If Gun Laws Work, Why Are We Afraid? : Despite regulation, crime keeps rising. Do we need more laws?

It’s almost funny that, under existing laws, a successful merchant can’t be sure of selling anything legally. If you sell a product for less than your competitors, that’s “cutthroat competition” or “dumping.” If you sell at the same price, it’s “price-fixing.” And if you sell for more, that’s “monopolistic advantage.” Those who promote gun-control have stacked the cards even better.

If you buy a handgun that is inexpensive, small and low-caliber, it’s a Saturday-night special. If you want a handgun that is more expensive, larger and higher-caliber, it’s “the weapon-of-choice of drug dealers.” Whatever qualities a particular handgun has, gun-controllers don’t want it allowed. Heads they win, tails you lose.

If a rifle is magazine-fed and semi-automatic, it’s a deadly “assault weapon.” If a rifle is bolt-action, it’s a “sniper rifle.” Again, all possibilities are covered.

A favorite media practice is to focus only on the bad things firearms are used for. If a handgun is used for murder or mayhem, it’s headline news. If that same handgun is used by a restaurant patron to stop a takeover robbery, the story is buried.

Another gun-controllers’ game is to tell us how successful the last gun-control law passed is, while simultaneously telling us how “gun violence” is unchecked by current laws. Examples are California’s 15-day waiting period on firearms and the Roberti-Roos Assault Weapons Act. If these laws had reduced violent crime, why would we need new gun-control laws? Since crime continues upward, why should we believe gun-controllers when they say we need more of the same?

Here’s another. New York City has strict gun-control laws and a high rate of violent crime; Virginia has less-strict gun laws and a lot less violent crime. Supposedly, criminals were buying guns in Virginia (using fake Virginia ID’s) and smuggling them to New York for black-market sales. Political pressure was placed on Virginia to limit gun purchases to one a month; the law passed over National Rifle Assn. protests that it affected only honest gun owners because criminals could obtain black-market ID’s anyway.

So if New York’s laws are so unsuccessful that guns can be smuggled in anyway, what good is New York’s gun-control? And if Virginia, with easily obtainable firearms, has less crime than does New York, why didn’t New York take a lesson from Virginia and loosen its gun laws instead? Do criminals know something that New York politicians don’t?

But my favorite trick is the one that says the reason gun owners keep guns around is that they’re paranoid and fearful.

We’re shown videotape of Rodney King being beaten by Los Angeles police. We read Ventura County Prosecutor Michael Bradbury’s report stating that Donald Scott, a rich, white man, was killed during a Los Angeles County sheriff’s drug raid trumped up in an attempt to steal Scott’s Malibu estate using the asset-forfeiture laws. We see an acquittal of Randy Weaver for defending himself from the U.S. marshals who killed his wife and son and videotape of federal agents opening fire on David Koresh’s followers in Waco with no return fire from the Branch Davidians visible. Then we’re told that gun owners are paranoid for not wanting to rely on tainted police authorities for protection against criminals.

Day after day, the news media tell us every time a gun is used in a murder, a carjacking, an ATM robbery or a drive-by shooting. But we’re also told that it’s unreasonably fearful to think that we need to arm ourselves. Los Angeles Assistant City Attorney Byron Boeckman, in discussing the Police Department’s new policy of issuing concealed-carry weapons licenses, tells us that the danger of violence to L.A. residents is exaggerated.

Well, which is it? Either America today is so peaceful, well-ordered and efficiently protected by police that there is no “gun violence” and the rationale for gun control is based on a nonexistent problem, or we are surrounded by heavily armed psychopaths terrorizing our society, in which case being better armed than the criminals is the rational response of decent citizens who wish to preserve their civilization and our laws should encourage, rather than discourage, trained civilians to keep and carry firearms.

Gun-control advocates constantly contradict themselves because gun control has never been shown to reduce violence. And in the absence of a provable case, all they have left in their stage-magician’s trunk are old, worn-out tricks.

Which gun owners know better than to fall for.