I must disagree wholly with Roy Wetherington’s recent opinion piece regarding gun violence and the need for more gun control in the United States. There are already strong gun control laws in place, and the law-abiding citizens of this great nation do not need any more. First, when Mr. Wetherington uses the term “assault weapons‚” it is misleading to the readers. A true “assault weapon” is fully-automatic and extremely difficult for a law-abiding citizen to own. He is most likely referring to semi-automatic weapons, which can look exactly like fully-automatic assault weapons. However, these semi-automatic weapons are no different in action or caliber than a typical hunting rifle, except they look “scary.” This is certainly not a legitimate reason to ban or restrict the weapon any further, and thankfully Congress used logic when it allowed the former restrictions on these “scary” guns to expire.
Mr. Wetherington proposes a running-scoreboard in Times Square, on news channels, and in major newspapers that lists daily gun deaths, much like the previous deficit clock. The count “could be divided by murders, accidental deaths and self-defense.”
For Mr. Wetherington and the readers’ information, according to the CDC, in 2005, there were approximately 31,000 gun-related deaths; of that number fewer than 800 were unintentional (670 adults and 130 juveniles). Of that 31,000, there were 17,000 suicides and 12,000 homicides, certainly not a jaw-dropping statistic or even a Times Square-worthy statistic when you consider that the population of the United States was over 296 million in 2005.
This means that .004 percent of the population were a victim of homicide. The CDC does not factor in whether these homicides were self-defense or criminal acts. It also does not factor in the nature of the homicide — innocent bystander being murdered versus a gang-related death. This is not to say that the innocent victims who were murdered are not important, but stricter gun control laws would not have prevented their death.
In the case of the Virginia Tech shootings last year, Seung-Hui Cho had a documented history of mental illness, and the state of Virginia failed to close a loophole that would have prevented him from purchasing both handguns. Fixing this problem is certainly a reasonable and responsible thing to do, but to insist that we need stronger or more gun control laws for mentally stable, law-abiding citizens is ridiculous. If anything is to be done, lawmakers should abolish gun-free “safety zones,” which put the public and citizens who would carry a concealed weapon in more danger. A criminal, by his or her definition, is not going to respect a law that prohibits carrying a weapon on a college campus or any other public gathering. These “safety zones” are hot spots for violent rampages that result in mass murders.
Mr. Wetherington goes on to insist that “the weapons — handguns and assault weapons — used in the gun deaths must also be listed.” He states that this will provide “solid evidence” to our nation’s lawmakers that handguns and those pesky “assault weapons” cause “needless deaths and are rarely used for protection in a home or business.”
Mr. Wetherington has again failed to do his homework. There is already solid evidence — but to the contrary. In the early 1990s, Gary Kleck, a professor at Florida State University’s College of Criminology and Criminal Justice, scientifically estimated that there are as many as 2.5 million defensive uses of guns (handguns etc.) every year. This estimate not only includes instances where the weapon was fired; it also includes when a weapon was just brandished or drawn by the victim, and the situation was neutralized.
A few years later, Dr. John Lott, while a professor at the University of Chicago, co-authored research that showed states with concealed carry laws had lower overall crime rates than those states that prohibited or had very strict concealed carry laws. When states such as Florida adopted early concealed carry laws in the mid-1980s, crime rates dropped approximately 78 percent. However, when governments ban guns, crime rates increase dramatically. For example, in 1996 the United Kingdom “strengthened” gun control laws and subsequently crime rates rose 40 percent. When Australia followed similar suit that same year, violent crime rates rose an average of 25 percent.
The state and federal gun control laws that are in place work. Law-abiding citizens do not use their right to legally own and carry guns to commit crime and murder. They use their right to defend and deter crime or murder from happening to themselves or others. Criminals do not obtain their weapons (handguns or “assault weapons”) legally; therefore more or stricter gun control laws do not solve the problem.
Keith Perry
Tifton
