At the Washington Times: Advocates of ‘reasonable’ gun control laws don’t want any firearms at all
Dr. John Lott has a new op-ed at the Washington Times:
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Gun control advocates keep claiming that they just want “reasonable” gun control, but self-defense advocates are understandably skeptical. New York and New Jersey cover their states with gun-free zones, to the point of making concealed carry impractical. Hawaii’s legislature is now proposing to charge permit holders $1,000 in fees. None of that is reasonable. Nor is it reasonable when President Biden keeps talking about banning all semi-automatic guns, which account for about 85 percent of handguns sold.
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ABC news reported in 2013 that former Rep. Gabrielle Giffords and her husband, who are gun control activists, “Just want what they call reasonable gun control.”
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But at the end of an interview with Time this April, Gabby Giffords finally made her wishes clear:
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“‘No more guns,’ she says. Ambler, her aide and adviser, tries to clarify that she means no more gun violence, butGiffords is clear about what she’s saying. ‘No, no, no,’ she says. ‘Lord, no.’ She pauses another 32 seconds. ‘Guns, guns, guns. No more guns. Gone.’”
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Giffords’ aide pointed to Australia, where “gun sales were outlawed after a mass shooting and existing weapons were purchased by the government.” Giffords agreed that this was an example for the United States to follow.
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But Australia didn’t ban guns. Australia’s buyback in 1996 and 1997 resulted in almost 1 million guns being turned in and destroyed (about 29% of all guns), but private gun ownership subsequently steadily increased. By 2010, gun ownership exceeded pre-buyback levels. In fact, since 1997, gun ownership in Australia grew over three times faster than the population (from 2.5 million (p. 5) to 5.8 million by 2015 (p. 63) guns).
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Gun control advocates should have predicted a sudden drop in firearm homicides and suicides after the buyback, followed by an increase as gun ownership rose again. But that didn’t happen.
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Besides, we shouldn’t just be looking at before-and-after averages of gun deaths in Australia. Firearm homicides and suicides had been falling for 15 years prior to the buyback. With these rates falling over the whole period, you could pick any year, and the average firearm homicide and suicide rates after that year would be down compared to the average before it.
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So the question should be whether the rate of decline changed after the gun buyback law went into effect. But the decline in firearm homicides and suicides actually slowed down after the buyback.
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The armed robbery rate soared right after the gun buyback, then gradually declined as gun ownership was increasing.
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Gun control advocates like to note that there has been no mass public shooting in Australia since the buyback. But they are lots of countries with even stricter gun control regulations that had very different experiences. Properly done statistics doesn’t involve simply picking out a country that happens to show what they want it to show. European countries such as Finland, France, Norway, and Russia are just some of the dozens of countries that have even stricter gun control laws than Australia, but their mass public shooting rates are at least as high as that of the United States.
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A ban on guns, even just a handgun ban like what we’ve seen in Washington and Chicago, inevitably makes things much worse. While many places tried gun bans (either a ban on all guns or all handguns), after every gun ban, murder rates have gone up.
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One would think that just once, out of simple randomness, murder rates would have gone down or at least stayed the same after a ban. But whenever crime data are available both before and after a ban, we can see that murder rates have gone up (often by huge amounts).
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Gun-control advocates will tell you that Washington and Chicago weren’t fair tests. They will point out that criminals could still get guns in Virginia or Maryland, or Illinois or Indiana. while that might explain why murder rates didn’t fall as promised, it doesn’t explain why murder and violent crime rates went up. After all, criminals could get these same guns before the ban.
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Even island nations have fared no better. After the U.K. banned handguns in January 1997, its homicide rate rose by 50 percent over the next eight years. The rate returned to earlier levels only after a 14 percent increase in the number of police.
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Even more dramatic post-ban surges occurred in Jamaica and Ireland, with six or sevenfold increases in homicide rates.
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Gun control advocates claim they only want “reasonable gun control laws.” But don’t fall for this poll-tested phrase. Their ultimate goal is to ban guns, and they are only too willing to misrepresent what happens in other countries.
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