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- WASHINGTON -
The latest shootings
by two maniacs with grudges in Honolulu and in
Seattle produced the predictable
cries for more gun laws from Attorney
General Janet Reno, Vice President
Al(pha) Gore, the big media and the
usual suspects in the anti-gun lobby
who won't be satisfied until the
only people with access to guns are criminals.
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- As National Rifle Association
President Charlton Heston
testified last week on Capitol Hill, there
are currently 22,000 federal,
state and local gun laws on the books,
most of which are never enforced.
He properly asked why more gun laws
are the answer when current laws are
not being enforced and criminals
pay no attention to them at all.
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- Anti-gun people are trying to
sell more restrictive legislation
on the false premise that fewer guns
mean a safer society. Writing in The
New York Times, Josh Sugarmann,
executive director of the Violence Policy
Center, urges Congress to
skip "incremental legislation that won't
control handgun
violence" and "immediately call on Congress to
pass
far-reaching industry regulation" that would effectively
"ban"
handguns.
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- Whether such legislation would make us safer is no
longer
a matter of conjecture. Evidence in countries where gun laws
tougher than
ours exist show more, not less, crime.
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- In Australia, where
strict new gun legislation was passed
following a 1996 shooting rampage
by a man who killed 35 people and wounded
19 others, gun-related crime
has increased. According to the Australian
Bureau of Statistics, the
number of armed robberies went up 39 percent
last year and assaults
involving guns rose 28 percent. Gun murders increased
19 percent. In
addition to laws so strict that Olympic shooters must leave
the country
in order to practice, an expensive gun buy-back program resulted
in
640,000 guns being turned in to authorities. The cost of the program
averaged $57 per Australian. Still, gun crime is up. Prior to the new gun
laws, crime in Australia was in decline.
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- Phillip Adams, a prominent
Australian columnist and radio
talk-show host, who turned in several of
his own guns, got to the heart
of the thinking of anti-gun zealots when
he told the Washington Post two
years ago about the main point of the
gun laws: "The whole country
feels better." So, facts don't
matter, just feelings?
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- In Great Britain, where massive firearms-confiscation
programs were enacted following a widely publicized shooting in Scotland,
gun-related crimes have increased, including "hot" robberies,
meaning those conducted while the victims are at home. Criminals
apparently
believe their odds have improved since many of the
law-abiding have been
disarmed.
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- Even the liberal-leaning
Democratic governor of Vermont,
Howard Dean, said after last summer's
synagogue shooting in Los Angeles:
"Gun laws wouldn't have helped
. . . Better enforcement would have
helped."
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- That was Heston's point when he
testified before a congressional
committee last week. Only a fraction
of laws on the books is enforced,
so why pass more laws? Heston quoted
Deputy Attorney General Eric Holder,
who told USA Today, "It's not
the federal government's role to prosecute"
gun cases. Then why
pass the laws in the first place?
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- The goal of the anti-gun lobby
is confiscation. In Canada,
a law that took effect last December
required many new categories of guns
to be surrendered. Those who keep
them face prosecution and the potential
for police invasion of their
homes and businesses. Fifty-eight percent
of handguns registered in
Canada since 1935 are now banned. Those who fail
to turn them in can be
tracked down and forced to comply, while being charged
with a
crime.
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- The
criminals, meanwhile, are largely undeterred by new
laws. Why should
they be when they haven't obeyed the old ones? But more
laws make some
people feel good, including the criminals who now have easier
pickings
in Australia and Great Britain and probably will have in Canada
when
new crime figures are available. Maybe the NRA has been right all
along. When guns are outlawed, only outlaws will have guns. Anyone want
to debate that point with facts instead of feelings?
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