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Jewish World Review Oct. 20, 2005 / 17 Tishrei, 5766 What if it were legal in America for adults to carry concealed weapons? By John Stossel
http://www.JewishWorldReview.com |
Guns are dangerous. But myths are dangerous, too. Myths about
guns are very dangerous, because they lead to bad laws. And bad laws kill
people.
"Don't tell me this bill will not make a difference," said
President Clinton, who signed the Brady Bill into law.
Sorry. Even the federal government can't say it has made a
difference. The Centers for Disease Control did an extensive review of
various types of gun control: waiting periods, registration and licensing,
and bans on certain firearms. It found that the idea that gun control laws
have reduced violent crime is simply a myth.
I wanted to know why the laws weren't working, so I asked the
experts. "I'm not going in the store to buy no gun," said one
maximum-security inmate in New Jersey. "So, I could care less if they had a
background check or not."
"There's guns everywhere," said another inmate. "If you got
money, you can get a gun."
Talking to prisoners about guns emphasizes a few key lessons.
First, criminals don't obey the law. (That's why we call them "criminals.")
Second, no law can repeal the law of supply and demand. If there's money to
be made selling something, someone will sell it.
A study funded by the Department of Justice confirmed what the
prisoners said. Criminals buy their guns illegally and easily. The study
found that what felons fear most is not the police or the prison system, but
their fellow citizens, who might be armed. One inmate told me, "When you
gonna rob somebody you don't know, it makes it harder because you don't know
what to expect out of them."
What if it were legal in America for adults to carry concealed
weapons? I put that question to gun-control advocate Rev. Al Sharpton. His
eyes opened wide, and he said, "We'd be living in a state of terror!"
In fact, it was a trick question. Most states now have "right
to carry" laws. And their people are not living in a state of terror. Not
one of those states reported an upsurge in crime.
Why? Because guns are used more than twice as often defensively
as criminally. When armed men broke into Susan Gonzalez' house and shot her,
she grabbed her husband's gun and started firing. "I figured if I could
shoot one of them, even if we both died, someone would know who had been in
my home." She killed one of the intruders. She lived. Studies on defensive
use of guns find this kind of thing happens at least 700,000 times a year.
And there's another myth, with a special risk of its own. The
myth has it that the Supreme Court, in a case called United States v.
Miller, interpreted the Second Amendment — "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" — as conferring a special privilege
on the National Guard, and not as affirming an individual right. In fact,
what the court held is only that the right to bear arms doesn't mean
Congress can't prohibit certain kinds of guns that aren't necessary for the
common defense. Interestingly, federal law still says every able-bodied
American man from 17 to 44 is a member of the United States militia.
What's the special risk? As Alex Kozinski, a federal appeals
judge and an immigrant from Eastern Europe, warned in 2003, "the simple
truth — born of experience — is that tyranny thrives best where government
need not fear the wrath of an armed people."
"The prospect of tyranny may not grab the headlines the way
vivid stories of gun crime routinely do," Judge Kozinski noted. "But few saw
the Third Reich coming until it was too late. The Second Amendment is a
doomsday provision, one designed for those exceptionally rare circumstances
where all other rights have failed — where the government refuses to stand
for reelection and silences those who protest; where courts have lost the
courage to oppose, or can find no one to enforce their decrees. However
improbable these contingencies may seem today, facing them unprepared is a
mistake a free people get to make only once."
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© 2005, by JFS Productions, Inc. Distributed by Creators Syndicate, Inc. |
Mitch Albom | ||||||||||||
