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Gun Control: For the Children?
Written by Howard Nemerov
Thursday, March 04, 2004
~~o~~ I am constantly amazed at the emotional highjacking and moral posturing of gun controllers. Gun controllers are lying when they say they have children’s interests at heart; they are merely using children to promote their own goal of civilian disarmament. Senator Barbara Boxer sent out an e-mail that I received entitled ''Protecting Our Children.'' I have included the text, one paragraph at a time, to better understand the insanity and bigotry of a gun controller’s mind. ''An estimated 3.3 million children in the United States live in houses with guns. In most cases, those guns have so little trigger resistance they could be fired by a 3-year-old. The potential for tragedy is overwhelming, and we need to act to diminish this threat to children. Child safety locks are an easy and inexpensive way to make our children safer. I recently introduced the 'Child Safety Device Act of 2004' to make these locks mandatory on manufacturer and dealer sales of handguns.'' Notice the fear-mongering, followed by the standard rant of ''we need to act.'' Let’s not take time to think, let’s just do something to make us feel better about ourselves. Let’s use children to bolster our failed self-esteem. ''Potential for tragedy'' means that there has not yet been tragedy. Should we get rid of cars because they have a potential to mow down 50 farmers market customers at a time? (1) Should we illegalize bath tubs and buckets because they kill more children each year than guns? (2) Over 70 million additional civilian firearms have been sold since 1990 (3), yet the firearm death rate for children under 15 has dropped 60%. (4) With all those children living in homes containing firearms, if Boxer assumed correctly, the death rate should be much higher for children. More questions for Barbara: Why do you want to make firearms more expensive and less affordable to poorer folks who live in inner cities? How are they to defend their children against violent predators? A gun lock may be ''inexpensive'' to you, but that is not the case for the little people you profess to care so much for. “My legislation would require gun retailers to provide locking devices with any handgun they sell, and direct the Consumer Product Safety Commission to create a consumer product safety standard for the locking devices which ensures they are sufficiently protective and prevent discharge of the handgun unless the device has been removed.” Another one of Boxer’s ''reasonable gun control'' steps towards confiscation, this bill would begin to put gun regulation into the hands of three politically-appointed bureaucrats who could regulate civilian firearms out of existence.(5) Their product safety standards could make it impossible for civilians to own firearms. Ignoring the legal precedent of innocent until proven guilty, Boxer seeks to circumvent due process and legislative representation, and uses children to promote gun confiscation. “In 2000, more than nine young people aged 19 and under were killed each day in gun homicides, suicides, and unintentional shootings in the United States. 1,776 children and teenagers were murdered with guns, 1,007 committed suicide with guns, and 193 died in unintentional shootings. A recent Johns Hopkins study found that 44 percent of deaths could have been prevented with the use of safety devices.” Let’s take square aim at the crown jewel of gun control. You will often hear the manta ''nine (up to 13) kids a day'' as if it is sacred truth. It creates a vision of plaid-shirted goon squads mowing school children down like some sort of absurd horror story come to life. Notice how she fudges and uses the phrase ''children and teenagers.'' Guy Smith does an excellent job of debunking this myth about children and guns in his research paper entitled ''Gun Facts.'' (6) When you subtract adults, criminals, and suicides, you end up with less than one child per day dying from guns. Contrast this with 13 children a day dying in cars, or four from parental abuse and neglect. These are all horrible tragedies, but Barbara, if you truly cared about children’s lives more than your own chances for reelection, wouldn’t your energies be better spent banning cars and parents? The vast majority of these ''young people'' are criminals shot while engaged in illegal activity. They illegally own guns, and any new regulation would make it more likely that they would own illegal, unsafe firearms, while law-abiding citizens would own fewer. This will drive up crime, as we won’t be able to defend ourselves from predators like the ones Boxer weeps over. Unlike Boxer’s contrived concern aimed at pandering to her anti-gun constituency, armed citizens show incredible self-discipline when attacked by teenage predators. The vast majority of armed confrontations during commission of a crime result in the armed citizen holding criminals until the police arrive. (7) This gets to another part of the equation ignored by gun controllers: the cost of not owning a gun for self-defense. Citizens who avoid becoming crime victims often save not only their lives, but their businesses which represent significant contribution to our economy. By virtue of their age and ''occupation,'' teenage criminals have contributed nothing. Armed citizens have saved our country billions of dollars in health care, insurance claims, and business infrastructure. (8) While gun ownership has risen, the suicide rate for children has dropped slightly. (9) It is fascinating to note that the child suicide rate was lowest prior to the 1968 Gun Control Act, which banned children from purchasing guns. ''As a U.S. Senator, I have worked hard to keep guns out of the hands of our children, out of our schools, and off the streets. This legislation ensures that guns that are purchased in the future can be safely secured.'' Meaning, taken away from you, thereby giving the government absolute power over your sorry lives. You are incompetent and stupid, and I don’t trust you. ''Safely secured'' means owned exclusively by the government. Between 1.2 and 1.5 million children died during the Holocaust, most of them Jews. (10,11) In 1938, Hitler, one of the world’s foremost experts on gun control, enacted gun laws that forbade Jews from owning firearms. (12) When the Nazis came to round them up, parents had no way to protect their children. It took Hitler about six years to murder an average of 550 kids per day. (We haven’t even included all the children murdered by other world-famous gun control experts like Stalin and Mao.) Compare this with less than one per day in our free society, or even Boxer’s 9 per day, as if gang-bangers won’t kill each other without guns. At today’s death rates for the entire country, it would take over 60 years equal what Hitler did to only one segment of society, according to Boxer’s estimate. If compared to the accidental death rate for children, it would take over 1,000 years. This does not factor in the nearly tripled world population since 1940, so it may be closer to 3,000 years. Barbara, how can you possibly consider doing again to your people what history has shown to be the road to Hitler’s Final Solution? Action Items for Those Who Are Interested Call your Congressional representatives and tell them to vote NO on S. 2129, the Child Safety Device Act of 2004. Footnotes (1) Infant Dies After Santa Monica Farmers’ Market Crash. NBC4 TV News, July 17, 2003. http://www.nbc4.tv/news/2337407/detail.html (2) Gun Facts, Version 3.3. Guy Smith, 2003, page 188. Go to http://www.gunfacts.info/ and select the format you prefer. Quoted here: statistics from CDC, 1999. (3) Firearms Commerce in the United States 2001/2002. Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, and Firearms.
http://www.atf.gov/pub/fire-explo_pub/firearmscommerce/firearmscommerce.pdf (4) Table 47 (page 1 of 3). Death rates for firearm-related injuries, according to sex, race, Hispanic origin, and age: United States, selected years 1970–2001. Centers for Disease Control, 2003.
http://www.cdc.gov/nchs/data/hus/tables/2003/03hus047.pdf (5) Consumer Product Safety Commission settlement against Daisy Manufacturing.
http://www.cpsc.gov/CPSCPUB/PREREL/prhtml04/04033stratton.pdf. This paper shows the chilling potential if Boxer’s dream comes true. (6) Gun Facts, Version 3.3, page 14, Guy Smith, 2003. Go to http://www.gunfacts.info/ and select the format you prefer. (7) NRA Armed Citizen Archives
http://www.nraila.org/ArmedCitizen/Default.aspx
Stories of armed citizens who halted or prevented crime. (8) Victim Costs and Consequences: A New Look, Miller, Cohen, Wiersema. National Institute of Justice Research Report, US Department of Justice, January, 1996. http://www.ncjrs.org/pdffiles/victcost.pdf (9) Death rates for suicide, according to sex, race, Hispanic origin, and age: United States, selected years 1950–2001. Centers for Disease Control, 2003.
http://www.cdc.gov/nchs/data/hus/tables/2003/03hus046.pdf (10)_______Butterflies, a memorial to children who died in Holocaust. Tim Bullard, The New Catholic Miscellany, Copyright 1997-98.
http://www.catholic-doc.org/miscellany/1998/0498-hol.html (11)_______Reunion of the One Thousand Children. Veronica Gonzalez, Chicago Tribune, Copyright 2002.
http://www.onethousandchildren.org/pages/629543/index.htm (12)_______Regulations Against Jews Possession of Weapons
http://www.jpfo.org/NaziLawEnglish.htm *** Howard Nemerov is a Bay Area freelance writer who receives e-mail at: hnemerov@netvista.net. |
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