Gun control loses firepower
By BETSY HART, Scripps Howard News Service May 28, 2004

When a "million moms" turned up in Washington recently to demand more
gun-control
laws, it wasn't exactly a million. It was more like 3,000 - tops.

Gun control is not an issue in this year's national election, partly because
even
Democratic presidential candidate John Kerry has mouthed support, sort of,
for the
Second Amendment.

An extension on the so-called assault-weapons ban was defeated in the Senate
in
March, to little public outcry. It went down in large part because the ban
had not
been shown to reduce crime, as advocates had predicted it would.

Sure, every once in a while one hears of a small gun-control victory, or
near-victory, in some state legislature, but while gun control was all the
rage only
a few years ago, now it's sort of on a par with Madonna: Every once in a
while she
pops up in the news, and you think, "Gee, is she still out there?"

John Lott, perhaps America's foremost expert on gun-control laws, is a
scholar at
the American Enterprise Institute in Washington and author of "More Guns
Less Crime"
(University of Chicago Press), among other books. He says the declining
interest in
the issue of gun control is that we have so much evidence it doesn't work.

Lott points out that 37 states now have "right-to-carry" laws, and nine
states allow
some persons to carry guns. Although there was widespread panic by
gun-control
advocates that the growth in such laws over the last decade would cause
shootouts at
the OK Corral, the fact is that those who carry weapons have shown
themselves to be
law-abiding. So, Lott argues, this and other "doom and gloom" scenarios
about what
would happen if we didn't enact stricter gun controls put the gun-control
lobby in a
bad spot.

So does the international record. Lott shows that crime rose sharply in
England
after guns were banned, though it had fallen steadily before the ban was in
place.
Australia saw its crime rates soar after gun-control measures were enacted
in 1996.
In fact, the most recent crime survey done "shows that the violent-crime
rate in
England and Australia was twice the rate in the United States."

Gun registration in Canada, Lott notes, has been equally unrewarding for gun
-control advocates. It costs 1,000 times more than promised, and a recent
poll shows
that only 17 percent of Canadians now support it.

All of this evidence does not help the once-very-fashionable gun-control
movement in
the United States.

Lott is right. But I think there is something else at play, too.

Sept. 11. And once again, this week new warnings about imminent terror
threats.

Look, most people don't think Osama or one of his minions is going to come
up the
home driveway anytime soon.

But the fact remains that gun control was a very popular theme while violent
crime
rates were falling, as they have for well more than a decade, and people
felt pretty
safe. Gun control is a luxury that one can afford when one does not feel at
risk.

But suddenly, it's a new and dangerous world out there. We perceive
ourselves and
our families as being in danger. Yes, the risk from terrorists would likely
come
from a "dirty" bomb, not a "shootout. "

But, just in case ...

One can argue that it's irrational to buy a gun in response to the al Qaeda
threat
(gun sales did rise dramatically in the weeks and months following 9/11).
But, it's
not irrational to believe we live in a dangerous world. And that whether the
threat
comes from overseas or down the street, we can't really count on the
government to
protect us from danger every minute. We have some responsibility to protect
ourselves. Maybe we even understand that we wouldn't want a government that
was big
enough and powerful enough to protect us every moment.

The rush for ever-stricter gun-control laws has become something of a quaint
relic
of an earlier, more innocent age.

I'm glad to see that agenda become something of a thing of the past, for
now,
anyway. But if I'm at all right about how we got here, it's a tragedy it had
to
happen this way.

Bart Senior wrote:
....I'm glad to see that agenda become something of a thing of the past, for
now,
anyway. But if I'm at all right about how we got here, it's a tragedy it had
to
happen this way.

I don't know how much of the lack of popular interest in gun control is
due to the current political moods, and how much is due to to the whole
"gun control mania" having run it's course, like the fad for hula hoops.
Certainly, the statistics that increased restrictions on citizens gun
ownership actually increases crime has little or nothing to do with it,
people involved in this kind of campaign don't care about facts.

DSK