gun

(a very low quality handgun).



     Of course, ordinary citizens are not going to grab their

Saturday night specials and charge into oncoming columns of

tanks. Resistance to tyranny or invasion would be a guerrilla

war. In the early years of such a war, before guerrillas would be

strong enough to attack the occupying army head on, heavy weapons

would be a detriment, impeding the guerrillas' mobility. As a war

progresses, Mao Zedong explained, the guerrillas would use

ordinary firearms to capture better small arms and eventually

heavy equipment.



     The Afghan mujahedeen have been greatly helped by the new

Stinger antiaircraft missiles, but they had already fought the

Soviets to a draw using a locally made version of the outdated

Lee-Enfield rifle. One clear lesson of this century is that a

determined guerrilla army can wear down an occupying force until

the occupiers lose spirit and depart--just what happened in

Ireland in 1920 and Palestine in 1948. As one author put it:

"Anyone who claims that popular struggles are inevitably doomed

to defeat by the military technologies of our century must find

it literally incredible that France and the United States

suffered defeat in Vietnam . . . that Portugal was expelled from

Angola; and France from Algeria."



     If guns are truly useless in a revolution, it is hard to

explain why dictators as diverse as Ferdinand Marcos, Fidel

Castro, Idi Amin, and the Bulgarian communists have ordered

firearms confiscations upon taking power.



     Certainly the militia could not defend against

intercontinental ballistic missiles, but it could keep order at

home after a limited attack. In case of conventional war, the

militia could guard against foreign invasion after the army and

the National Guard were sent into overseas combat. Especially

given the absence of widespread military service, individual

Americans familiar with using their private weapons provide an

important defense resource. Canada already has an Eskimo militia

to protect its northern territories.



     The United States is virtually immune from foreign invasion,

but as the late vice president Hubert Humphrey explained,

domestic dictatorship will always be a threat: "The right of

citizens to bear arms is just one more guarantee against

arbitrary government, one more safeguard against the tyranny

which now appears remote in America, but which historically has

proved to be always possible."



     The most advanced technology in the world could not keep

track of guerrilla bands in the Rockies, the Appalachians, the

great swamps of the South, or Alaska. The difficulty of fighting

a protracted war against a determined popular guerrilla force is

enough to make even the most determined potential dictator think

twice.



     The Second Amendment debate goes to the very heart of the

role of citizens and their government. By retaining arms,

citizens retain the power claimed in the Declaration of

Independence to "alter or abolish" a despotic government. And

citizens retain the power to protect themselves from private

assault. Ramsey Clark asked the question, "What kind of society

depends on private action to defend life and property?" The

answer is a society that trusts its citizenry more than the

police and the army and knows that ultimate authority must remain

in the hands of the people.





                 PARTICULAR FORMS OF GUN CONTROL



     The foregoing discussion has focused on gun control in

general. Many people who are skeptical about a complete ban on

all guns nevertheless favor some sort of intermediate controls,

which would regulate but not ban guns or ban only certain types

of guns. While some of these proposals seem plausible in the

abstract, closer examination raises serious doubts about their

utility.





REGISTRATION



     Gun registration is essentially useless in crime detection.

Tracing the history of a recovered firearm generally leads to the

discovery that it was stolen from a legal owner and that its

subsequent pattern of ownership is unknown.



     Analogies are sometimes drawn between gun registration and

automobile registration. Indeed, a majority of the public seems

to favor gun registration not because a reduction in crime is

expected but because automobiles and guns are both intrinsically

dangerous objects that the government should keep track of. The

analogy, though, is flawed. Gun owners, unlike drivers, do not

need to leave private property and enter a public roadway. No one

has ever demanded that prospective drivers prove a unique need

for a car and offer compelling reasons why they cannot rely

solely on public transportation. No Department of Motor Vehicles

has ever adopted the policy of reducing to a minimum the number

of cars in private hands. Automobile registration is not

advocated or feared as a first step toward confiscation of all

automobiles. However, registration lists did facilitate gun

confiscation in Greece, Ireland, Jamaica, and Bermuda. The

Washington, D.C., city council considered (but did not enact) a

proposal to use registration lists to confiscate all shotguns and

handguns in the city. When reminded that the registration plan

had been enacted with the explicit promise to gun owners that it

would not be used for confiscation, the confiscation's sponsor

retorted, "Well, I never promised them anything!" The Evanston,

Illinois, police department also attempted to use state

registration lists to enforce a gun ban.



     Unlike automobiles, guns are specifically protected by the

Constitution, and it is improper to require that people

possessing constitutionally protected objects register themselves

with the government, especially when the benefits of registration

are so trivial. The Supreme Court has ruled that the First

Amendment prohibits the government from registering purchasers of

newspapers and magazines, even of foreign Communist propaganda.

The same principle should apply to the Second Amendment: the

tools of political dissent should be privately owned and

unregistered.





GUN LICENSING



     Although opinion polls indicate that most Americans favor

some form of gun licensing (for the same reasons they approve of

auto licensing), 69 percent of Americans oppose laws giving the

police power to decide who may or may not own a firearm. That is

exactly what licensing is. Permits tend to be granted not to

those who are most at risk but to those with whom the police get

along. In St. Louis, for example, permits have routinely been

denied to homosexuals, nonvoters, and wives who lack their

husbands' permission. Other police departments have denied

permits on the basis of race, sex, and political affiliation, or

by determining that hunting or target shooting is not an adequate

reason for owning a handgun.



     Class discrimination pervades the process. New York City

taxi drivers, who are more at risk of robbery than anyone else in

the city, are denied gun permits, since they carry less than

$2,000 in cash. (Of course, most taxi drivers carry weapons

anyway, and only rookie police officers arrest them for doing

so.) As the courts have ruled, ordinary citizens and storeowners

in the city may not receive so-called carry permits because they

have no greater need for protection than anyone else in the city.

Carry permits are apparently reserved for New Yorkers such as the

Rockefellers, John Lindsay, the publisher of the New York Times,

(all of them gun control advocates), and the husband of Dr. Joyce

Brothers. Other licensees include an aide to a city councilman

widely regarded as corrupt, several major slumlords, a Teamsters

Union boss who is a defendant in a major racketeering suit, and a

restaurateur identified with organized crime and alleged to

control important segments of the hauling industry--hardly proof

that licensing restricts gun ownership to upstanding citizens.



     The licensing process can be more than a minor imposition on

the purchaser of a gun. In Illinois the automated licensing

system takes 60 days to authorize a clearance. Although New

Jersey law requires that the authorities act on gun license

applications within 30 days, delays of 90 days are routine; some

applications are delayed for years, for no valid reason.

Licensing fees may be raised so high as to keep guns out of the

hands of the poor. Until recently Dade County, Florida, which

includes Miami, charged $500 for a license; nearby Monroe County

charged $2,000. These excessive fees on a means of self-defense

are the equivalent of a poll tax. Or licensing may simply turn

into prohibition. Mayor Richard Hatcher of Gary, Indiana, ordered

his police department never to give anyone license application

forms. The police department in New York City has refused to

issue legally required licenses, even when commanded by courts to

do so. The department has also refused to even hand out blank

application forms.



     In addition to police abuse of licensing discretion, there

is also the problem of the massive data collection that would

result from a comprehensive licensing scheme. For example, New

York City asks a pistol permit applicant:



          Have you ever . . .



               Been discharged from any employment?



               Been subpoenaed to, or attended [!] a hearing or

               inquiry conducted by any executive, legislative,

               or judicial body?



               Been denied appointment in a civil service system,

               Federal, State, Local?



               Had any license or permit issued to you by any

               City, State, or Federal Agency?



     Applicants for a business premises gun permit in New York

City must also supply personal income-tax returns, daily bank

deposit slips, and bank statements. Photocopies are not

acceptable. A grocer in the South Bronx may wonder what the size

of his bank deposits has to do with his right to protection.



     The same arguments that lead one to reject a national

identity card apply to federal gun licensing. A national

licensing system would require the collection of dossiers on half

the households in the United States (or a quarter, for handgun-

only record keeping).



     Implementing national gun licensing would make introduction

of a national identity card more likely. Assuming that a large

proportion of American families would become accustomed to the

government collecting extensive data about them, they would

probably not oppose making everyone else go through the same

procedures for a national identity card.



     Finally, licensing is not going to stop determined

criminals. The most thorough study of the weapons behavior of

felony prisoners (the Wright-Rossi project funded by the National

Institute of Justice) found that five-sixths of the felons did

not buy their handguns from a retail outlet anyway. (Many of the

rest used a legal, surrogate buyer, such as a girlfriend.) As

noted above, felons have little trouble buying stolen guns on the

streets. In sum, it remains to be proven that gun licensing would

significantly reduce crime. Given the very clear civil liberties

problems with licensing, it cannot be said that the benefits

outweigh the costs.



WAITING PERIODS



     In the 1960s and 1970s bills to implement federal gun

registration and licensing were soundly defeated in Congress,

never to resurface as politically viable proposals. The broadest

federal gun legislation currently under consideration is a

national waiting period for gun purchases. Senator Howard

Metzenbaum (D-Ohio) has introduced legislation to require a

national seven-day waiting period for handgun transfers, which

would be permitted only after police officials had an opportunity

to check an applicant's background. Because the bill applies to

all gun transfers, it would even compel a wife to get police

permission before receiving a handgun as a gift from her husband.

However, statistical evidence shows no correlation between

waiting periods and homicide rates. The image of a murderously

enraged person leaving home, driving to a gun store, finding one

open after 10 p.m. (when most crimes of passion occur), buying a

weapon, and driving home to kill is a little silly. Of course, a

licensing system is bound to deny some purchasers an opportunity

to buy, but only the most naive rejected purchaser would fail to

eventually find a way to acquire an illegal weapon.



     In addition, waiting periods can be subterfuges for more

restrictive measures. Former Atlanta mayor Maynard Jackson

proposed a six-month waiting period--a long time to wait for a

woman who is in immediate danger of attack from her ex-boyfriend.

Senator Metzenbaum's bill would give the police de facto

licensing powers, even in states that have explicitly considered

and rejected a police-run licensing system.





MANDATORY SENTENCING



     Those who want to make simple gun possession a crime

frequently call for a mandatory prison sentence for unlawful

possession of a gun. The National Handgun Information Center

demands a one-year mandatory minimum sentence for possession of a

handgun during "any crime" (apparently including drunk driving or

possession of a controlled substance). Detroit recently enacted a

30-day mandatory sentence for carrying an unlicensed gun. None of

those proposals is a step toward crime control.



     Massachusetts's Bartley-Fox law, with a mandatory one-year

sentence for carrying an unlicensed gun, has apparently reduced

the casual carrying of firearms but has not significantly

affected the gun use patterns of determined criminals. Of the

Massachusetts law, a Department of Justice study concluded that

"the effect may be to penalize some less serious offenders, while

the punishment for more serious offenses is postponed, reduced,

or avoided altogether." New York enacted a s     >+      1    1    1    
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          they want), but rather poor people who have

          decided they need a gun to protect themselves

          against the felons but who find that the

          cheapest gun in the market costs more than

          they can afford to pay.



     Indeed, one wonders what a ban on these low-caliber guns

would accomplish. Criminals who use them could easily take up

higher-powered guns. Some criminals might switch to knives, but

severe knife wounds are just as deadly (and almost as easy to

inflict at close range, where most robberies occur).



     If a ban on Saturday night specials failed to reduce crime,

is it likely that its proponents would admit defeat and repeal

the law? Or would they conclude that a ban on all handguns was

what was really needed? Once criminals started substituting

sawed-off shotguns, would the new argument be that long guns too

must be banned? That is the point that gun control in Great

Britain is approaching, after beginning with a seemingly

innocuous registration system for handguns.





                           CONCLUSION



     In 1911 state Senator Timothy Sullivan of New York promised

that if New York City outlawed handgun carrying, homicides would

decline drastically. The year the Sullivan law took effect,

however, homicides increased and the New York Times pronounced

criminals "as well armed as ever." Gun control does not reduce

crime; gun ownership does. Gun control insists that citizens rely

on the authorities. Gun owners know better than to put their

lives and liberty in the hands of 911 and the police. Gun control

and the Bill of Rights cannot coexist. The advocates of gun

control believe that government agents are more trustworthy than

ordinary citizens. The authors of the Second Amendment believed

just the opposite.

 

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