GUN CONTROL: Many are calling for gun control in the name of public safety.
By Ben Diguglielmo, Staff Writer.
In wake of the recent school shooting at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland Florida, students and citizens alike are taking to social media and the streets calling on Congress to take action regarding gun laws.
Many have stated that they are protesting in favor of “common sense” gun control, which seems to range anywhere from a ban on high round magazines and bump stocks, to a total ban on all semi-automatic guns. Not only are all of these ideas an infringement on the right to bear arms, but they are impractical and will lead to increased underground sale of firearms and attachments, empowering gangs and organized crime rings.
What should be considered, is whether or not the United States government is capable of enforcing a ban on semi-automatic guns. We can compare this to the government’s previous attempts to control substances, such as the Prohibition. When the government passed legislation banning the production and use of alcohol in 1920, the Mafia and the people continued distributing alcohol. The government proved incapable of stopping them. More recently, we can examine the modern day Drug War. It’s a harsh reality that many people in and out of high school have drugs easily accessible to them, despite the continued efforts of the government to stop it. In both of these events, sales continued underground, and strengthened gangs.
One can also point to the dangerous history of forced civilian disarmament by government. In 1929, the Soviet Union established gun control and from 1929 to 1953, around 20 million members of the political opposition, were rounded up and exterminated. China established gun control in 1935. From 1948 to 1952, 20 million political protesters, were rounded up and exterminated. Germany established gun control in 1938 and from 1939 to 1945, 13 million Jews and others who were unable to defend themselves were rounded up and exterminated. This does not mean that the government is going to begin a mass genocide, it means that civilian disarmament takes power from the people, and gives it to those who have the guns. Which in most cases, is the government, and the criminal underground.
Even without accounting for the political dangers of disarming the civilian population, statistical evidence shows that gun ownership and violence or not inherently correlated. In 1999, the The National Instant Criminal Background Check System (NCIS) recorded 8,543,037 firearm background checks. While in 2017 they recorded 25,235,215 firearm background checks. This suggests that legal gun sales have almost tripled in the last 17 years. In the same amount of time, the rate of victims of violent crimes per capita has fallen from 506 offenses for every 100,000 (2000) to 383 for every 100,000 (2016.)
Many point to European countries as examples of successful gun control practices. However, the “success” of these countries is grossly exaggerated. For example, while gun ownership in the United Kingdom (UK) is very low. 775 out of 100,000 people in the UK were victims of violent crimes in 2016, while the rate was only 383 out of 100,000 In the US. If gun ownership and crime rates are proportional, how can a virtually gunless society be so much more dangerous than the US?
So even if a relatively gunless society can have more violent crimes per capita, violent crime has fallen while gun ownership has risen, and there’s no evidence to suggest a prohibition on guns would be any more successful than the government’s previous attempts to control substances. What purpose is there to ban guns or attachments? The only thing a ban on semi-automatic guns would accomplish, is a disarming of the law-abiding population, and the criminalization of those who refuse to turn in their guns and have their rights violated.