This post will prove academic for some here and for those who read it and think to themselves “Yeah…I know that” I apologize for restating the obvious but sadly it isn’t obvious to everyone in light of many of the discussions we’ve seen lately.
The issue seems simple: See a problem, fix the problem.
And as reasonable, intelligent and rational people we always assume we can fix almost any problem. Sadly criminal misuse of firearms isn’t one of them, especially if you try and approach it from the “firearm” part of the equation.
We need to recognize that those with a specific agenda to disarm US citizens are actually a minority. There are the Feinsteins, McCarthy’s and Boxers who have built their entire careers around the issue but mainstream America isn’t really behind them. The typical “reasonable American” doesn’t want to ban guns…BUT they also don’t want to be shot and much more importantly they don’t want their kids to be shot. This is of course entirely reasonable, we also don’t wish to be shot and we most certainly wouldn’t want our kids to be shot.
So we have a natural impulse to consider “reasonable gun control” efforts that might prevent such things. Just one problem, they don’t work. If gun control “worked” it would have been solved the first time we tried it and more importantly laws against shooting innocent people, especially children would also be preventing such tragedies.
Even more absurd are laws that seek to differentiate “good guns” from “bad guns” as if being shot by a deer rifle is in any way preferable to being shot by an AR-15.
Back in the 1920s the streets roared with the sound of the Tommy Gun. Gangsters ran major cities and profits from prohibited alcohol purchased corruption in all areas of enforcement and even Joe Kennedy managed to earn enough for a political career for himself and his sons. In 1934 we passed a gun control measure that put guns such as the Thompson, BAR and sawed off shotguns out of the reach of the average citizen. Did it solve the problem of 1930s gangsters? Not really, the Commission formed from the Five Families was still going strong and the mafia dominated organized crime well until the 1970s. Not surprisingly, they still could get Thompsons and any other machine gun anytime they wanted.
The late 1960s and early 70s were a powder keg of revolutionary violence. Groups like the SLA, Black Panthers, The Weather Underground and other marxist inspired militant groups regularly shot it out with the police on the streets. SWAT was created for the specific purpose of dealing with these extremist groups who often employed select fire weapons despite the 1934 NFA. These incidents and several high profile political assassinations led to the 1968 Gun Control Act. And while it may have ended mail order firearms, it certainly did not end criminal misuse of firearms by organized crime or radical political activists.
Small caliber handguns with short barrels may have been banned from importation (which is why you can’t get a .380 Glock) by the 68 GCA but that hardly stopped gun violence in the 60s and 70s, especially in urban areas with a booming narcotics trade. The heroin dealers seemed to have little difficulty finding a means of protecting their product, profits and enforcing their territorial boundaries despite existing bans.
By the early 1980s cocaine had largely replaced heroin and the cocaine cowboys of the “Scarface era” much preferred the Ingram Mac-10 to any low powered .380 import handgun. As the $200 NFA tax wasn’t as cost prohibitive as it was in the 1930s an amendment to close the machine gun registry was duly added to the Firearm Owners Protection Act of 1986 as a “reasonable restriction” to address gun violence. Despite the fact that by 1986 not a single incident of criminal misuse involving a NFA weapon existed (this would change in the late 1980s when a off duty LEO shot a man with a registered machine gun that he found in bed with his wife) the closing of the registry became law with the passage of FOPA.
For organized crime, cocaine dealers and LA gangs it was business as usual and they discovered they could import Uzis and AK-47s as easily as a kilo of cocaine. Despite the fact that the domestic machine gun ban found within FOPA (a machine gun ban regulating imports was part of the 68 GCA) seemed to have little or no impact on criminals, that didn’t prevent then Drug Czar William Bennett from declaring that “only drug dealers use semi automatic weapons like HK-91s and FN FALs” so they were promptly banned by Executive Order in 1989. This of course actually changed nothing as criminals continued to obtain unregistered Uzis as easily as they obtained cocaine.
There is perhaps no better example of the futility of these efforts as the North Hollywood Bank Robbery where two bank robbers took on the LAPD with an HK91 modified to select fire and AK-47s that were either illegally imported full autos or modified semi autos almost a decade later in 1997. Laws regarding importation and illegal modification to select fire didn’t prevent that incident any more than laws against bank robbery and murder prevented those things from happening.
But despite the obvious, politicians still keep trying to find a way to prevent these incidents by regulating inanimate objects that they believed, or simply tried to convince others to believe, facilitated these kinds of crime and that the problem could be controlled if only the specific firearms in question could be controlled.
So with the problem still unsolved Bill Clinton signed into law the domestic Assault Weapon Ban which came with a ban on high capacity magazines for a period of 10 years starting in 1994.
Not only did it fail to prevent the North Hollywood Bank Robbery and shootout it also did not prevent the Columbine shooting in 1999, the DC snipers in 2002 nor did it prevent any other significant criminal misuse according to FBI statistics.
And it still seems that not only politicians, but even some gun owners, remain unable to figure out that you can’t control crime by controlling an object. Otherwise we wouldn’t have an illicit drug problem. People also can’t seem to figure out that simply denying a gun to a violent person doesn’t make them safe. Violent people will always find ways to do violence, the BTK Killer, Danny Rolling, Jeffery Dahmer, Richard Ramirez and John Gacy managed quite well without firearms let alone semi automatic assault rifles and high caps. And while the Zodiak Killer and David Richard Berkowitz were known to use firearms, they were the kind deemed socially acceptable in the form of a revolver.
So there is NO reasonable restriction be it Saturday Night Specials, sawed off shotguns, street sweepers, tommy guns, semi automatic assault rifles, cheap military surplus or sniper rifles. If you took us all the way back to muzzle loading flintlocks criminals would still misuse them and obtain illegal “regulated” firearms. The only people who would actually be “regulated” are those law abiding individuals who by definition are not the problem. The end result is potential victims are those who lose access to the best means of defending themselves and their families. These are exactly the people who NEED the advantage of modern firearms to attempt to counter the determination of violent criminals.
As a result gun owners need to STOP making these “reasonable concessions” because they didn’t work the first time they were tried and they haven’t ever worked.
Now some will say the unique situation of school shootings (which most believe started as a new phenomenon with Columbine) create a special need situation. But really that isn’t true either. School shootings are hardly new. The earliest known school shooting was July 26, 1764 and the list is quite comprehensive.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_school_shootings_in_the_United_States
Furthermore Sandy Hook still isn’t the worst school massacre, that is still the Bath School Massacre.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bath_School_disaster
No guns were involved and 38 elementary school children and six adults were killed, at least 58 other people were injured. This happened on May 18, 1927 and all because Andrew Kehoe, the 55-year-old school board treasurer, was angry after his defeat in the spring 1926 election for township clerk.
So what do we do?
First we stop making concessions that do nothing and we tell people why. Email everyone the list of school shootings that starts in 1764 and continues on through the 1800s and then through every decade despite ongoing efforts to regulate killers through inanimate objects.
Second we stop bickering this pointless stupidity among ourselves as if getting rid of Lorcins, Jennings and Ravens will really make criminals stop shooting people. As if sacrificing 30 round magazines will prevent tragedies or banning cheap AKs will stop crime. Before you agree to any concession ask yourself “Would I deny this to a family member or loved one if they were forced to defend themselves from a violent attacker?”
Third we stop with the notion that we must “meet in the middle” concerning our rights and instead focus on taking back what has been lost. In the last 20 years many states have made tremendous strides with respect to conceal carry laws and castle doctrine laws and we have watched crime rates adjust accordingly. We need to focus our efforts on eliminating the “sporter clause” of the 1968 Gun Control Act which allows politicians a “qualifier” never mentioned in the Constitution regarding what is a “civilian acceptable” firearm.
And lastly we need to start looking for better ways to control violent people in our society, especially those who would kill us and our children if given the opportunity. Because taking “our guns” simply isn’t fixing it.