This has little hope of working in the United States, though, where most gun owners want to keep their firearms. However, even if this were to be effective, how would the government stop newly illegal guns from flooding into the country across America's massive, largely unguarded borders? A study published in by the Trans-Border Institute and Igarape Institute estimates an average of , firearms cross the U. Earlier in , the Canadian government reported it believed there are greater than 1 million prohibited guns in its country, and Canadian officials believe most of the firearms were brought there from the United States.
These figures prove that without massive border-security improvements - which, ironically, most gun-control advocates oppose - there's no way a substantial reduction in guns could ever occur. It's also important to note that relative to other problems in our society of million people, gun-related crime caused by Americans who legally own a firearm involved in the crime is virtually nonexistent.
Of the 33, gun-related deaths that occur each year, two-thirds are suicides, and the majority of the remaining 11, deaths are gang-related and involve guns purchased illegally. By contrast, 88, people die every year from alcohol-linked causes. That means if you exclude suicides, alcohol is percent deadlier than guns including gang-related crime - and virtually no one is calling for another Prohibition, which, it's worth pointing out, was a complete disaster.
Instead of penalizing law-abiding gun owners who use their firearms to save thousands of people every year, lawmakers should work to reduce crime by improving economic growth and providing additional educational opportunities. Those are proven methods for limiting crime. Justin Haskins. Justin Haskins is executive editor and a research fellow at the Heartland Institute heartland. Believing that any gun control law would have disarmed or dissuaded a man willing to commit mass murder is to fail to understand the nature of the beast.
Regardless of gun control laws, criminals, crazies and terrorists manage to obtain firearms. Always have.
Always will. To believe otherwise is dangerously naive. We have to end the revolving-door justice system that returns dangerous criminals to the streets. We have to improve economic and educational opportunities for inner city youth.
Both sides use comparative data from other countries to bolster their arguments. Gun control advocates draw comparisons with countries that have stricter gun laws and much lower levels of gun violence.
Opponents cite countries like Switzerland, with high levels of gun ownership and much lower gun-homicide rates, as evidence of the protective benefit of guns.
Clearly, gun-related crime has more than a single cause, and measurements and trends are subject to manipulation by both sides. For example, while decreasing adult homicide rates in urban areas with tough gun laws are cited as proof of the effectiveness of control, increasing youth homicide rates in the same areas are cited as proof of its futility.
With such wildly divergent sets of statistical ammunition, one wonders if it even makes sense to prepare for this debate by arming oneself with facts and figures.
At a minimum, it seems useful to try to quantify the problem, if not its exact nature. Most estimates place the number of guns in the United States at somewhere over million. Approximately million guns became available to the general public between and , according to statistics compiled by the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms, but some of these are presumably no longer in existence or at least not in working order.
Handguns and rifles each account for slightly over a third of the total, with shotguns slightly under a third. An estimated 4 million new guns are added to these totals annually, and in recent years, over half of the new guns were handguns. Somewhere over a million crimes are committed each year involving a firearm, with recent estimates in the range of 1.
The number of deaths due to guns each year is approximately 38,, divided about evenly between homicides and suicides, with a small fraction attributed to accidents. The "Debate" Reducing the issue of gun control to "pros" and "cons" is probably the least desirable outcome of studying gun control, but it may be a very useful beginning.
The pure pleasure of argument will attract some students. Other students may appreciate being asked for their opinions, rather than having to come up with a "right" answer at the outset of the discussion. The debate used to be waged-both in classrooms and elsewhere-largely on constitutional grounds in terms of the right of individuals to keep and bear arms versus the role of government in providing for the common good.
The U. Supreme Court has had relatively little to say about the Second Amendment, the main constitutional buttress of arguments that regulation is illegal. The amendment reads: "A well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed. When the Supreme Court has ruled, it has been more likely to allow regulation than to prohibit it, at least at the state level. Even Daniel Polsby, a lawyer and one of the most eloquent and persuasive opponents of gun control, suggests that seeking constitutional protection under the Second Amendment is a flawed approach.
He argues that a guaranteed right to bear arms under any circumstances, including those that might endanger public safety, would provide grounds for repeal of the amendment rather than a case for respecting it.
Instead, Polsby argues that the best reason for opposing gun control is that "gun control laws don't work. The terms, but not the tenor, of the debate have changed. Some of the most persuasive of the gun control opponents employ economic arguments, using rational choice theory to demonstrate the inability of regulation to stop the flow of guns into neighborhoods where crime is the dominant employer in local labor markets.
Gun control advocates argue from a public health standpoint, noting that while guns may not cause violence, they do cause violence to be far more lethal. This "lethality," in suicide and accidents as well as homicide, is the imperative from a public health perspective for regulating guns like other deadly substances.
I recently listened to a debate, staged by a public policy school, that featured two respected figures hurling statistics at each other. They treated each other with disdain. I was appalled that this was the way in which we modeled "public affairs" for adults, let alone for young people.
Despite my own bias in favor of regulation, I found myself wondering if such regulation could be effective in a society so full of discord and so lacking in civil discourse. Opponents of regulation argue that laws are not the primary arbiter of behavior. On the other hand, there is surely a social cost when "bad" laws are disregarded, divert resources, or produce a false sense of security. Others would argue that the role of law is not primarily to change behavior, but to reflect the behavioral norms that a society professes.
Even when these norms conflict, the process by which they are negotiated suggests a value in accepting the outcomes. An Alternative Process Consider the following primary learning objectives established for a curriculum that addresses public policy approaches to reducing gang violence: 1 to increase student knowledge of the problem, substituting facts and specific information for stereotypes and generalities 2 to listen to a range of opinions, gaining practice both in persuading others to change and in being open to change 3 to understand that laws need not only to have worthy ends, but must provide effective means 4 to demonstrate the role of ordinary citizens in shaping good laws.
These objectives apply equally well to the study of gun control or to any other public policy issue. It is not necessary that issues be violence-related in order to teach the fundamental concepts of social justice, public responsibility, tolerance, and equity.
But issues related to violence underscore form with function. A classroom debate on gun control as part of a violence-reduction curriculum offers an appealing option, but also presents a situation to be avoided. The appeal of a point-counterpoint method of engaging students in learning models the real-life process of public policy making. But the rancorous, uncivil, and often unproductive nature of the debate-as it has been conducted in the real-life models of state legislatures, the national media, and the halls of Congress-is at odds with producing either good citizens or effective policy.
The challenge is to combine the attraction and inherent interest of the issue with a genuine desire to seek information, solutions, and above all, effective public policy. In attempting to reduce gun violence, the policy debate has focused on regulatory vs. As students consider policy alternatives, it can be helpful to examine the truth of these beliefs and to investigate the context that gives rise to these notions about the so-called American gun culture.
While it is difficult to deny the existence of those ,, guns, it is worthwhile to examine how and why they came into the possession of their owners, and what factors influence their use. Students might also look at other problems with parallel conditions that might suggest solutions to the problem of gun violence.
The following list is merely suggestive of topics that may crop up in your curriculum. Some provide support for popularly held notions, while others might cause students to examine the motives as well as the content of some policy stances.
For instance, some of the earliest gun legislation passed during the post-Civil War era was aimed at disarming recently freed slaves.
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