Firearm Facts for 2002
Read these issues carefully....and then make your educated decision. Separate CRIME and FIREARMS and you might understand the right Americans have to bear arms. As long as our Militia bears, we have the same right...but a responsible right.
Enjoy~
CURRENT ISSUES
"Gun show" legislation would not only impose background checks on private firearm sales at gun shows. It would impose the same requirement on private sales occurring in people's homes. Now, "gun control" advocates are shamelessly trying to use the attacks of September 11 to advance their agenda, claiming that to prevent terrorism a background check should be required on all transfers of firearms, even between friends and family members.
The federal "assault weapon" law affects firearms never widely used in crime, according to a study conducted for Congress. (The Urban Institute, Impact Evaluation of the Public Safety and Recreational Firearms Use Protection Act of 1994, 3/13/97) Among the nearly 200 makes and models of firearms restricted by this onerous law are semi-automatic Service Rifles like the Colt AR-15 and Springfield M1A, the center-fire rifles most commonly used for target shooting competitions. Because Congress has, since 1903, officially recognized that civilian Service Rifle ownership and proficiency is a component of national defense, the law threatens the concept of the citizen-soldier as well as the right of Americans to decide for themselves which firearms to have for target shooting, hunting and protection. The law is scheduled to expire in September 2004, but the anti-gun lobby has already demanded that it be made permanent and--proving its gun confiscation goals--that legal owners of these firearms never be allowed to sell them.
Registration and licensing are precursors to confiscation, as shown in England, Australia, Mexico and California. In the 1970s, the chairman of Handgun Control, Inc., called registration a necessary first step to confiscating all privately owned handguns. The Supreme Court has ruled that felons have Fifth Amendment immunity from registration, thus such measures impact only upon good citizens.
Lawsuits attempting to hold firearm manufacturers financially responsible for the acts of criminals run counter to long-standing principles of tort law, and have been prohibited by the legislatures of 27 states and nearly universally dismissed by the courts.
"One per month" limits on handgun purchases are arbitrary and could be increased to one per year or, as has happened in South Africa, one gun per person. Such limits treat a constitutionally protected right as a mere privilege to be rationed.
Mandatory storage laws, requiring gun owners to install gun locks on all firearms, have been shown to prevent firearms from being used for self-defense.
Raising the age for handgun ownership from 18 to 21 would infringe the right of young adults to defend themselves and their families. YOUNG ADULTS CAN DRIVE CARS, SERVE IN THE MILITARY, VOTE, BUY HOMES AND RAISE FAMILIES. Why shouldn't they be trusted to be responsible gun owners?
Waiting periods have never reduced crime. Historically, violent crime has been worse in states with waiting periods. "Gun control" advocates claim that a waiting period is necessary as a "cooling off period" for "crimes of passion." However, in 1993, after finding no evidence to support that theory, Congress rejected it and approved the National Instant Check.
"Gun control" advocates claim that a thorough records check cannot be accomplished without a delay. But most Instant Checks require only a few minutes, and they are the most comprehensive checks ever run on firearm purchasers, superior to any conducted under waiting periods.
SELF-DEFENSE & RIGHT-TO-CARRY
Survey research during the early 1990s by criminologist Gary Kleck found as many as 2.5 million protective uses of firearms each year in the U.S. "[T]he best available evidence indicates that guns were used about three to five times as often for defensive purposes as for criminal purposes," Kleck writes. Analyzing National Crime Victimization Survey data, he found "robbery and assault victims who used a gun to resist were less likely to be attacked or to suffer an injury than those who used any other methods of self-protection or those who did not resist at all." (Targeting Guns, Aldine de Gruyter, 1997)
Most protective firearm uses do not involve discharge of a firearm. In only 1% of protective uses are criminals wounded and in only 0.1% are criminals killed.
A Dept. of Justice survey found that 40% of felons chose not to commit at least some crimes for fear their victims were armed, and 34% admitted having been scared off or shot at by armed victims. (James D. Wright and Peter H. Rossi, Armed and Considered Dangerous, Aldine de Gruyter, 1986)
Thirty-three states now have Right-to-Carry (RTC) laws providing for law-abiding citizens to carry firearms for protection against criminals. Twenty-three states have adopted RTC laws in the last 15 years. Half of Americans, including 60% of handgun owners, live in RTC states.
Professor John R. Lott, Jr., and David B. Mustard, in the most comprehensive study to date of RTC laws' effectiveness concluded, "When state concealed-handgun laws went into effect in a county, murders fell about 8 percent, rapes fell by 5 percent, and aggravated assaults fell by 7 percent. . . . Will allowing law-abiding citizens to carry concealed handguns save lives? The answer is yes, it will." (Lott, More Guns, Less Crime, Univ. of Chicago Press, 1998)
RTC states have lower violent crime rates on average: 22% lower total violent crime, 28% lower murder, 38% lower robbery, and 17% lower aggravated assault. The five states with the lowest violent crime rates are RTC states. (FBI) People who carry legally are by far more law-abiding than the rest of the public. In Florida, for example, only a fraction of 1% of carry licenses have been revoked because of gun-related crimes committed by license holders. (Florida Dept. of State)
FIREARM SAFETY
Because focus group research has shown that the public reacts unfavorably to the term "gun control," the anti-gun lobby has begun calling its legislative proposals by the euphemistic term "gun safety." (Handgun Control, Inc., now calls itself the "Brady Campaign.")
True gun safety depends on education and personal responsibility, not government regulation. NRA's 38,000 Certified Instructors and Coaches reach 700,000 Americans each year. NRA's award-winning Eddie EagleŽ GunSafe Program has been used by more than 20,000 schools, law enforcement agencies and civic groups to reach more than 15 million children since 1988. Accidental deaths with firearms have been decreasing for decades and are now at an all-time annual low among the U.S. population on the whole and among children in particular. Since 1930, the annual number of such accidents has decreased 78%, while the U.S. population has more than doubled and the number of privately owned guns has quintupled. Among children, fatal firearm accidents have decreased 78% since 1975. (National Center for Health Statistics and National Safety Council)
The per capita rate of accidental deaths with firearms is also at an all-time low, having decreased 91% since the all-time high in 1904. Firearm accidents account for less than 0.9% of accidental deaths and less than 0.04% of all deaths in the U.S. Among children, firearm accidents account for 2% of accidental deaths and 0.4% of all deaths. Most accidental deaths involve motor vehicles or are due to drowning, falls, fires, poisoning, medical mistakes, choking on ingested objects and environmental factors.
"GUN CONTROL" FAILURES
The federal Gun Control Act was imposed in 1968, yet violent crime increased until 1991. Washington, D.C., banned handguns in 1976 and by 1991 its homicide rate had tripled, while the U.S. rate had risen only 12%. Chicago, the only other city to ban handguns, has had more murders than any city for the last two years. Despite having some of the most restrictive gun laws, Maryland's robbery rate remains highest among the states, and Baltimore's murder rate has nearly overtaken D.C.'s.
States that delay firearm sales with waiting periods, licensing and purchase permits have historically had higher crime rates. For many years after California imposed a 15-day waiting period on firearm sales in 1975 (reduced to 10 days in 1997), its violent crime rate was 50% higher each year, on average, compared to the rest of the country. States that prohibit or severely restrict the right to carry have higher crime rates, on average.
A Library of Congress study concluded, "it is difficult to find a correlation between the existence of strict firearms regulations and a lower incidence of gun-related crimes." (Report for Congress: Firearms Regulations in Various Foreign Countries, May 1998)
A study for the Department of Justice concluded, "[A]dvocates of stricter weapons regulations sometimes assert that the United States is virtually the only advanced civilized nation in the world that exercises no controls over the civilian ownership, possession, or use of firearms. In fact, there are about 20,000 firearms laws of one sort or another already on the books." (James D. Wright, Peter H. Rossi and Kathleen Daly, Under the Gun, Aldine de Gruyter, 1983)
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If interested, the rest of the Firearm Facts for 2002 are at: www.nraila.org/factsheets.asp?FormMode=Details&ID=82