The
Follies of Gun Control
GrassTopsUSA Exclusive Commentary
By Gennady Stolyarov II
08-12-07
When it comes
to restricting private individuals’ Second Amendment rights, it
seems that the world must turn upside down to justify gun control.
Criminals need to obey the law, limited human beings need to be
present everywhere and respond to anything, inanimate objects need
to assume a volition of their own, and parents all of a sudden need
to become totally oblivious to what their children are doing. Yes,
all of these astounding assumptions are behind the common case for
gun control. And, as logic dictates, either the assumptions
themselves must be true, or the arguments made on their basis must
be discarded as illegitimate.
Will restricting private gun ownership reduce gun-related crimes?
Gun control advocates think it will. They presume that it is
possible to simply legislate away an undesirable behavior if the
electorate or the politicians wish it. If the law says that no
private citizen may obtain certain firearms, then no private citizen
will obtain these firearms. True? No; it is absurd.
To be fair, laws against private gun ownership will reduce said
ownership among the people who respect the law and do not wish to
violate it. But among people who are already outside the law or who
hold no scruples about evading it, prohibiting gun ownership will
have no effect. Indeed, some of these people are already thieves and
murderers. It is astonishing that anyone thinks that such criminals
will balk at committing a far more minor offense – such as
possession of an illegal weapon.
Hence, gun control would – in reality – shift the balance of power
greatly in favor of the criminal elements of society. Good people
who obey the law will have disarmed themselves; evil people who
ignore the law will continue to obtain weapons. Evil people will
thus have more of an opportunity to conduct effective aggression,
while good people will have a reduced ability to retaliate. Can
anything but increased crime be the outcome?
In response, those who advocate gun control might assert that guns
are a form of mind control. This is indeed behind the presumption
that good people, by the sheer fact of owning a gun, will suddenly
transform into evil people with a maniacal, uncontrollable desire to
shoot everybody and everything. By extension, we need to watch all
of our society’s kitchen chefs in training. After all, each of them
is a budding Jack the Ripper – since he has such extensive exposure
to and practice in the use of knives!
If this particular argument goes nowhere in the discussion, gun
control proponents will shift to another claim. Private citizens do
not need guns, they argue, because protecting the public from crime
is the job of the police and other government law enforcement
agencies. This theory has several necessary corollaries: 1) that
crime does not happen at all, because the work of the police and
other government agencies suffices to protect the public against it,
and 2) that it is possible to instantaneously notify the proper
authorities and receive an instantaneous response from them whenever
a crime is attempted. The truth or falsity of both of the above
predictions can be easily verified empirically.
But, seriously, the police forces – no matter how well equipped or
competent – are comprised of limited human beings with limited
abilities. They cannot, contrary to gun control advocates’ fancy, be
everywhere, see everything, and act immediately to prevent any
criminal conduct. But if the police cannot successfully address all
crime, then something else needs to supplement their work. Indeed,
private gun ownership has prevented many a crime before the police
could get to the would-be criminal. In many cases of obvious
aggression, the retaliatory use of guns by private citizens sufficed
to prevent a tragedy and to enable police resources to be directed
toward dealing with still other crimes.
Digging deeper into their repertoire of justifications, gun control
advocates will pull out a favorite claim – that guns are responsible
for a vast number of deaths from domestic violence. Indeed, some
might even cite dubious statistics claiming that there exist more
gun-related killings within families than instances in which private
gun use repelled a criminal. But this argument, too, has its
assumptions. One such assumption is that, aside from guns, there
exist no deadly objects within anybody’s home – such that if one
member of a family wanted to kill another, he or she would simply be
out of luck for a lack of means. This, of course, implies that the
five drowned children of Andrea Yates are still alive and well, that
all food is eaten solely using spoons and spatulas, and that human
beings are all limbless torsos who have no arms or legs to deliver
deadly punches or kicks.
Finally, we come to yet another interpretation of the way the world
works from the perspective of a gun control proponent. Namely, guns
are responsible for thousands of accidental child deaths because
children find them, experiment with them, and kill or maim
themselves in the process. Note that, under this view, gun safety
locks do not exist, most parents keep their guns loaded all the
time, and virtually no parents look out for what their kids are
doing. Indeed, it requires an appalling degree of negligence on the
part of a parent to fail to prevent a child from getting to a gun.
Gun control advocates must be assuming that all parents are
chronically drunk or have the IQ of a gun.
But if a parent lacks the care to protect his or her child from the
possibility of accidentally abusing a firearm, then much more is
wrong with that parent than the fact that he or she owns a gun. That
is, unless gun control advocates also want to claim that owning a
gun makes people negligent, just as it makes them inclined to go out
and indiscriminately shoot things. It is as if guns have more
volition than people. No matter how much parents love their children
or how hard they work for their safety, if their gun decides it, the
child will find it loaded and easy to abuse. People’s prudence and
foresight have absolutely no input in the matter!
Indeed, the theory underlying gun control is truly a theory of gun
control: guns control people, and only government officials (who,
strangely enough, must not be people under this view) can
effectively control guns. Forget hypnotism and demagoguery: this is
the way to truly reach into people’s minds – either turning them
into serial killers by giving them weapons or making them angels by
simply saying that they may not have those weapons.
Meanwhile, back in the real world, gun control has always and
everywhere resulted in increased crime and suffering for the most
innocent among people.
Gennady Stolyarov II is
Editor-in-Chief of
The Rational Argumentator, a magazine championing the principles
or Reason, Rights, and Progress. His works have been published by
Le Quebecois Libre,
Enter Stage Right Magazine, the
Ludwig von Mises Institute,
Rebirth of Reason, and other organizations. Mr. Stolyarov can be
contacted at
gennadystolyarovii@yahoo.com.
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GrasstopsUSA.com 2007
