- Guns are dangerous. But myths are dangerous, too. Myths
about guns are very dangerous, because they lead to bad laws. And bad laws
kill people.
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- "Don't tell me this bill will not make a difference,"
said President Clinton, who signed the Brady Bill into law.
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- Sorry. Even the federal government can't say it has made
a difference. The Centers for Disease Control did an extensive review of
various types of gun control: waiting periods, registration and licensing,
and bans on certain firearms. It found that the idea that gun control laws
have reduced violent crime is simply a myth.
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- I wanted to know why the laws weren't working, so I asked
the experts. "I'm not going in the store to buy no gun," said
one maximum-security inmate in New Jersey. "So, I could care less
if they had a background check or not."
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- "There's guns everywhere," said another inmate.
"If you got money, you can get a gun."
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- Talking to prisoners about guns emphasizes a few key
lessons. First, criminals don't obey the law. (That's why we call them
"criminals.") Second, no law can repeal the law of supply and
demand. If there's money to be made selling something, someone will sell
it.
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- A study funded by the Department of Justice confirmed
what the prisoners said. Criminals buy their guns illegally and easily.
The study found that what felons fear most is not the police or the prison
system, but their fellow citizens, who might be armed. One inmate told
me, "When you gonna rob somebody you don't know, it makes it harder
because you don't know what to expect out of them."
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- What if it were legal in America for adults to carry
concealed weapons? I put that question to gun-control advocate Rev. Al
Sharpton. His eyes opened wide, and he said, "We'd be living in a
state of terror!"
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- In fact, it was a trick question. Most states now have
"right to carry" laws. And their people are not living in a state
of terror. Not one of those states reported an upsurge in crime.
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- Why? Because guns are used more than twice as often defensively
as criminally. When armed men broke into Susan Gonzalez' house and shot
her, she grabbed her husband's gun and started firing.
- "I figured if I could shoot one of them, even if
we both died, someone would know who had been in my home." She killed
one of the intruders. She lived. Studies on defensive use of guns find
this kind of thing happens at least 700,000 times a year.
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- And there's another myth, with a special risk of its
own. The myth has it that the Supreme Court, in a case called United States
v. Miller, interpreted the Second Amendment -- "A well regulated Militia,
being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people
to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed" -- as conferring a
special privilege on the National Guard, and not as affirming an individual
right. In fact, what the court held is only that the right to bear arms
doesn't mean Congress can't prohibit certain kinds of guns that aren't
necessary for the common defense. Interestingly, federal law still says
every able-bodied American man from 17 to 44 is a member of the United
States militia.
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- What's the special risk? As Alex Kozinski, a federal
appeals judge and an immigrant from Eastern Europe, warned in 2003, "the
simple truth -- born of experience -- is that tyranny thrives best where
government need not fear the wrath of an armed people."
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- "The prospect of tyranny may not grab the headlines
the way vivid stories of gun crime routinely do," Judge Kozinski noted.
"But few saw the Third Reich coming until it was too late. The Second
Amendment is a doomsday provision, one designed for those exceptionally
rare circumstances where all other rights have failed -- where the government
refuses to stand for reelection and silences those who protest; where courts
have lost the courage to oppose, or can find no one to enforce their decrees.
However improbable these contingencies may seem today, facing them unprepared
is a mistake a free people get to make only once."
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- ©2005 JFS Productions, Inc. Distributed by Creators
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