GUNS AND CRIMINALS - More gun laws - more thugs with guns

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NH UnionLeader

November 6, 2001

Guns and criminals: More gun laws = more thugs with guns

FOR THE umpteenth time, a national study has found that gun control laws don’t work. The verification of this fact is getting to be one of life’s predictable occurrences, like the migration of monarch butterflies or the late-season choking of the Boston Red Sox.

The latest in this constant flow of data showing the futility of gun-control laws comes from a national survey of prisoners by the United States Bureau of Justice Statistics. The survey found that more convicted criminals used guns in the commission of their crimes after the passage of tough gun-control laws in the 1990s than before.

In 1991, 16 percent of state prisoners used guns while committing the crimes that landed them in prison. In 1997 the number was 18 percent. The comparable numbers for federal prisoners were 12 percent in 1991 and 15 percent in 1997.

The Brady Bill, which requires background checks for gun purchases, was passed in 1993. Other gun-control laws made their way onto the books in the 1990s, and that decade also saw an increase in the number of other futile gun-control measures such as gun buy-back programs.

But in the end, more criminals had more guns and used them in more crimes. How did this happen? Well, the Bureau of Justice Statistics survey found that when criminals couldn’t buy weapons themselves, they acquired them from friends and relatives. The percentage of state prison inmates who bought a gun at a store, pawn shop or flea market fell from 21 percent in 1991 to 14 percent in 1997. In that meaningless way, the Brady Bill has worked. It has reduced the number of gun purchases by criminals at traditional retail outlets.

But during the same period, the percentage of criminals who got guns from friends or family members rose from 34 percent to 40 percent, making the Brady Bill a dismal failure in keeping criminals from obtaining guns.

The only way to keep guns away from criminals is to eliminate guns, which of course is impossible because you can’t uninvent a technology. Firearms, like rock ‘n’ roll, are here to stay.

The most effective way to reduce gun-related crime is to ensure that citizens have the right to arm themselves. The effectiveness of concealed carry laws has been scientifically documented as firmly as has the failure of gun-control laws. If only the anti-gun nuts would wake up and smell the gunpowder.

-- Anonymous, November 07, 2001


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