- Our discussion of the issues revolving around the horrific
events at Virginia Tech has literally brought in tens of thousands of
new readers. And in that mixture are a few who have advocated, as one
of them put it, "total control" of guns. Their positions is
that all weapons must be confiscated and severe penalties imposed on people
who own firearms for self-defense.
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- There is a certain naive simplicity to that which is
frightening. What they advocate is a zero tolerance policy akin to the
War on Drugs, which itself was just a reincarnation of the previous total
war on an evil commodity: alcohol. Obviously since both of those were
such smashing successes they want to repeat the exercise.
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- England followed the same logic. In 1988 it first banned
semiautomatic and pump-action rifles, short shotguns and a few others
firearms. Law abiding citizens turned in their weapons. Criminals did
not. With criminals feeling safer the number of crimes committed with
guns escalated. Then the totalitarian idea of absolute control took hold.
So for all practical purpose it is now virtually impossible to own a handgun
in the UK. Following that ban the number of crimes committed by armed
criminals jumped again.
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- Street gangs in various sections of the UK have no problem
obtaining firearms even though they are entirely illegal. The Southwark
neighborhood of London had 266 crimes committed with firearms that were
reported in 2006. The Lambeth neighborhood had 239, Lewisham had 185.
Apparently someone forgot to tell criminals they weren't supposed to own
firearms.
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- Det. Supt. Kevin Davis heads the Trident program to tackle
youth/gang related crime in London. he says that more "teens are
resorting to carrying or using guns." Claudia Webber, an advisor
to Trident says that in the gang culture guns are "an everyday accessory,
a fashionable accessory, that young people want to be seen with."
This with what amounts to be an almost total ban. The very few loopholes
that are left are not the source of firearms for gangs. Criminals almost
never purchase guns legally.
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- Not long ago the British government conceded that one
in three young criminals own or have use of a firearm. When guns were
confiscated 162,000 weapons were turned in by law-abiding citizens. Apparently
criminals didn't join the queue. At the time police estimated there were
250,000 illegal guns in the UK. They now believe there are 3 million illegal
firearms in the country and said "criminals are more willing than
ever to use them."
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- One result is that criminals in the UK are more brazen.
In England 53 per cent of burglaries on homes take place while the residents
are home, only 13 per cent in America take place under similar circumstance.
British criminals don't mind breaking in while people are home since they
know that the residents have been disarmed. Criminals in the US are worried
the homeower is armed. One result is that numerous elderly people in the
UK get battered around by young thugs. A proud moment for the "total
control" advocates. Yet the victim disarmament Gun Control Network
calls the UK policies "the gold standard" of gun control.
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- The British Home Office has conceded: "We recognise
there is a continuing problem with the use of guns by criminals and that
it has increased over recent years." Gold standard indeed.
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- The London Telegraph wrote that following the imposition
of gun control "the total number of recorded crimes went up by almost
800,000 at a time when numbers in France and Germany were virtually stable
and in America were falling dramatically."
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- The ban on guns has meant that black market weapons smuggled
into the country are plentiful. The left-leaning Guardian says that sawed-off
shotguns "can now be bought illegally for between £50 and £200
according to Home Office research. A purpose-built 9mm handgun, which
is easier to conceal than a shotgun, is available for £1000-£1,400
on the back streets of Britain while those wanting "a gangster image"
can buy a machine gun for £800." The paper also said "increasingly
firearms had become a normal part of the systematic violence found in
the street-level criminal economy. They had assumed a symbolic significance
as they became associated with criminal affluence and were conflated with
status and the potential for violence." The gold standard, indeed.
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- British citizens are now routinely monitored by closed
circuit cameras throughout their daily life. And gun crime is up, illegal
weapons have increased, more people are being killed than before. If
this sort of constant surveillance is not working then what sort of police
state measures will be necessary to make a total ban on guns workable?
Apparently the rise in crime following gun control brought about new control
measures to undo the damage of gun control. The result is a society that
is rapidly turning into a police state.
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- Let us consider a community where there is total control
and see if prohibition works. In prison one has extremely limited Constitutional
rights. You can be searched at any time of the day. Armed guards can
ransack your living quarters at will. You are constantly being monitored
by agents of the government. You eat when they tell you to eat. You are
allowed to have friends visit only under the most stringent of circumstances.
Your every mover is under government control. You quite literally can't
sit on the toilet and expect privacy. Yet prisoners still use illegal
drugs.
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- Billions and billions of dollars have been spent to impose
total control on illegal drugs. Across American heavily armed SWAT teams
routinely carry out raids on homes of suspected "drug dealers".
They shoot to kill. Every year innocent people who were wrongly targeted
are killed. But it's "war" and they are collateral damage. Penalties
for drug possession in the US are bizarrely severe. Children are encouraged
in state schools to spy on their parents and turn them in to the police.
There is a constant barrage of propaganda. And drug use today remains
almost the same as it was when the "War on Drugs" was started.
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- So precisely how much more severe will police monitoring
have to become to impose "total control" on guns? How much of
the Bill of Rights, beyond just the 2nd Amendment, will have to be shredded
in order to obtain this control? And does total control mean stripping
police of firearms?
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- Crime will escalate under total control. First, a nation
that can't prevent tons of cocaine from entering the country can't prevent
firearms from entering. The reality is that the most violent, anti- social
criminals will have guns. Only their victims will be disarmed. Perhaps
even the police will be disarmed. Crime will escalate. As in the UK criminals
will become more brazen and more homeowners will be hurt or killed by
thugs with superior strength or firearms. Certainly the weaker members
of society,those least able to fight off a hulking criminal, will become
prime targets.
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- And there is still the annoying issue of an unarmed population
and an armed government. Governments have a tendency to become oppressive.
Throughout history they have slaughtered hundreds of millions of people.
More people have been killed by governments in the 20th century, or by
agents of the state, than by run of the mill criminals.
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- Disarming a population only means that if a totalitarian
state arises the people are defenseless and unable to prevent their own
oppression. What is worse is that the "total control" measures
that will be necessary to wipe out private firearms will go a long way
toward establishing that very kind of society.
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- And this leads, not to a slippery slope, but a free fall.
How do we prevent firearms from outside a country from entering the country?
Ah, the "total control" advocates will tell you that we need
international controls. So the dictatorial regime necessary to wipe out
private firearms will have to be a global regime. It would require authority
over all nation states. The powers necessary to impose "total control"
mean that they increase in scope constantly and are centralized. The end
result is a massive global government that is forced by the doctrine of
"total control" to monitor and regulate people in ways never
before seen on this planet.
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- The tendency is toward dictatorship. And with the people
disarmed and the massive State having vast, monopoly powers you can kiss
what few remaining freedoms you have good bye. And who do our Left-wing
"total control" friends think will run this state? Some kindly,
benevolent, gentle soul, a reincarnation of Ghandi perhaps? Or maybe
the reborn Mother Theresa? History shows that the men who rise to the
top of those kind of political systems are more similar to Alberto Gonzales
and George Bush than to a Ghandi. It requires a world run by the Bushs
of the world with legislation that makes the Patriot Act look like child's
play.
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- Of course the reality is that the police won't be disarmed
at all. They will become more and more militarized in order to deal with
the millions of new criminals created by a total ban on guns. And they
will become more and more likely to use excessive force. So expect more
and more out of control police departments. Or do we centralize their
authority as well? No doubt we will with only worse results.
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- Now the one time in my life that a criminal, with an
illegal weapon, shot at me he was using a weapon that was not exactly
a Smith & Wesson. He used a weapon that was literally home made. There
is no shortage of instructions on how to make your own gun at home. And
now we get the mission creep inherent in all state programs.
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- Under the war on drugs the government has increasingly
made life more and more difficult for the vast majority of Americans who
don't use illegal drugs. Grow lights help grow plants including marijuana.
So people with grow lights have had their homes raided even when the
plants are tomatoes. One might take certain ingredients from cold medicines
and use them in producing illegal drugs. So your ability to treat your
cold is severely restricted. To prevent "drug abuse" hypodermic
syringes were tightly regulated. Addicts didn't disappear, they shared
needles and they, and their sexual partners, the sexual partner of their
partners, became a hot house environment spreading HIV.
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- "Informers" who don't exist give cops, who
do exist, the names of drug dealers and innocent elderly women are murdered
by armed cops. All these things take place because the state finds it
must do more and more to control drugs. It must control many aspects of
human life which are only tangentially related to drugs.
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- So now we need a government that doesn't just regulate
firearms but also regulates the tools and the materials that can be used
to produce firearms. Total control would have to mean censorship to stop
people from learning how to produce home-made weapons. It would mean
regulating lathes which can be used, piping which can be used and so on.
Just as grow lights, bongs, and rolling papers are under increasing state
control a war on guns would require censorship and state control of the
materials and tools that can potentially be used to produce firearms.
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- When antigun activists talk about "total control"
to stop guns that is precisely what they mean. They want the same kind
of police state mentality created by the War on Drugs but bigger, better,
more powerful, more deadly. They want a police state but a police state
on steroids. Perhaps some don't want that. I doubt when the War on Drugs
started the supporters in the 1960s envisioned an America riddled with
prisons, violent gangs with drug monopolies in the inner cities and innocent
people being gunned down by paramilitary police squads. But that is the
path they chose to follow. And if you get on a road that points to a police
state then don't be shocked when you wake up in a police state. The road
to hell is paved with good intentions.
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- Labels: gun control, police state
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- POSTED BY CLS AT 4/24/2007 04:08:00 PM
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