This is Part 2 of the Political Sticks on Gun Control article...
Decreased availability,
increased accountability
Guns
don’t kill people. People kill people. But if you take assault weapons out of
circulation, you reduce the ability of deranged people to get guns. People
without access to assault weapons are not able to fire hundreds or thousands of
rounds within minutes.
Guns
don’t kill people. People kill people. But if you enforce rigorous background
checks and create a register of gun owners, you significantly improve the
accountability of the individual.
In
the United States, the law does not require that a record of the acquisition,
possession and transfer of each privately held firearm be retained in an
official register.[1]
And forty per cent of gun sales are not subjected to background checks. Imagine
not knowing to whom forty per cent of the cars in a country belong. Indeed, ‘in some
places, even a bicycle must be registered, as must some household dogs’.[2]
But not guns. No Sir, that – of all things - would be infringing my freedom.
Ninety
per cent of gang related homicides involve hand guns. Without a nationwide,
Federal law requiring background checks and a national gun registry, a
gang-banger from Chicago in the strictly controlled state of Illinois can drive
to Indiana, and purchase a gun with virtually no-one knowing.
It
is not about the Government controlling you, or taking away your guns as it
seems the N.R.A. would have you believe. It is not about unconstitutionally
taking away your rights. It is about sensibly, logically and coherently reducing
the chances of any killing machine falling in to the hands of a killer, and
ensuring there are ways to trace those that do. It is about monitoring who has
a weapon in the same way most countries in the world monitor who owns a motor
vehicle. And it’s about doing this for the safety of your family and your
children.
Those damn politicians
Those damn politicians
In
1996, the sleepy cathedral town of Dunblane in Scotland was battered by the
sound of gunfire within the grounds of its primary school. Eighteen people
died. Six weeks later, on the other side of the world, a shooter killed 35
people in Port Arthur, Australia.
Following
Port Arthur, conservative Australian Prime Minister John Howard – elected with
the help of gun enthusiasts - proposed strict gun control laws including a ban
on all semi-automatic rifles and all semi-automatic and pump-action shotguns,
along with a highly restrictive system of licensing and ownership controls. He
also launched possibly the most ambitious gun buyback programme ever seen.[3] Despite
surveys showing up to 85% of Australians being in support of gun control, his
party fought off multiple attempts to influence and undermine his Government –
including one town hall meeting when he was advised by his security to wear a
bullet proof vest - and the controls were enacted. A country that suffered 13
mass shootings in the 18 years preceding the Port Arthur massacre has been
subjected to none since, and firearm suicides fell by 74% as a result of the
gun buyback scheme.[4]
In
Britain, then Conservative Prime Minister John Major worked with Leader of the
Opposition Tony Blair to enact the ‘Firearms (Amendment) Act 1997’.[5]
Gun laws were further tightened by the implementation of the ‘Firearms
(Amendment) (No. 2) Act 1997’ under the Labour Government after Tony Blair’s
victory in the 1997 General Election.[6]
This second Act effectively made private ownership of handguns illegal in the
United Kingdom.
Until
2010, crime-ridden Britain experience no further mass shootings, with gun
related homicides remaining below 100 per year since 1997.[7]
America,
meanwhile, had seven mass shootings last year alone, with gun related deaths
dropping below 10,000 per year only once since the turn of the millennium.[8]
(Note:
It is widely accepted that Britain has succeeded in controlling guns, what it
has not yet managed to create is a substantial knife control policy.)
Far
from the existence of guns in the wrong hands being combatted by guns in the
right hands, and generally arming every demographic of society to the teeth,
surely the idealistic way to reduce gun crime is to reduce the existence of
guns entirely? America has the highest percentage of gun ownership per capita
in the world. Yemen is second - about half the rate of America. Japan, on the
other hand, has virtually eliminated gun crime, people just don’t own guns. In
2006, two people were killed with
guns, this jumped to a comparatively astonishing 22 in 2007. In 2008, 11 people
died at the end of a firearm; a year in which 587 Americans were killed by guns
that fired accidentally.[9]
Japan
has laws against owning guns, against owning ammunition, and against firing
that ammunition from a gun. Japan has written tests, shooting range tests,
mental fitness tests and drug tests. (After all, guns don’t kill people; people
kill people). Thorough background checks will be undertaken for criminal
records, as will checks for involvement or contact with criminal or extremist
groups. The police will keep documentation relating to the location of your gun
in your home – which must be locked away. And the location of your ammunition –
which, obviously, must be locked and stored in a separate location. They will
also inspect the gun each year, and you will be required to retake each class
and test every three years.
That
is gun control. That, to many, is the kind of responsibility and care that
should be a condition of gun ownership. In Japan, you know that gun owners have
the utmost respect for their weapons, and the system to which they must adhere.
They can still have their fun. They can still shoot at targets, they can still
hunt. And they know that if they do, they are a part of a responsible,
regulated system, and are far less likely to be on the receiving end of a
bullet as a result.
The Art of Rhetoric
How
have Britain and Australia controlled gun crime in their countries in the last
decade, and how has Japan been the epitome of a gun free nation for just as
long, if not longer? As we so often can when looking for a logical, measured argument
on American politics, we need look no further than the fictional political
juggernaut that is The West Wing for a resoundingly apt conclusion penned by
Aaron Sorkin and delivered by Richard Schiff as White House Communications
Director Toby Ziegler:
‘I
do know that if you combine the populations of Great Britain, France, Germany,
Japan, Switzerland, Sweden, Denmark and Australia, you’ll get a population
roughly the size of the United States. We had 32,000 gun deaths last year. They
had 112. Do you think it’s because Americans are more homicidal by nature? Or
do you think it’s because those guys have gun control laws?’
FURTHER READING: 17th March 2013
Stephen King releases passionate essay on gun control
Click on the links below to read previous content from Political Sticks:
Click on the links below to read previous content from Political Sticks:
[1] USA.
1968. ‘Rules and Regulations.’ Gun Control Act of 1968, Public Law 90-618,
Title 18, United States Code – Firearms; Chapter 44 (Section 926).
[2] Warren E. Burger, Chief Justice of the United
States (1969-86) writing in Parade Magazine, January 14, 1990
[3] The gun buyback program
collected nearly 650,000 assault weapons and 50,000 additional weapons – about
one sixth of the national stock. (Source: ABC News - http://abcnews.go.com/International/australia-model-successful-gun-control-laws/story?id=18007055)
[4] John Howard writing in the New
York Times, January 2013: http://www.nytimes.com/2013/01/17/opinion/australia-banned-assault-weapons-america-can-too.html?_r=0
[5]
http://www.legislation.gov.uk/ukpga/1997/5/contents
[6]
http://www.legislation.gov.uk/ukpga/1997/64/contents
[7] United Nations Office on Drugs
and Crime (UNODC) statistics:
http://www.unodc.org/unodc/en/data-and-analysis/homicide.html
[8] Also UNODC statistics:
http://www.unodc.org/unodc/en/data-and-analysis/homicide.html
[9]
http://www.theatlantic.com/international/archive/2012/07/a-land-without-guns-how-japan-has-virtually-eliminated-shooting-deaths/260189/
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