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The False Promise of Gun Control

By Daniel D. Polsby

from the March 1994 issue of The Atlantic Monthly.

Gun-control laws may save some lives, but they can never stem the flow of guns, and they divert attention from the roots of our crime problem.

During the 1960s and 1970s the robbery rate in the United States increased sixfold, and the murder rate doubled; the rate of handgun ownership nearly doubled in that period as well. Handguns and criminal violence grew together apace, and national opinion leaders did not fail to remark on that coincidence.

It has become a bipartisan article of faith that more handguns cause more violence. Such was the unequivocal conclusion of the national Commission on the Causes and Prevention of Violence in 1969, and such is now the editorial opinion of virtually every influential newspaper and magazine, from The Washington Post to The Economist to the Chicago Tribune. Members of the House and Senate who have not dared to confront the gun lobby concede the connection privately. Even if the National Rifle Association can produce blizzards of angry calls and letters to the Capitol virtually overnight, House members one by one have been going public, often after some new firearms atrocity at a fast-food restaurant or the like. And last November they passed the Brady bill.

Alas, however well accepted, the conventional wisdom about guns and violence is mistaken. Guns don’t increase national rates of crime and violence — but the continued proliferation of gun-control laws almost certainly does. Current rates of crime and violence are a bit below the peaks of the late 1970s, but because of a slight oncoming bulge in the at-risk population of males aged fifteen to thirty-four, the crime rate will soon worsen. The rising generation of criminals will have no more difficulty than their elders did in obtaining the tools of their trade. Growing violence will lead to calls for laws still more severe. Each fresh round of legislation will be followed by renewed frustration.

Gun-control laws don’t work. What is worse, they act perversely. While legitimate users of firearms encounter intense regulation, scrutiny, and bureaucratic control, illicit markets easily adapt to whatever difficulties a free society throws in their way. Also, efforts to curtail the supply of firearms inflict collateral damage on freedom and privacy interests that have long been considered central to American public life. Thanks to the seemingly never-ending war on drugs and long experience attempting to suppress prostitution and pornography, we know a great deal about how illicit markets function and how costly to the public attempts to control them can be. It is essential that we make use of this experience in coming to grips with gun control.

The thousands of gun-control laws in the United States are of two general types. The older kind sought to regulate how, where, and by whom firearms could be carried. More recent laws have sought to make it more costly to buy, sell, or use firearms (or certain classes of firearms, such as assault rifles, Saturday-night specials, and so on) by imposing fees, special taxes, or surtaxes on them. The Brady bill is of both types: it has a background-check provision, and its five-day waiting period amounts to a “time tax” on acquiring handguns. All such laws can be called scarcity-inducing, because they seek to raise the cost of buying firearms, as figured in terms of money, time, nuisance, or stigmatization.

Despite the mounting number of scarcity-inducing laws, no one is very satisfied with them. Hobbyists want to get rid of them, and gun-control proponents don’t think they go nearly far enough. Everyone seems to agree that gun-control laws have some effect on the distribution of firearms. But it has not been the dramatic and measurable effect their proponents desired.

Opponents of gun control have traditionally wrapped their arguments in the Second Amendment to the Constitution. Indeed, most modern scholarship affirms that so far as the drafters of the Bill of Rights were concerned, the right to bear arms was to be enjoyed by everyone, not just a militia, and that one of the principal justifications for an armed populace was to secure the tranquility and good order of the community. But most people are not dedicated antiquitarians, and would not be impressed by the argument “I admit that my behavior is very dangerous to public safety, but the Second Amendment says I have a right to do it anyway.” That would be a case for repealing the Second Amendment, not respecting it.

Fighting the demand curve

Everyone knows that possessing a handgun makes it easier to intimidate, wound, or kill someone. But the implication of this point for social policy has not been so well understood. It is easy to count the bodies of those who have been killed or wounded with guns, but not easy to count the people who have avoided harm because they had access to weapons. Think about uniformed police officers, who carry handguns in plain view not in order to kill people but simply to daunt potential attackers. And it works. Criminals generally do not single out police officers for opportunistic attack. Though officers can expect to draw their guns from time to time, few even in big-city departments will actually fire a shot (except in target practice) in the course of a year. This observation points to an important truth: people who are armed make comparatively unattractive victims. A criminal might not know if any one civilian is armed, but if it becomes known that a larger number of civilians do carry weapons, criminals will become warier.

Which weapons laws are the right kinds can be decided only after considering two related questions. First, what is the connection between civilian possession of firearms and social violence? Second, how can we expect gun-control laws to alter people’s behavior? Most recent scholarship raises serious questions about the “weapons increase violence” hypothesis. The second question is emphasized here, because it is routinely overlooked and often mocked when noticed; yet it is crucial. Rational gun control requires understanding not only the relationship between weapons and violence but also the relationship between laws and people’s behavior. Some things are very hard to accomplish with laws. The purpose of a law and its likely effects are not always the same thing. many statutes are notorious for the way in which their unintended effects have swamped their intended ones.

In order to predict who will comply with gun-control laws, we should remember that guns are economic goods that are traded in markets. Consumers’ interest in them varies. For religious, moral, aesthetic, or practical reasons, some people would refuse to buy firearms at any price. Other people willingly pay very high prices for them.

Handguns, so often the subject of gun-control laws, are desirable for one purpose — to allow a person tactically to dominate a hostile transaction with another person. The value of a weapon to a given person is a function of two factors: how much he or she wants to dominate a confrontation if one occurs, and how likely it is that he or she will actually be in a situation calling for a gun.

Dominating a transaction simply means getting what one wants without being hurt. Where people differ is in how likely it is that they will be involved in a situation in which a gun will be valuable. Someone who intends to engage in a transaction involving a gun — a criminal, for example — is obviously in the best possible position to predict that likelihood. Criminals should therefore be willing to pay more for a weapon than most other people would. Professors, politicians, and newspaper editors are, as a group, at very low risk of being involved in such transactions, and they thus systematically underrate the value of defensive handguns. (Correlative, perhaps, is their uncritical readiness to accept studies that debunk the utility of firearms for self-defense.) The class of people we wish to deprive of guns, then, is the very class with the most inelastic demand for them — criminals — whereas the people most like to comply with gun-control laws don’t value guns in the first place.

Do guns drive up crime rates?

Which premise is true — that guns increase crime or that the fear of crime causes people to obtain guns? Most of the country’s major newspapers apparently take this problem to have been solved by an article published by Arthur Kellermann and several associates in the October 7, 1993, New England Journal of Medicine. Kellermann is an emergency-room physician who has published a number of influential papers that he believes discredit the thesis that private ownership of firearms is a useful means of self-protection. (An indication of his wide influence is that within two months the study received almost 100 mentions in publications and broadcast transcripts indexed in the Nexis database.) For this study Kellermann and his associates identified fifteen behavioral and fifteen environmental variables that applied to a 388-member set of homicide victims, found a “matching” control group of 388 non-homicide victims, and then ascertained how the two groups differed in gun ownership. In interviews Kellermann made clear his belief that owning a handgun markedly increases a person’s risk of being murdered.

But the study does not prove that point at all. Indeed, as Kellermann explicitly conceded in the text of the article, the causal arrow may very well point in the other direction: the threat of being killed may make people more likely to arm themselves. Many people at risk of being killed, especially people involved in the drug trade or other illegal ventures, might well rationally buy a gun as a precaution, and be willing to pay a price driven up by gun-control laws. Crime, after all, is a dangerous business. Peter Reuter and Mark Kleiman, drug-policy researchers, calculated in 1987 that the average crack dealer’s risk of being killed was far greater than his risk of being sent to prison. (Their data cannot, however, support the implication that ownership of a firearm causes or exacerbates the risk of being killed.)

Defending the validity of his work, Kellermann has emphasized that the link between lung cancer and smoking was initially established by studies methodologically no different from his. Gary Kleck, a criminology professor at Florida State University, has pointed out the flaw in this comparison. No one ever thought that lung cancer causes smoking, so when the association between the two was established the direction of the causal arrow was not in doubt. Kleck wrote that it is as though Kellermann, trying to discover how diabetics differ from other people, found that they are much more likely to possess insulin than nondiabetics, and concluded that insulin is a risk factor for diabetes.

The New York Times, the Los Angeles Times, The Washington Post, The Boston Globe, and the Chicago Tribune all gave prominent coverage to Kellermann’s study as soon as it appeared, but none saw fit to discuss the study’s limitations. A few, in order to introduce a hint of balance, mentioned that the NRA, or some member of its staff, disagreed with the study. But readers had no way of knowing that Kellermann himself had registered a disclaimer in his text. “It is possible,” he conceded, “that reverse causation accounted for some of the association we observed between gun ownership and homicide.” Indeed, the point is stronger than that: “reverse causation” may account for most of the association between gun ownership and homicide. Kellermann’s data simply do not allow one to draw any conclusion.

If firearms increased violence and crime, then rates of spousal homicide would have skyrocketed, because the stock of privately owned handguns has increased rapidly since the mid-1960s. But according to an authoritative study of spousal homicide in the American Journal of Public Health, by James Mercy and Linda Saltzman, rates of spousal homicide in the years 1976 to 1985 fell. If firearms increased violence and crime, the crime rate should have increased throughout the 1980s, while the national stock of privately owned handguns increased by more than a million units in every year of the decade. It did not. Nor should the rate of violence and crime in Switzerland, New Zealand, and Israel be as low as they are, since the number of firearms per civilian household is comparable to that in the United States. Conversely, gun-controlled Mexico and South Africa should be islands of peace instead of having murder rates more than twice as high as those here. The determinants of crime and law-abidingness are, of course, complex matters, which are not fully understood and certainly not explicable in terms of a country’s laws. But gun-control enthusiasts, who have made capital out of the low murder rate in England, which is largely disarmed, simply ignore the counterexamples that don’t fit their theory.

If firearms increased violence and crime, Florida’s murder rate should not have been falling since the introduction, seven years ago, of a law that makes it easier for ordinary citizens to get permits to carry concealed handguns. Yet the murder rate has remained the same or fallen every year since the law was enacted, and it is now lower than the national murder rate (which has been rising). As of last November 183,561 permits had been issued, and only seventeen of the permits had been revoked because the holder was involved in a firearms offense. It would be precipitate to claim that the new law has “caused” the murder rate to subside. Yet here is a situation that doesn’t fit the hypothesis that weapons increase violence.

If firearms increased violence and crime, programs of induced scarcity would suppress violence and crime. But — another anomaly — they don’t. Why not? A theorem, which we could call the futility theorem, explains why gun-control laws must either be ineffectual or in the long term actually provoke more violence and crime. Any theorem depends on both observable fact and assumption. An assumption that can be made with confidence is that the higher the number of victims a criminals assumes to be armed, the higher will be the risk — the price — of assaulting them. By definition, gun-control laws should make weapons scarcer and thus more expensive. By our prior reasoning about demand among various types of consumers, after the laws are enacted criminals should be better armed, compared with non criminals, than they were before. Of course, plenty of noncriminals will remain armed. But even if many noncriminals will pay as high a price as criminals will to obtain firearms, a larger number will not.

Criminals will thus still take the same gamble they already take in assaulting a victim who might or might not be armed. But they may appreciate that the laws have given them a freer field, and that crime still pays — pays even better, in fact, than before. What will happen to the rate of violence? Only a relatively few gun-mediated transactions — currently, five percent of armed robberies committed with firearms — result in someone’s actually being shot (the statistics are not broken down into encounters between armed assailants and unarmed victims, and encounters in which both parties are armed). It seems reasonable to fear that if the number of such transactions were to increase because criminals thought they faced fewer deterrents, there would be a corresponding increase in shootings. Conversely, if gun-mediated transactions declined — if criminals initiated fewer of them because they feared encountering an armed victim or an armed good Samaritan — the number of shootings would go down. The magnitude of these effects is, admittedly, uncertain. Yet it is hard to doubt the general tendency of a change in the law that imposes legal burdens on buying guns. The futility theorem suggests that gun-control laws, if effective at all, would unfavorably affect the rate of violent crime.

The futility theorem provides a lens through which to see much of the debate. It is undeniable that gun-control laws work — to an extent. Consider, for example, California’s background-check law, which in the past two years has prevented about 12,000 people with a criminal record or a history of mental illness or drug abuse from buying handguns. In the same period Illinois’s background-check prevented the delivery of firearms to more than 2,000 people. Surely some of these people simply turned to an illegal market, but just as surely not all of them did. The laws of large numbers allow to say that among the foiled thousands, some potential killers were prevented from getting a gun. We do not know whether the number is large or small, but it is implausible to think it is zero. And, as gun-control proponents are inclined to say, “If only one life is saved…”

The hypothesis that firearms increase violence does predict that if we can slow down the diffusion of guns, there will be less violence; one life, or more, will be saved. But the futility theorem asks that we look not simply at the gross number of bad actors prevented from getting guns but at the effect the law has on all the people who want to buy a gun. Suppose we succeed in piling tax burdens on the acquisition of firearms. We can safely assume that a number of people who might use guns to kill will be sufficiently discouraged not to buy them. But we cannot assume this about people who feel that they must have guns in order to survive financially and physically. A few lives might indeed be saved. But the overall rate of violent crime might not go down at all. And if guns are owned predominantly by people who have good reason to think they will use them, the rate might even go up.

Are there empirical studies that can serve to help us choose between the futility theorem and the hypothesis that guns increase violence? Unfortunately, no: the best studies of the effects of gun-control laws are quite inconclusive. Our statistical tools are too weak to allow us to identify an effect clearly enough to persuade an open-minded skeptic. But it is precisely when we are dealing with undetectable statistical effects that we have to be certain we are using the best models of human behavior.

Sealing the border

Handguns are not legally for sale in the city of Chicago, and have not been since April of 1982. Rifles, shotguns, and ammunition are available, but only to people who possess an Illinois Firearm Owner’s Identification card. It takes up to a month to get this card, which involves a background check. Even if one has a FOID card there is a waiting period for the delivery of a gun. In few places in America is it as difficult to get a firearm legally as in the city of Chicago.

Yet there are hundreds of thousands of unregistered guns in the city, and new ones arriving all the time. It is not difficult to get handguns — even legally. Chicago residents with FOID cards merely go to gun shops in the suburbs. Trying to establish a city as an island of prohibition in a sea of legal firearms seems an impossible project.

Is a state large enough to be an effective island, then? Suppose Illinois adopted Chicago’s handgun ban. Same problem again. Some people could just get guns elsewhere: Indiana actually borders the city, and Wisconsin is only forty miles away. Though federal law prohibits the sale of handguns in one state to residents of another, thousands of Chicagoans with summer homes in other states could buy handguns there. And, of course, a black market would serve the needs of other customers.

When would the island be large enough to sustain a weapons-free environment? In the United States people and cargoes move across state lines without supervision or hindrance. Local shortages of goods are always transient, no matter whether the shortage is induced by natural disasters, prohibitory laws, or something else.

Even if many states outlaws sales of handguns, then, they would continue to be available at a somewhat higher price, reflecting the increased legal risk of selling them. Mindful of the way markets work to undermine their efforts, gun-control proponents press for federal regulation of firearms, because they believe that only Congress wields the authority to frustrate the interstate movement of firearms.

Why, though, would one think that federal policing of illegal firearms would be better than local policing? The logic of that argument is far from clear. Cities, after all, are comparatively small places. Washington, DC, for example, has an area of less than 45,000 acres. Yet local officers have had little luck repressing the illegal firearms trade there. Why should federal officers do any better watching the United States’ 12,000 miles of coastline and millions of square miles of interior? Criminals should be able to frustrate federal police forces just as well as they can local ones. Ten years of increasingly stringent federal efforts to abate cocaine trafficking, for example, have not succeeded in raising the street price of the drug.

Consider the most drastic proposal currently in play, that of Senator John Chafee, of Rhode Island, who would ban the manufacture, sale, and home possession of handguns within the United States. This proposal goes far beyond even the Chicago law, because existing weapons would have to be surrendered. Handguns would become contraband, and selling counterfeit, stolen, and contraband goods is big business in the United States. The objective of law enforcement is to raise the costs of engaging in crime and so force criminals to take expensive precautions against becoming entangled with the legal system. Crimes of a given type will, in theory, decline as soon as the direct and indirect costs of engaging in them rise to the point at which criminals seek more profitable opportunities in other (not necessarily legal) lines of work.

In firearms regulation, translating theory into practice will continue to be difficult, at least if the objective is to lessen the practical availability of firearms to people who might abuse them. On the demand side, for defending oneself against predation there is no substitute for a firearm. Criminals, at least, can switch to varieties of law-breaking in which a gun confers little to no advantage (burglary, smash-and-grab), but people who are afraid of confrontations with criminals, whether rationally or (as an accountant might reckon it) irrationally, will be very highly motivated to acquire firearms. Long after the marijuana and cocaine wars of this century have been forgotten, people’s demand for personal security and for the tools they believe provide it will remain strong.

On the supply side, firearms transactions can be consummated behind closed doors. Firearms buyers, unlike those who use drugs, pornography, or prostitution, need not recurrently expose themselves to legal jeopardy. One trip to the marketplace is enough to arm oneself for life. This could justify a consumer’s taking even greater precautions to avoid apprehension, which would translate into even steeper enforcement costs for police.

Don Kates, Jr, a San Francisco lawyer and a much-published student of this problem, has pointed out that during the wars in Southeast and Southwest Asia local artisans were able to produce, from scratch, serviceable pot-metal counterfeits of AK-47 infantry rifles and similar weapons in makeshift backyard foundries. Although inferior weapons cannot discharge thousands of rounds without misfiring, they are more than deadly enough for light to medium service, especially by criminals and people defending themselves and their property, who ordinarily use firearms by threatening with them, not by firing them. And the skills necessary to make them are certainly as widespread in America as in the villages of Pakistan or Vietnam. Effective policing of such a cottage industry is unthinkable. Indeed, as Charles Chandler has pointed out, crude but effective firearms have been manufactured in prisons — highly supervised environments, compared with the outside world.

Seeing that local firearms restrictions are easily defeated, gun-control proponents have latched onto national controls as a way of finally making gun control something more than a gesture. But the same forces that have defeated local regulation will defeat further national regulation. Imposing higher costs on weapons ownership will, of course, slow down the weapons trade to some extent. But planning to slow it down in such a way as to drive down crime and violence, or to prevent motivated purchasers from finding ample supplies of guns and ammunition, is an escape from reality. And like many other such, it entails a morning after.

Administering prohibition

Assume for the sake of argument that to a reasonable degree of criminological certainty, guns are every bit the public-health hazard they are said to be. It follows, and many journalists and a few public officials have already said, that we ought to treat guns the same we do smallpox viruses or other critical vectors of morbidity and mortality — namely, isolate them from potential hosts and destroy them as speedily as possible. Clearly, firearms have at least one characteristic that distinguishes them from smallpox viruses: nobody wants to keep smallpox viruses in the nightstand drawer. Amazingly enough, gun-control literature seems never to have explored the problem of getting weapons away from people who very much want to keep them in the nightstand drawer.

Our existing gun-control laws are not uniformly permissive, and, indeed, in certain places are tough even by international standards. Advocacy groups seldom stress the considerable differences among American jurisdictions, and media reports regularly assert that firearms are readily available to anybody anywhere in the country. This is not the case. For example, handgun restrictions in Chicago and the District of Columbia are much less flexible than the ones in the United Kingdom. Several hundred thousand British subjects may legally buy and possess sidearms, and anyone who joins a target-shooting club is eligible to do so. But in Chicago and the District of Columbia, excepting peace officers and the like, only grandfathered registrants may legally possess handguns. Of course, tens or hundreds of thousands of people in both those cities — nobody can be sure how many — do in fact possess them illegally.

Although though is, undoubtedly, illegal handgun ownership in the United Kingdom, especially in Northern Ireland (where considerations of personal security and public safety are decidedly unlike those elsewhere in the British Isles), it is probable that Americans and Britons differ in their disposition to obey gun-control laws: there is reputed to be a marked national disparity in compliance behavior. This difference, if it exists, may have something to do with the comparatively marginal value of firearms to British consumers. Even before it had strict firearms regulation, Britain had very low rates of crimes involving guns; British criminals, unlike their American counterparts, prefer burglary (a crime of stealth) to robbery (a crime of intimidation).

Unless people are prepared to surrender their guns voluntarily, how can the US government confiscate an appreciable fraction of our country’s nearly 200 million privately owned firearms? We know that it is possible to set up weapons-free zones in certain locations — commercial airports and many courthouses and, lately, some troubled big-city high schools and housing projects. The sacrifices of privacy and convenience, and the costs of paying guards, have been though worth the (perceived) gain in security. No doubt it would be possible, though it would probably not be easy, to make weapons-free zones of shopping centers, department stores, movie theaters, ball parks. But it is not obvious how one would cordon off the whole of an open society.

Voluntary programs have been ineffectual. From time to time community-action groups or police departments have sponsored “turn in your gun” days, which are nearly always disappointing. Sometimes the government offers to buy guns at some price. This approach has been endorsed by Senator Chafee and the Los Angeles Times. Jonathan Alter, of Newsweek, has suggested a variation on this theme: youngsters could exchange their guns for a handshake with Michael Jordan or some other sports hero. If the price offered exceeds that at which a gun can be bought on the street, one can expect to see plans of this kind yield some sort of harvest — as indeed they have. But it is implausible that these schemes will actually result in a less-dangerous population. Government programs to buy up surplus cheese cause more cheese to be produced without affecting the availability of cheese to people who want to buy it. So it is with guns.

One could extend the concept of intermittent roadblocks of the sort approved by the Supreme Court for discouraging drunk driving. Metal detectors could be positioned on every street corner, or ambulatory metal-detector squads could check people randomly, or hidden magnetometers could be installed around towns, to detect concealed weapons. As for firearms kept in homes (about half of American households), warrantless searches might be rationalized on the well-established theory that probable cause is not required when authorities are trying to correct dangers to public safety rather than searching for evidence of a crime.

In a recent “town hall” meeting in California, President Bill Clinton used the word “sweeps,” which he did not define, to describe how he would confiscate firearms if it were up to him. During the past few years the Chicago Housing Authority chairman, Vincent Lane, has ordered “sweeps” of several gang-ridden public-housing projects, meaning warrantless searches of people’s homes by uniformed police officers looking for contraband. Lane’s ostensible premise was that possession of firearms by tenants constituted a lease violation that, as a conscientious landlord, he was obliged to do something about. The same logic could justify any administrative search. City health inspectors in Chicago were recently authorized to conduct warrantless searches for lead hazards in residential paint. Why not lead hazards in residential closets and nightstands? Someone has probably already thought of it.

Ignoring the ultimate sources of crime and violence

The American experience with prohibition has been that black marketeers — often professional criminals — move in to profit when legal markets are closed down or disturbed. In order to combat them, new laws and law-enforcement techniques are developed, which are circumvented almost as soon as they are put in place. New and yet more stringent laws are enacted, and greater sacrifices of civil liberties and privacy demanded and submitted to. But in this case the problem, crime and violence, will not go away, because guns and ammunition (which, of course, won’t go away either) do not cause it. One cannot expect people to quit seeking new weapons as long as the tactical advantages of weapons are seen to outweigh the costs imposed by the prohibition. Nor can one expect large numbers of people to surrender firearms they already own. The only way to make people give up their guns is to create a world in which guns are perceived as having little value. This world will come into being when criminals choose not to use guns because the penalties for being caught with them are too great, and when ordinary citizens don’t think they need firearms because they aren’t afraid of criminals anymore.

Neither of these eventualities seems very likely without substantial departures in law-enforcement policy. Politicians’ nostrums — increasing the punishment for crime, slapping a few more death-penalty provisions into the code — are taken seriously by few students of the crime problem. The existing penalties for predatory crimes are quite severe enough. The problem is that they are rarely meted out in the real world. The penalties formally published by the code are in practice steeply discounted, and criminals recognize that the judicial and penal systems cannot function without bargaining in the vast majority of cases.

This problem is not obviously one that legislation could solve. Constitutional ideas about due process of law make the imposition of punishments extraordinarily expensive and difficult. Like the tax laws, the criminal laws are basically voluntary affairs. Our system isn’t geared to a world of wholesale disobedience. Recalibrating the system simply by increasing its overall harshness would probably offend and then shock the public long before any of its benefits were felt.

To illustrate, consider the prospect of getting serious about carrying out the death penalty. In recent years executions have been running at one or two dozen a year. As the late Supreme Court Justice Potter Stewart observed, those selected to die constitute a “capriciously selected random handful” taken from a much larger number of men and women who, just as deserving of death, receive prison sentences. It is not easy to be exact about that much larger number. But as an educated guess, taking into account only the most serious murders — the ones that were either premeditated or committed in the course of a dangerous felony — there are perhaps 5,000 prisoners a year who could plausibly be executed in the United States: say, 100,000 executions in the next twenty years. It is hard to think that the death penalty, if imposed on this scale, would not noticeably change the behavior of potential criminals. But what else in national life or citizens’ character would have to change in order to make that many executions acceptable? Since 1930 executions in the United States have never exceeded 200 a year. At any such modest rate of imposition, rational criminals should consider the prospect of receiving the death penalty effectively nil. On the best current evidence, indeed, they do. Documentation of the deterrent effect of the death penalty, as compared with that of long prison sentences, has been notoriously hard to produce.

The problem is not simply that criminals pay little attention to the punishments in the books. Nor is it even that they also know that for the majority of crimes, their chances of being arrested are small. The most important reason for criminals behavior is this: the income that offenders can earn in the world of crime, as compared with the world of work, all too often makes crime appear to be the better choice.

Thus the crime bill that Bill Clinton introduced last year, which provides for more prisons and police officers, should be of only very limited help. More prisons means that fewer violent offenders will have to be released early in order to make space for new arrivals; perhaps fewer plea bargains will have to be struck — all to the good. Yet a moment’s reflection should make clear that one more criminal locked up does not necessarily mean one less criminal on the street. The situation is very like one that conservationists and hunters have always understood. Populations of game animals readily recover from hunting seasons but not from loss of habitat. Means streets, when there are few legitimate entry-level opportunities for young men, are a criminal habitat, so to speak, in the social ecology of modern American cities. Cull however much one will, the habitat will be preoccupied promptly after its previous occupant is sent away. So social science has found.

Similarly, whereas increasing the number of police officers cannot hurt, and may well increase people’s subjective feelings of security, there is little evidence to suggest that doing so will diminish the rate of crime. Police forces are basically reactive institutions. At any realistically sustainable level of staffing they must remain so. Suppose 100,000 officers were added to police fosters nationwide, as proposed in the current crime bill. This would amount to an overall personnel increase of about 18 percent, which would be parceled out according to the iron laws of democratic politics — distributed through states and congressional districts — rather than being sent to the areas that most need relief. Such an increase, though unprecedented in magnitude, is far short of what would be needed to pacify some of our country’s worst urban precincts.

There is a challenge here that is quiet beyond being met with tough talk. Most public officials can see the mismatch between their tax base and the social entropies they are being asked to repair. There simply isn’t enough money; existing public resources, as they are now employed, cannot possibly solve the crime problem. But mayors and senators and police chiefs must not say so out loud: too-disquieting implications would follow. For if the authorities are incapable of restoring public safety and personal security under the existing ground rules, then obviously the ground rules must change, to give private initiative greater scope. Self-help is the last refuge of non scoundrels.

Communities must, in short, organize more effectively to protect themselves against predators. No doubt this means encouraging properly qualified private citizens to possess and carry firearms legally. It is not morally tenable — nor, for that matter, is it even practical — to insist that police officers, few of whom are at a risk remotely as great as are the residents of many city neighborhoods, retain a monopoly on legal firearms. It is needless to fear giving honest men and women the training and equipment to make it possible for them to take back their own streets.

Over the long run, however, there is no substitute for addressing the root causes of crime — bad education and lack of job opportunities and the disintegration of families. Root causes are much out of fashion nowadays as explanations of criminal behavior, but fashionable or not, they are fundamental. The root cause of crime is that for certain people, predation is a rational occupational choice. Conventional crime-control measures, which by stiffening punishments or raising the probability of arrest aim to make crime pay less, cannot consistently affect the behavior of people who believe that their alternatives to crime will pay virtually nothing. Young men who did not learn basic literacy and numeracy skills before dropping out of their wretched public schools may not have been worth hiring at the minimum wage set by George Bush, let alone at the higher, indexed minimum wage that has recently been under discussion by the Clinton Administration. Most independent studies of the effects of raising minimum wages show a similar pattern of excluding the most vulnerable. This displacement, in turn, makes young men free, in the nihilistic, nothing-to-lose sense, to dedicate their lives to crime. Their legitimate opportunities, as always precarious in a society where race and class still matter, often diminish to the point of being for all intents and purposes absent.

Unfortunately, many progressive policies work out in the same way as increases in the minimum wage — as taxes on employment. One example is the Administration’s pending proposal to make employer-paid health insurance mandatory and universal. Whatever the undoubted benefits of the plan, a payroll tax is needed to make it work. Another example: in recent years the use of the “wrongful discharge” tort and other legal innovations has swept through the courts of more than half the states, bringing to an end the era of “employment at will,” when employees (other than civil servants) without formal contracts — more than three quarters of the workforce — could be fired for good reason, bad reason, or no reason at all. Most commentators celebrated the loss of the at-will rule. How could one object to a new legal tenet that prohibited only arbitrary and oppressive behavior by employers?

But the costs of the rule are not negligible, only hidden. At-will employment meant that companies could get out of the relationship as easily as employees could. In a world where dismissals are expensive rather than cheap, and involve lawyers and the threat of lawsuits, rational employers must become more fastidious about whom they hire. By raising the costs of ending the relationship, one automatically raises the threshold of entry. The burdens of the rule fall unequally. Worst hit are entry-level applicants who have little or no employment history to show that they would be worth their pay.

Many other tax or regulatory schemes, in the words of Professor Walter Williams, of George Mason University, amount to sawing off the bottom rungs of the ladder of economic opportunity. By suppressing job creation and further diminishing legal employment opportunities for young men on the margin of the work force, such schemes amount to an indirect but unequivocal subsidy to crime.

The solution to the problem of crime lies in improving the chances of young men. Easier said than done, to be sure. No one has yet proposed a convincing program for checking all the dislocating forces that government assistance can set in motion. One relatively straightforward change would be reform of the educational system. Nothing guarantees prudent behavior like a sense of the future, and with average skills in reading, writing, and math, young people can realistically look forward to constructive employment and the straight life that steady work makes possible.

But firearms are nowhere near the root of the problem of violence. As long as people come in unlike sizes, shapes, ages, and temperaments, as long as they diverge in their taste for risk and their willingness and capacity to prey on other people or to defend themselves from predation, and above all as long as some people have little or nothing to lose by spending their lives in crime, dispositions to violence will persist.

This is what makes the case for the right to bear arms, not the Second Amendment. It is foolish to let anything ride on hopes for effective gun control. As long as crime pays as well as it does, we will have plenty of it, and honest folk must choose between being victims and defending themselves.

Gun Control: White Man’s Law

by William R. Tonso

Chances are that you’ve never heard of General Laney. He hasn’t had a brilliant military career, at least as far as I know. In fact, I’m not certain that he’s even served in the military. General, you see, isn’t Laney’s rank. General is Laney’s first name. General Laney does, however, have a claim to fame, unrecognized though it may be.

Detroit resident General Laney is the founder and prime mover behind a little publicized organization known as the National Black Sportsman’s Association, often referred to as “the black gun lobby.” Laney pulls no punches when asked his opinion of gun control: “Gun control is really race control. People who embrace gun control are really racists in nature. All gun laws have been enacted to control certain classes of people, mainly black people, but the same laws used to control blacks are being used to disarm white people as well.”

Laney is not the first to make this observation. Indeed, allied with sportsmen in vocal opposition to gun controls in the 1960s were the militant Black Panthers. Panther Minister of Information, Eldridge Cleaver noted in 1968: “Some very interesting laws are being passed. They don’t name me; they don’t say, take the guns away from the niggers. They say that people will no longer be allowed to have (guns). They don’t pass these rules and these regulations specifically for black people, they have to pass them in a way that will take in everybody.”

Some white liberals have said essentially the same thing. Investigative reporter Robert Sherrill, himself no lover of guns, concluded in his book *The Saturday Night Special* that the object of the Gun Control Act of 1968 was black control rather than gun control. According to Sherrill, Congress was so panicked by the ghetto riots of 1967 and 1968 that it passed the act to “shut off weapons access to blacks, and since they (Congress) probably associated cheap guns with ghetto blacks and thought cheapness was peculiarly the characteristic of imported military surplus and the mail-order traffic, they decided to cut off these sources while leaving over-the-counter purchases open to the affluent.” Congressional motivations may have been more complex than Sherrill suggests, but keeping blacks from acquiring guns was certainly a large part of that motivation. (Incidentally, the Senate has passed legislation that would repeal the more-onerous provisions of the 1968 act. The bill faces an uncertain future in the House of Representatives.)

There is little doubt that the earliest gun controls in the United States were blatantly racist and elitist in their intent. San Francisco civil-liberties attorney Don B. Kates, Jr., an opponent of gun prohibitions with impeccable liberal credentials (he has been a clerk for radical lawyer William Kunstler, a civil rights activist in the South, and an Office of Economic Opportunity lawyer), describes early gun control efforts in his book *Restricting Handguns: The Liberal Skeptic Speak Out*. As Kates documents, prohibitions against the sale of cheap handguns originated in the post-Civil War South. Small pistols selling for as little as 50 or 60 cents became available in the 1870s and ’80s, and since they could be afforded by recently emancipated blacks and poor whites (whom agrarian agitators of the time were encouraging to ally for economic and political purposes), these guns constituted a significant threat to a southern establishment interested in maintaining the traditional structure.

Consequently, Kates notes, in 1870 Tennessee banned “selling all but ‘the Army and Navy model’ handgun, i.e., the most expensive one, which was beyond the means of most blacks and laboring people.” In 1881, Arkansas enacted an almost identical ban on the sale of cheap revolvers, while in 1902, South Carolina banned the sale of handguns to all but “sheriffs and their special deputies – i.e., company goons and the KKK.” In 1893 and 1907, respectively, Alabama and Texas attempted to put handguns out of the reach of blacks and poor whites through “extremely heavy business and/or transactional taxes” on the sale of such weapons. In the other Deep South states, slavery-era bans on arms possession by blacks continued to be enforced by hook or by crook.

The cheap revolvers of the late 19th and early 20th centuries were referred to as “Suicide Specials,” the “Saturday Night Special” label not becoming widespread until reformers and politicians took up the gun control cause during the 1960s. The source of this recent concern about cheap revolvers, as their new label suggests, has much in common with the concerns of the gunlaw initiators of the post-Civil War South. As B. Bruce-Briggs has written in the Public Interest, “It is difficult to escape the conclusion that the ‘Saturday Night Special’ is emphasized because it is cheap and is being sold to a particular class of people. The name is sufficient evidence – the reference is to ‘niggertown Saturday night.'”

Those who argue that the concern about cheap handguns is justified because these guns are used in most crimes should take note of *Under the Gun: Weapons, Crime, and Violence in America*, by sociologists James D. Wright, Peter H. Rossi, and Kathleen Daly. The authors, who undertook an exhaustive, federally funded, critical review of gun issue research, found *no conclusive proof that cheap handguns are used in crime more often than expensive handguns*. (Interestingly, the makers of quality arms, trying to stifle competition, have sometimes supported bans on cheap handguns and on the importation of cheap military surplus weapons. Kates observes that the Gun Control Act of 1968, which banned mail-order gun sales and the importation of military surplus firearms, “was something domestic manufacturers had been impotently urging for decades.”) But the evidence leads one to the conclusion that cheap handguns are considered threatening primarily because minorities and poor whites can afford them.

Attempts to regulate the possession of firearms began in the northern states during the early part of the 20th century, and although these regulations had a different focus from those that had been concocted in the South, they were no less racist and elitist in effect or intent. Rather than trying to keep handguns out of the price range that blacks and the poor could afford, New York’s trend-setting Sullivan Law, enacted in 1911, required a police permit for legal possession of a handgun. This law made it possible for the police to screen applicants for permits to posses handguns, and while such a requirement may seem reasonable, it can and has been abused.

Members of groups not in favor with the political establishment or the police are automatically suspect and can easily be denied permits. For instance, when the Sullivan Law was enacted, southern and eastern European immigrants were considered racially inferior and religiously and ideologically suspect. (Many were Catholics or Jews, and a disproportionate number were anarchists or socialists.) Professor L. Kennett, coauthor of the authoritative history *The Gun in America*, has noted that the measure was designed to “strike hardest at the foreign-born element,” particularly Italians. Southern and eastern European immigrants found it almost impossible to obtain gun permits.

Over the years, application of the Sullivan Law has become increasingly elitist as the police seldom grant handgun permits to any but the wealthy or the politically influential. A beautiful example of this hypocritical elitism is the fact that while the *New York Times* often editorializes against the private possession of handguns, the publisher of that newspaper, Arthur Ochs Sulzberger, has a hard-to-get permit to own and carry a handgun. Another such permit is held by the husband of Dr. Joyce Brothers, the pop psychologist who has claimed that firearms ownership is indicative of male sexual inadequacy.

Gun-control efforts through the centuries have been propelled by racist and elitist sentiments. Even though European aristocrats were members of a weapons-loving warrior caste, they did their best to keep the gun from becoming a weapon of war. It was certainly all right to kill with civilized weapons such as the sword, the battle ax, or the lance; these were weapons that the armored knights were trained to use and which gave them a tremendous advantage over commoners who didn’t have the knights’ training or possess their expensive weapons and armor. But guns, by virtue of being able to pierce armor, democratized warfare and made common soldiers more than a match for the armored and aristocratic knights, thereby threatening the existence of the feudal aristocracy.

As early as 1541, England enacted a law that limited legal possession of handguns and crossbows (weapons that were considered criminally dangerous) to those with incomes exceeding 100 pounds a year, though long-gun possession wasn’t restricted – except for Catholics, a potentially rebellious minority after the English Reformation. Catholics couldn’t legally keep militia-like weapons in their homes, as other Englishmen were encouraged to do, but they could legally possess defensive weapons – except, as Bill of Rights authority Joyce Lee Malcolm has noted in her essay “The Right to Keep and Bear Arms: The Common Law Tradition,” during times “of extreme religious tension.”

According to Malcolm, when William and Mary came to the English throne, they were presented with a list of rights, one of which was aimed at staving off any future attempt at arms confiscation – “all Protestant citizens had a right to keep arms for their defence.” England then remained free of restrictive gun legislation until 1920 when, even though the crime rate was very low, concern about the rebellious Irish and various political radicals ushered in today’s draconian gun laws. (Colin Greenwood, former superintendent of the West Yorkshire Metropolitan Police, has discovered in his research at Cambridge University that the English gun crime rate is significantly *higher* now than it was before that nation’s strict gun laws were enacted.)

Alas, the European aristocracy wasn’t able to control gun use, and at least in part, the spread of effective firearms helped to bring down aristocracy and feudalism. By contrast, in 17th-century Japan the ruling Tokugawa Shogunate was able to establish a rigidly stratified society that deemphasized the development of guns and restricted arms possession to a warrior aristocracy, the *samurai*. When Commodore Perry “reopened” Japan to the rest of the world, in the middle of the 19th century, few Japanese were familiar with guns (the sword was the most honored weapon of the samurai) and the most common guns were primitive matchlocks similar to those introduced to Japan by the Portuguese in the middle of the 16th century. As post-Perry Japan modernized and acquired a modern military, it also quickly developed modern weaponry. But a citizenry without a gun-owning tradition was easily kept in place in a collectivist society where individuals were more susceptible to formal and informal social controls than are westerners.

The preceding are just samples of the political uses to which gun controls have been put throughout the world. Nazi Germany, the Soviet Union, and South Africa are modern examples of repressive governments that use gun control as a means of social control. Raymond G. Kessler, a lawyer- sociologist who has provided some of the most sociologically sophisticated insights into the gun control issue, suggests in a *Law and Policy Quarterly* article that attempts to regulate the civilian possession of firearms have five political functions. They “(1) increase citizen reliance on government and tolerance of increased police powers and abuse; (2) help prevent opposition to the government; (3) facilitate repressive action by government and its allies; (4) lesson the pressure for major or radical reform; and (5) can be selectively enforced against those perceived to be a threat to government.”

Of course, while many gun control proponents might acknowledge that such measures have been used in the ways Kessler lists, they would deny that the controls that they support are either racist or elitist, since they would apply to everybody and are aimed at reducing violence for everybody. Yet the controls that they advocate are in fact racist and elitist in *effect*, and only the naive or the dishonest can deny their elitist *intent*.

Kessler has also written that while liberals are likely to sympathize with the poor and minorities responsible for much of this nation’s violent crime, when the are victimized themselves, “or when they hear of an especially heinous crime, liberals, like most people, feel anger and hostility toward the offender. The discomfort of having incompatible feelings can be alleviated by transferring the anger away from the offender to an inanimate object – the weapon.”

A perfect example of this transference is provided by Pete Shields, the chairman of Handgun Control Inc., whose son was tragically murdered by one of San Francisco’s Zebra killers – blacks who were killing whites at random in the early 1970s. This killing was carried out by a black man who was after whites – his own skin color and that of the victim were important to the killer – but in his grief, the white liberal father couldn’t blame the criminal for this racist crime. So the gun was the culprit. The upshot is that we now have Handgun Control Inc., with its emphasis on the *weapon* used to commit a crime rather than the criminal. Yet blacks and minorities, who would be prevented from defending themselves, are likely to be harmed most by legislation proposed by Handgun Control Inc., the National Coalition to Ban Handguns, and other proponents of strict handgun controls.

Since the illegal possession of a handgun (or of any gun) is a crime that doesn’t produce a victim and is unlikely to be reported to the police, handgun permit requirements or outright handgun prohibitions aren’t easily enforced. And as civil liberties attorney Kates has observed, when laws are difficult to enforce, “enforcement becomes progressively more haphazard until at last the laws are used only against those who are unpopular with the police.” Of course minorities, especially minorities who don’t “know their place,” aren’t likely to be popular with the police, and these very minorities, in the face of police indifference or perhaps even antagonism, may be the most inclined to look to guns for protection – guns that they can’t acquire legally and that place them in jeopardy if possessed illegally. While the intent of such laws may not be racist, their effect most certainly is.

Today’s gun-control battle, like those of days gone by, largely breaks down along class lines. Though there are exceptions to the rule, the most dedicated and vociferous proponents of strict gun controls are urban, upper-middle-class or aspiring upper- middle-class, pro-big-government liberals, many of whom are part of the New Class (establishment intellectuals and the media), and most of whom know nothing about guns and the wide range of legitimate uses to which they are regularly put to use. Many of these elitists make no secret of their disdain for gun-owners. For instance, Gov. Mario Cuomo of New York recently dismissed those who are opposed to the Empire State’s mandatory seat-belt law as “NRA hunters who drink beer, don’t vote, and lie to their wives about where they were all weekend.”

On the other hand, the most dedicated opponents of gun control are often rural- or small-town-oriented, working- or middle-class men and women, few of whom possess the means to publicize their views, but many of whom know a great deal about the safe and lawful uses of guns. To these Americans, guns mean freedom, security, and wholesome recreation. The battle over gun controls, therefore, has come about as affluent America has attempted to impose its anti- gun prejudices on a working-class America that is comfortable with guns (including handguns), seldom misuses them (most gun crime is urban), and sees them as protection against criminal threats and government oppression.

How right you are, General Laney. “All gun laws have been enacted to control certain classes of people….”

— William R. Tonso is a professor of sociology at the University of Evansville and the author of Gun and Society.

— Reprinted, with permission, from the December 1985 issue of REASON magazine. Copyright (c) 1985 by the Reason Foundation, 2716 Ocean Park Blvd., Suite 1062, Santa Monica, CA 90405. Not to be printed for circulation without permission.

Savage Model 110 in .243 Winchester

Savage Model 110 in .243 Winchester
Savage Model 110 in .243 Winchester

By Syd

We went out to Knob Creek yesterday to try out the new Savage Model 110 in .243 Winchester and we were very pleased. The scope, while “bore sighted at the factory” must have been zeroed to a much greater distance than what we were shooting, 50 and 100 yards. After we figured that out, the rifle settled down and began to shoot nicely. We fired a total of 40 rounds, perhaps a bit much, but we were swabbing the barrel every three shots. The .243 Winchester cartridge is a nice shooting load. It’s a .308 case necked-down to 6mm. It is the largest varmint cartridge and the smallest deer load, and consequently it is not punishing to shoot like a .30-06 or 7mm Magnum. The .243 strikes a good balance–pleasant for target shooting but powerful enough to train my kids to hunt. This is not to say that it has no recoil, because it does. After about 20 rounds, Alex, 14, said he was finished for the day because his shoulder was getting tender. We went out to the range with a box of Remington 80g soft points, and when we had fired those, we bought a box of Federal 100g HydraShoks. The kick from the 100g bullets was noticeably stronger than the 80g.

This is the first new long-range precision rifle I’ve owned. All of my other rifles have been hand-me-downs or used. Since this was a new and never before fired rifle, I wanted to make sure that I was initiating it properly. I had read a bit about the esoteric subject of barrel break-in and wanted to do it right if a break-in was in fact required. In the good old days, back when I was a kid, I never heard anything about breaking in barrels on hunting rifles. People just bought a new rifle and went out and shot it. Nevertheless, this art of barrel break-in has emerged recently so I researched it the best I could given my eagerness to get out to the range and shoot it. I did purchase a bore guide and a one-piece cleaning rod for the purpose of avoiding nicks in the chamber and gunk in the action.

In talking to people and scanning the web on the question of barrel break-in, I found opinion that ranged from almost mystical devotion about rituals of barrel break-in on one hand to a total rejection and disbelief on the other. The theory goes like this: on a new barrel, minute burrs and such catch copper as the bullet blasts down the barrel and removing the copper between each shot has the effect of polishing the barrel by preventing copper build-up. This is said to make the rifle a more consistent shooter and easier to clean up. To a certain extent this makes sense because it is logical that some of this would happen, and it’s not that different from fire lapping. On the other hand, isn’t that what I’m paying the rifle manufacturer to do, to prepare a firearm with adequate finishes inside and out which will enable it to perform accurately? Oh, well. I decided to split the difference. We swabbed out the barrel with Hoppes between each shot for the first five shots, then between each three for twenty. Seemed to work pretty well, and it was very easy to get the barrel “squeaky clean” at the end of the day.

The Simmons scope is a variable power 3-9×40 hunting scope with a simple duplex reticle (cross hairs). It does not have distance estimation marks, mil-dots, or some of the other niceties of the premium scopes, but then it doesn’t cost more than your car either. The optics are very bright and clear and the adjustment controls are straight forward and easy to use, giving 1/4″@100 yard click stops for elevation and windage. If I were going to be shooting much further than 200 yards, I would want more scope than this, but for hunting deer in the 100-200 yard range it is fine and quite adequate. For target shooting and plinking, well, it already sees much better than I do, and if the target is out past 200 yards it better be the size of a car.

This rifle and scope is one of the best values in a quality thunder stick that I’ve seen in quite some time. In terms of accuracy, the Savage rifles hold their own and often exceed their Remington and Winchester counterparts which cost twice as much.

Enfield No. 4 Mk.1

Enfield No. 4 Mk. 1 Rifle
Enfield No. 4 Mk. 1 Rifle

By Dick Tracy

Last year while shopping for jewelry for my wife we decided to stop at our local pawn shop to see what they had. While my wife was looking at their rather large display case full of gold ,silver and diamonds I decided to wander over to the gun section. Their prices are usually pretty high but I thought it worth a look since my wife was to busy talking to the owner to notice my wandering and I’m not much on jewelry.

There it sat in the very far corner of the gun rack. An obviously sporterized Enfield No.4 Mk.1. The price tag said $125 but I knew with a little creative talking I could buy it for a little less. I had nothing to lose so I offered $75 for it. I was promptly told no. Well we haggled for about 30-45 minutes and settled on $85(I still think they gave it to me at that price so I would just leave). I took my new prize home with a smile. I was especially happy because I have one of the greatest wives in the world. Not only did she not get upset at me for buying “another gun”, she got so interested in the rifle that she decided to forgo the jewelry to go shoot “that cute little rifle”. As it turned out she took her first deer with it but that’s another story.

I should give a little description of this little gem. It looks allot like the one in the photo with a few exceptions. The rear portion of my stock is of original configuration. Who ever owned it previously modified the detachable magazine to a fixed floor plate (looks kinda cool). The fore arm piece in the photo looks very close to mine (mine also does not have the top piece of wood). The front sight is a removable piece(which I removed). Barrel length is a measured 21.5 inch barrel. I ended up buying the excellent scope mount for the Enfield from S&K. It is a very sturdy mount of very good quality. I mounted a Bushnell 3-9×32 and bore sighted the now neat looking little rig.

I took the handy looking little set up to the range along with 80 rounds of Winchesters 180 gr. power points. My first couple of groups (3 shots per) were not real impressive. A 2.69” and a 2” even. I buckled down and paid more attention to what I was about and the next group shocked me to say the least. .38”! I knew it had to be a fluke. Well it was. But! I decided to let the barrel cool and cleaned it out while doing so. Once the cooling was done I settled back down on the bench. I fired three more groups before checking them out. When I went down to have a look at the target I was very happy indeed.

As I was taking the proper measurements I recorded these results. 1.69, 1.13 and what! .44! I should have quit at that point because it was getting dark fast. So far I had a group avg. of 1.4 in. But in my stubbornness I decide to shoot one more group. 2.38, damn. Well not to bad really it still came out with a 1.5”. avg! That’s as good an average as many new bolt action rifles. I would probably been able to keep that last group down under two inches but the light was almost gone and the target was a little hard to see. I have shot many groups since then (in good light) and have yet to shoot over two inches. Actually rarely over 1.75 inches!

I have been using .303s to hunt deer for the last four seasons and I can tell you this, They kill deer well! Matter of fact I would not hesitate to use it for Elk and Moose with Federal’s 180 grain Trophy Bonded High energy load. As long as one observes and adheres to the guns range limitations( with a 180 gr. load 250 yards on the large critters is not out of the question) the .303B should work as well as anything (with proper load selection). I believe I’ll try Hornady’s 150 gr. light magnum load this year. I’ll let you all know how it turns out.

Enfield Rifle Sites:

Lee-Enfield Rifles

.303 British

Enfield Rifle Research

Lee-Enfield Rifle Site

Richard’s Lee-Enfield Page

SMLE No.1 Mk. III Parts Page

The Lee-Enfield Forum

High Noon Sky High Holster

High Noon Sky High Holster
High Noon Sky High Holster

By Michael King

Michael King is a southwest Wisconsin Police Chief with a background in tactical operations and firearms training. He has been a member of the Illinois Tactical Officers Association since 1990

During the last decade, the trend in law enforcement firearms carry gear seems to be moving toward the use of high tech synthetics. While the synthetics are cost effective, durable and practical in most respects, I’ve never been particularly impressed with the stuff. Maybe my age is showing, but I still prefer to carry my pistols in a well designed holster built from quality leather. No doubt there are of custom holster makers who provide a superb product — but at a price and time frame that the average police officer may find prohibitive.

Over the past couple of years, I’ve located a manufacturer that satisfies my requirements for a quality holster at a reasonable price. High Noon Holsters is a relative newcomer to law enforcement leather. My introduction to High Noon Holsters located in Florida came a few months ago when I was in the market for a high ride thumb break duty holster for my Colt 1911. Since I rarely work in a uniform there days, I favor a pancake style holster that rides high and close enough to clear my desk (my office environment these days) and yet still offer a natural draw. The thumb break is appropriate for those times that I do work in uniform. During my search, I was thumbing through a national firearms publication when I noticed an ad placed by High Noon. The add included a photo of a well designed holster of exactly the type I was seeking. I contacted High Noon by phone and had my holster in short order.

The Sky High holster I received is well designed, well built and beautifully finished. It is fitted perfectly to the pistol and rides just right for a natural draw. The belt loops are triple stitched and the wet molding is just detailed enough to provide a perfect fit without hampering a smooth draw. Do I sound impressed? Well I really am. I was so impressed that I immediately ordered a similar one without the thumb break for off duty carry. While waiting for the second holster to arrive, I had a discussion with Michael from High Noon about various options that were available. I’ve been a real fan of suede lined holsters ever since Safariland introduced their green Orthopedic Elk suede lined holsters during the seventies. Not only did Michael offer to add this option to my future holster orders, but he eagerly agreed to exchange the holster I had already purchased for a similar lined model for only the cost of the optional lining. Talk about exceptional customer service!

The second model Topless holster was easily the equal of the first, and perfectly suited for concealed carry. Its been my daily companion for about three months now and I have yet to find any flaws. In addition to the duty holsters, I secured a Need For Speed model for IPSC competition. The Need For Speed model is reminiscent of the Bianchi Askin Avenger although, by my estimation, its a bit more sturdy and secure, with a molder sight track and adjustable retention screw.

High Noon also markets concealment type magazine pouches. I prefer a single mag pouch for both duty and off duty carry. The Tie Breaker carrier offered is first rate. It features a one way snap on belt tunnel, tension on the magazine is adjustable with the same type of screw retention device used on High Noon’s gun holsters. Magazine access is excellent and the fit and finish of the carrier is outstanding. High Noon offers the quality conscious buyer a series of extremely rugged and well designed holsters that easily is the equal of the far higher priced custom makers.

The ClipDraw

By Vaughn Terpack

When I saw the ad, I called John Rugh. John had earlier sent me one of his Woodsman’s Pals to test and review in my column so I was familiar with the quality of his craftsmanship. Considering that the Pal he sent has been abused severely and hasn’t lost its edge or rusted out, I was confident that the Clipdraw would perform as advertised.

I wasn’t disappointed. Installed under the rightside panel on my Springfield Armory 1911A1 in less than a minute, the Clipdraw adds nothing to the weight or feel of the gun. Being nothing more than a bent piece of very-thin metal, this was expected.

What I didn’t expect was the versatility the clipdraw afforded. I’ve been searching high and low for a holster that fits my body style (I was called plump by a coin-fed scale at the health food store); even most shoulder rigs don’t fit my 57″ chest. Anyhow, being what I like to think of as masculinely proportioned, the majority of holsters just don’t fit.
The Clipdraw does. The simple spring-steel clip fits where most holsters won’t. Strong-side carry…Small of the Back…Crossdraw…Seatbelt…you name it. All you have to do is stick it down the waistband and go. Hear a noise in the night? Grab your pistol and the “holster” comes with it.

The only downside to the Clipdraw, and it’s a slight one, is that it doesn’t prevent the gun from twisting. With a 1/4″ gap between the slide and the mouth of the clip, you need to wear a thick belt to insure a tight grip or you’ll find yourself with a muzzle-forward rake one minute and a butt-forward rake the next. This allowance of rotation is necessary if you want the spring clip to last a good while, but it does make a dedicated grip position hard to get. You can develop muscle memory to some degree but there is still a bit of fumbling because the handle is never exactly where it was a moment ago.

Having said that, I don’t have a serious problem with the Clipdraw and recommend it highly. Skyline is a top notch company with a reputation for craftsmanship that is hard to beat. For the price ($20), you won’t find a handier, more versatile way of toting your iron.

Where Is The Militia?

By Larry Pratt

During World War II, governors of east and west coast states called up the citizen-militia to deal with the threat of invasion by the Germans and Japanese.

Following 9/11, the governors did nothing and the federal government created a new bureaucracy in Washington to coordinate federal police agencies.

Everybody knows that Japan attacked Pearl Harbor, an act which was followed by a congressional declaration of war in 1941. Many fewer know that the Japanese also launched an invasion off the coast of Kona, one of the Hawaiian islands.

The attack against Kona took place in 1941 and was met by an armed militia (not a neighborhood watch). One description of the attack comes from Elizabeth Goldhahn writing in the Missoulan on December 8, 1991:

Every gun in that part of the coast was mobilized, civilian volunteers assembled, along with the military…. The men were armed, ready and waiting when the Japanese patrol boats approached. A concentrated volley from big game rifles, small arms and handguns left the Japanese rolling in the crimson surf. None of them set foot on Hawaii…. The force set to occupy the Kona region was destroyed to a man.

The threat of Japanese attack continued. The Japanese did successfully occupy a couple of the Aleutian Islands in 1942, and it cost 700 American lives to dislodge them.

Also in 1942, a Japanese sub fired shells at an oil refinery at Goleta, California and later fired shells into the naval base at Fort Stevens, Oregon.

In response, militia patrolled the west coast of the country during those tense years.

In the east, a German submarine penetrated Long Island for the purpose of blowing up bridges and water works. The saboteurs were captured and executed. Civilian pilots and sailors patrolled the east coast with their handguns and rifles at the ready.

Fifty years later, four gun-free zones flew right past the noses of the professional police forces of the country. During the time the Muslim mass murderers were preparing for 9/11, the FBI was investigating President Clinton’s bete noire, the vast right wing conspiracy. They did not have even a clue as to the real threat to America.

In spite of the national police force’s record of failure, even more centralization of their power is being coordinated by Tom Ridge, the Director of Homeland Security.

The airplanes are still gun free, and we know from FAA inspectors that they have been successful in slipping weapons through airport security nearly fifty percent of the time. This is following the federalization of airport security personnel.

The President and his subordinates have opposed even arming pilots. (Would it have been a bad thing or a good thing if a passenger or two had had a gun on the planes of 9/11?)

The Constitution provides for the militia. It gives the Congress power to provision the militia and to select its officers.

Why are the citizen militia not being called up to guard bridges, waterworks, nuclear plants, and airports? They have as much training for this as the national guard and other military units that have been assigned for some of these duties — none. Other than Military Police, the training of the military is to search and destroy — not exactly the training needed for protecting nuclear power plants. Why was the militia good enough for providing homeland security in the 1940’s, but not in 2002?

We should not stretch our Clinton-decimated military further than it is now. We should be calling up and training citizen militias.

Perhaps the idea of using “civilians” violates the unconstitutional notion that security can only be provided by a centralized, professionalized police force. The people cannot be trusted, in this view, to participate in providing their own protection.

This notion of a centralized police fits comfortably with the growing acceptance that only the federal government can provide for all of life’s needs — education, old age, unemployment, health, etc.

The growing preemption of American life by the federal government has no room for individual responsibility. Rather than encourage the militia, politicians are busily looking for ways to disarm more and more Americans.

It is an unconstitutional view. Those that hold it should not be trusted to hold public office.

Source: Gun Owners of America

Survey of Police Officers in Lehigh and Northampton Counties Pennsylvania

October 1997

Survey Response Rate: 56%

 

 

Field Work: 6/20/97 to 9/10/97

by

Stephen L. Christopoulos
250 S. 21st Street
Easton, PA 18049
(610)250-4694

 


 

Background

The idea for doing a survey of local police officers on the subject of firearms ownership and safety grew out of a discussion between Jim Carlisle of the Allentown Health Bureau and myself in the early summer of 1997. We both agreed that such an undertaking could prove to be both interesting and insightful. My personal motivation was curiosity.

 


 

Methodology

I began researching the subject area by searching the Internet sites of groups on both sides of the issue including Handgun Control Inc, National Rifle Association, The Center to Prevent Handgun Violence, Gun Owners of America, Coalition to Stop Gun Violence, The Citizens Committee for the Right to Keep and Bear Arms, Pacific Centre for Violence Prevention, Jews for the Preservation of Firearm Ownership, Washington Ceasefire, and The Lawyers Second Amendment Foundation.

Searching through these organizations’ material uncovered several major themes that I decided should be explored in the survey instrument including questions of opinion and of fact. My Internet search also turned up three previously conducted police surveys on the same general subject which provided a starting point for developing the questionnaire.

Once the questionnaire had been developed, I contacted a local police chief and asked for his help in reviewing the survey instrument to ensure the questions and the wording were appropriate and clear. As a result of his input, the wording of several questions was changed and additional demographic questions were developed.

Using the list provided by the Allentown Health Bureau of police departments in Lehigh and Northampton counties I began contacting the chief’s of police during the last week of June. I asked if I could meet with each of them for the purpose of having them look at the survey to decide whether or not they would allow their officers to take part in the survey. Of the forty-four local police departments, only one declined. Each police department was provided with enough questionnaires and sealable manila envelopes for each of its officers.

Each chief was responsible for distributing the surveys and for collecting them upon completion. Approximately three weeks after the distribution of the questionnaires, I called each chief to see if I could pick up their completed surveys. I finished picking up completed surveys by the end of August.

Copies of this summary of the results were distributed to the participating police departments on the 18th and 19th of September. Also, copies of the results and diskettes containing the response data were mailed to Handgun Control Inc and the National Rifle Association for their edification.

 


 

Comments

All the police chiefs were easily contacted, generous with their time, and friendly. Toward the end of the response period, one of the chiefs asked if I was working for one of the organizations listed at the top of the page or if I was attempting to win grant money by doing this project. The answer to both of these questions is no. I have worked as a research analyst at Easton Hospital since 1992 and can be reached during business hours at 610-250-4694.

 


 

Statistical Tolerances of Survey Data

In interpreting survey results it should be noted that all sample surveys are subject to sampling error, That is, the extent to which the results may differ from those that would be obtained if the entire population had responded. The size of such sampling errors depends largely on the number of people participating in the survey.

The following table may be used to determine the allowance that should be made for the sampling error of a percentage. The computed tolerances have taken into account the effect of the sample design upon sampling error. They may be interpreted as indicating the range (plus or minus the figure shown) within which the results of repeated sampling could be expected to vary, 95% of the time, assuming the same sampling procedure, survey execution, and questionnaire.

Recommended Allowance for Sampling Error of a Percentage

(at 95 in 100 confidence level for a sample of 378 from a universe of 680)

Percentages near 10 or 90 2.0%
Percentages near 20 or 80 2.7%
Percentages near 30 or 70 3.0%
Percentages near 40 or 60 3.3%
Percentages near 50 3.4%

The table should be used as follows:

Question 8a shows 86% of responses were True while 14% were False. Look in the row labeled “Percentages near 10 or 90”. The allowance is 2.0%, which means that the responses to question 8a are subject to a sampling error of plus or minus 2 percentage points. Therefore, it is highly probable (95 times out of 100) that the average of repeated sampling would be somewhere between 84% to 88% True and 12% to 16% False, with the most likely figures being the 86% True and 14% False that are reported here.

The questions for which there were four possible responses (Strongly Agree, Somewhat Agree, Somewhat Disagree, Strongly Disagree) in the questionnaire can make use of this table by combining the two possible Agree responses and the two possible Disagree responses. For example, combining the responses in Question 1 results in 37.4% Agree and 62.6% Disagree. The table shows the allowance to be 3.3%. Therefore, the Agree range is from 34.1% to 40.7% and the Disagree range is from 59.3% to 65.9%.

 


 

Initial Results of

Firearm Ownership and Safety Survey

  • There were 378 responses out of a universe of 680 giving a response rate of 56%.
  • Maximum sampling error does not exceed 3.36%.
  • All results are expressed as percentages except questions 44 and 46 which show the mean, median, and standard deviation of the data.

  Strongly Agree Somewhat Agree Somewhat Disagree Strongly Disagree
1. Gun laws reduce crime. 6.1 31.3 21.8 40.8
2. More guns will reduce crime. 6.4 19.9 24.7 49.1
3. Outlawing civilian gun ownership will result in less crime. 3.2 8.2 22.1 66.5
4. Outlawing civilian gun ownership will result in more crime. 24.1 24.9 27.8 23.3
5. Outlawing civilian gun ownership will result in a more civilized society. 2.9 10.4 29.5 57.2
6. The federal 5-day waiting period (Brady Law) is effective in preventing criminals from obtaining firearms. 5.9 28.5 19.2 46.4
7. Laws limiting gun ownership to law abiding citizens do not keep guns out of the hands of criminals. 73.9 17.3 3.7 5.1

  True False
8. Under current law:    
a. government officials decide what types of ammunition are legal 86.3 13.7
b. every prospective firearm owner has to prove he or she is law abiding 44.4 55.6
c. firearms dealers have to record sales of firearms on behalf of the federal government 92.2 7.8
d. unelected civil servants have the power to decide what kinds of firearms may be lawfully owned. 32.7 67.3
9. The Gun Control Act of 1968 (GCA 68)    
a. outlaws civilian possession of machineguns 53.7 46.3
b. is modeled after the Nazi Weapons Law of 1938 35.8 64.2
c. introduced the concept of “sporting purpose” as a way of classifying firearms 76.8 23.2
10. Gun control laws of the last 29 years (since GCA 68) all share the following fundamental characteristic: they outlaw or restrict an activity that is not inherently wrong in order to prevent harm before it occurs. 77.3 22.7

  Yes No
11. Do you have children who live at home? 56.3 43.7
12. Do you have privately owned firearms in your home? 93.8 6.2
13. Have you already or do you intend to teach your children and/or spouse the safe handling of firearms? 92.5 7.5
14. Will laws dictating the mandatory use of trigger locks significantly reduce accidental gun deaths? 35.3 64.7
15. Is it proper for politicians to dictate how firearms will be kept in your home (e.g. locked, disassembled, etc.)? 11.6 88.4
16. Is it proper for politicians to dictate to firearms manufacturers or dealers that trigger locks will be sold with every gun? 34.8 65.2
17. Do you lock your service firearm and/or privately owned firearms when at home so they are not able to be accidentally fired? 53.2 46.8
18. Is a gun trigger locking device an adequate replacement for proper safety training? 7.0 93.0

  Strongly Agree Somewhat Agree Somewhat Disagree Strongly Disagree
19. Laws governing the possession and carrying (keeping & bearing) of firearms are effective at preventing criminal acts. 4.0 24.8 21.6 49.6
20. Laws governing the possession or carrying (keeping & bearing) of firearms are effective at preventing suicides. 1.3 9.2 24.3 65.2
21. Laws regulating the manner in which firearms are kept in your home (locked, disassembled) will effectively prevent accidental gun deaths. 5.7 31.5 24.0 38.8
22. Laws aimed at restricting ownership and carrying of firearms instead of the criminal misuse of them are appropriate. 3.5 20.8 24.3 51.5
23. Gun safety is the responsibility of the gun owner and not the government. 73.0 16.7 8.1 2.2

  Yes No
24. Should civilian ownership of guns be outlawed? 3.2 96.8
25. Do you fear the possession of guns by the civilian population? 14.6 85.4
26. Do law abiding citizens who carry concealed weapons endanger the public? 16.3 83.7
27. Is gun ownership a symbol of independence, self-reliance, freedom, and responsibility? 71.2 28.8
28. Are armed civilians inept with firearms and do they pose more of a risk to themselves than to criminals who may prey upon them? 33.5 66.5

  True False
29. If the private ownership of guns were outlawed:    
a. the amount and/or rate of crime would decrease 8.9 91.1
b. citizens would not be morally bound to obey the law 21.5 78.5
c. the use of the military to enforce the law would be justified 12.0 88.0
d. citizens would be justified in revolting against the government 29.0 71.0
30. Offering gift certificates, cash or other awards to those who turn in firearms is:    
a. a public relations ploy 72.3 27.7
b. an effective way to reduce crime 19.1 80.9
c. an effective way to reduce suicides 14.6 85.4
d. an effective way to reduce accidents 30.3 69.7
e. an effective way to reduce theft of guns 28.6 71.4
f. an effective way to reduce the availability of guns to criminals 27.4 72.6
g. an attempt to desensitize the public in preparation for additional gun control 50.8 49.2
31. The phrases “cop killer bullets”, “Saturday night specials”, “junk guns”, “assault weapons”, “undetectible plastic guns” were created to influence public opinion. 51.5 48.5

  True False
32. The United States Constitution and the Pennsylvania Constitution:    
a. protect a citizen’s right to hunt 51.6 48.4
b. protect the state of Pennsylvania’s right to create an organized military force 60.5 39.5
c. protect a citizen’s right to own firearms for the purpose of maintaining a peaceful and free society 85.2 14.8
d. protect the right of the federal & state governments to regulate possession of firearms among its citizens. 38.3 61.7
33. Current federal and state law infringes on the right of the people to keep and bear arms. 44.7 55.3
34. The United States Bill of Rights:    
a. contains a list of privileges granted by the government to the people 71.2 28.8
b. protects the rights of the people from encroachment by the government 91.5 8.5
c. is an outdated document that can be changed to meet the needs of the present 32.1 67.9
d. is an outdated document that should be changed to meet the needs of the present 33.5 66.5

  Yes No
35. Did you swear an oath upon your honor to uphold the Constitution of the United States and the Constitution of Pennsylvania when you were hired as a police officer? 98.6 1.4
36. If a law were passed making it illegal for civilians to possess semi-automatic, military looking firearms, would you participate in dynamic entry, house to house searches to seize these firearms if so ordered by a supervisor? 58.1 41.9
37. If a law were passed making it illegal for civilians to possess any type of firearm, would you participate in dynamic entry, house to house searches to seize them if so oredered by a superior? 53.0 47.0

  True False
38. The rifles commonly referred to as assault weapons and which were banned as part of the 1994 Crime Bill:    
a. are fully automatic machine guns 68.6 31.4
b. are single shot, self loading firearms 24.2 75.8
c. are most commonly used by criminals in the commission of crimes 22.5 77.5
d. use cartridges best suited for hunting small game such as gophers 18.7 81.3
e. are standard issue infantry weapons in the military forces of many nations 71.4 28.6

  Strongly Agree Somewhat Agree Somewhat Disagree Strongly Disagree
39. The root cause of criminal violence is the availability of guns. 10.3 17.9 26.3 45.5
40. If all guns were to magically disappear tomorrow, there would be no more criminal violence. 0.4 4.3 10.4 85.0
41. The failure of politicians to defend the Bill of Rights is criminal. 33.00 31.6 27.7 7.8
42. Instead of offering protection, a gun in the home puts families at even greater risk. 4.9 18.7 32.5 43.9
43. The failure of a significant percentage of the population to exercise their 2nd Amendment rights encourages criminal acts. 15.7 22.3 34.6 27.5

Personal Information          
44. How many years have you been a police officer? Mean 12.7 Median 12 Std Dev 8.79    
45. Do you have any prior military experience? Yes 38.8% No 61.2%      
a. During what years were you active duty? N/A        
b. What branch? Air Force 15% Army 51% Coast Guard 1% Marines 19% Navy 14%
c. What was your MOS? (in English please) MP 27% Infantry 13% Other 60%    
d. What was your paygrade at separation? Enlisted 59.5% NCO 40% Officer 1.5%    
46. What is your age? Mean 37.9 Median 37 Std Dev 9.37    
47. What is your current police rank? Command 7% Supervisory 21% Patrol 72%    
48. Are you a full time or part time police officer? Full Time 84.8% Part Time 15.2%      

 


Discussion

There were three questions (8, 9, 38) that tested factual knowledge. The correct answers are shown below along with a brief explanation. Correct answers appear in highlighted cells in bold text, while the incorrect answers are in shaded cells and normal text.

8. Under current law: True False
a. government officials decide what types of ammunition are legal 86.3 13.7

The director of the BATF recommends to the Secretary of the Treasury those types of ammunition that should or should not be legally sold or owned. GCA 68 §925(d)(3);(e)(2)

  True False
b. every prosective firearm owner has to prove he or she is law abiding 44.4 55.6

A person wishing to purchase a firearm must fill out Federal Form 4473 thus affirming their ability to lawfully purchase the firearm. The dealer from whom the firearm is to be purchased must accept this affidavit as proof that the individual is law abiding. GCA 68 §922(a)(6);§924(a)(1)

  True False
c. firearms dealers have to record sales of firearms on behalf of the federal government 92.2 7.8

Federal Form 4473 must be filled out for each firearm sold. It records the purchaser’s name, address, telephone, date of birth, and driver’s license number (most common form of ID to confirm purchaser’s identity). These forms must be kept for government inspection upon demand. In the event that the dealer goes out of business, all of his Form 4473’s must be sent to the BATF. GCA 68 §178.124(a)

  True False
d. unelected civil servants have the power to decide what kinds of firearms may be lawfully owned 32.7 67.3

The director of the BATF recommends to the Secretary of the Treasury those types of firearms that should or should not be legally sold or owned. GCA 68 §925(d)(3);(e)(2)

9. The Gun Control Act of 1968 (GCA 68): True False
a. outlaws civilian possession of machine guns 53.7 46.3

Any civilian who passes an FBI background check and pays the required $200 tax to the U.S. Treasury Department may own a fully automatic machinegun. Prior to the 1934 National Firearms Act, no background check or tax payment was required for a civilian to own a machinegun.

  True False
b. is modeled after the Nazi Weapons Law of 1938 35.8 64.2

According to Torrence Stephens Ph.D. Emory University, Senator Tom Dodd of Connecticut was a senior member of the Nuremburg war trials staff in 1945-46. During this time he came into possession of a copy of the original German text of the Nazi Weapon Law of 1938 which he later had translated into English by the Library of Congress. In a memo dated 12 Jul 68 Lewis Coffin of the Library of Congress wrote to Senator Dodd, “In compliance with your request and with reference to several telephone conversations between Miss Frank of your office and Mr. Fred Karpf, European Law Division, we are enclosing herewith a translation of the Law on Weapons of March 18, 1938, prepared by Dr. William Solyom-Fekete of that Division, as well as the Xerox copy of the original German text which you supplied.” As the main sponsor of what was to become the GCA 68, Dodd incorporated the general concepts and many of the sections from the Nazi law nearly word for word into his legislation.

  True False
c. introduced the concept of “sporting purpose” as a way of classifying firearms 76.8 23.2

GCA 68 introduced but did not define the classification known as “sporting purpose” which is a direct translation of “Sport-zwecke” in the Nazi Weapons Law. It is up to the Secretary of the Treasury through the BATF to arbitrarily decide which firearms fulfill the unspecified requirements for “sporting purpose”. Under current law, only firearms that have been declared to have a legitimate sporting purpose may be sold to civilians.

38. The rifles commonly referred to as assault weapons and which were banned as part of the 1994 Crime Bill: True False
a. are fully automatic machine guns 68.6 31.4
b. are single shot, self loading firearms 24.2 75.8

According to BATF, the nineteen firearms banned from sales to civilians were all semi-automatic and not easily convertible to full automatic. These firearms fired one shot only with each pull of the trigger (single shot) and as a result of the bullet being fired, the mechanical action of the firearm caused another cartridge to be loaded into the chamber (self loading). In contrast, a machine gun will continue to fire for as long as the trigger is depressed.

  True False
c. are most commonly used by criminals in the commission of crimes 22.5 77.5

According to the FBI and numerous reports by metropolitan police departments around the country, the firearms most commonly used in the commission of crimes are handguns.

  True False
d. use cartridges best suited for hunting small game such as gophers 18.7 81.3

Of the nineteen firearms banned under the 1994 Crime Bill, only two fired cartridges larger than the 7.62x39mm used in the AK-47. The remaining seventeen firearms used cartridges smaller than the 7.62x39mm the most common being the .223 Remington. Attempting to address popular misconceptions regarding the purported deadliness of assault rifles, Col. Martin L. Fackler MD the director of the U.S. Army Wound Ballistics Research Laboratory wrote: “Many AK-47 shots will pass through the body causing no greater damage than that produced by non-expanding handgun bullets.” The .223 Remington cartridge is commonly referred to as a varmint cartridge i.e. used to hunt small animals such as ground hogs, prairie dogs, and gophers which are regarded as pests by many farmers and ranchers.

  True False
e. are standard issue infanry weapons in the military forces of many nations 71.4 28.6

Most of the banned firearms were rifles that looked like military weapons on the outside but were common semi-automatics on the inside. Unlike the banned firearms, military rifles are capable of fully automatic firing i.e. they are machine guns. No modern nation equips its military forces with single shot, self-loading rifles. Rather, they are equipped with true assault rifles that are capable of fully automatic fire with the flick of a selector switch. For example, the M-16 is the standard issue rifle of the American military. It is capable of firing semi- automatically, fully automatically, and some versions of it fire three round bursts. The AR-15 which was banned for civilian sale under the Crime Bill looks like an M-16 but is only capable of semi-automatic firing.

There were three other questions (32, 33, 34) that dealt with the meaning of the Constitution and the Bill of Rights. Since the Supreme Court has not ruled on a Second Amendment case, many believe there is no correct or incorrect answer to these questions. Not being an expert on Constitutional issues, I contacted The Constitution Society via the Internet who describe themselves as “a private non-profit organization dedicated to research and public education on the principles of constitutional republican government.”

Their answers to these three questions follow without going into the philosophical discussions that accompanied them:

32. The United States Constitution and the Pennsylvania Constitution True False
a. protect a citizen’s right to hunt 51.6 48.4
b. protect the state of Pennsylvania’s right to create an organized military force 60.5 39.5
c. protect a citizen’s right to own firearms for the purpose of maintaining a peaceful and free society 85.2 14.8
d. protect the right of the federal & state governments to regulate the possession of firearms among its citizens 38.3 61.7
33. Current federal and state law infringes on the right of the people to keep and bear arms. 44.7 55.3
34. The United States Bill of Rights:    
a. contains a list of privileges granted by the government to the people 71.2 28.8
b. protects the rights of the people from encroachment by the government 91.5 8.5

In addition, my Internet search uncovered many dozens of articles from law review journals which dealt with the subject of the Second Amendment. Dr. Edgar Suter MD reports that “[o]f the 11 peer reviewed articles claiming the Second Amendment is a collective states’ right, 5 are by employees of Handgun Control, Inc. or the Center to Prevent Handgun Violence and 3 are students. Of the 51 peer-reviewed articles noting that the Second Amendment guarantees the individual right of the people to keep and bear arms, 4 are by attorneys employed by the National Rifle Association. Excluding students and employees of lobbying organizations then, 47 support the individual right view and 3 support the collective right view.”


Verbatims

Seventeen questionnaires had comments written on them by the respondents. In the interest of full disclosure these comments are included below. In some instances, due to poor grammar or spelling, the comments have been edited to make them more easily read.

Respondent 39 – In response to question 28 this officer indicated that proper training is necessary to insure that armed civilians do not pose more of a risk to themselves than to criminals.

Respondent 69 – This officer indicated that civilians who want to legally own machineguns must obtain the appropriate Class license.

Respondent 142 – This officer typed the following at the end of the questionnaire: “Your survey questions appear to have bee[n] written with a NRA background worded in a manner that any one for gun control is un American. Questions not answered were left blank because there was no absolute answer. GET A JOB……”

Respondent 145 – In response to questions 36 and 37 this officer indicated he would only participate in house to house searches if there was an appropriate warrant issued.

Respondent 158 – This officer did not answer questions 9a, 9c, 32b, 36, 37 instead he placed “?” marks beside them indicating his lack of knowledge. In response to question 25 this officer wrote “depends who” in the margin.

Respondent 160 – This officer also put “?” marks next to questions 36 and 37.

Respondent 189 – This officer wrote many comments throughout the questionnaire. Next to 8b he wrote “background check”, next to 17 he wrote “except duty weapon – secured but not available”, next to 26 he wrote “under most circumstances”, next to 28 he wrote “vague question unable to properly answer -2 questions”, next to 29d he wrote “read 2nd Amendment”, next to 30d he wrote “if those guns turned in were not properly secured”, next to 32c & 32d he wrote “ambiguous questions -interpretation?”, next to 33 he wrote “could lead to this”, and next to 42 he wrote “if the gunowner is properly trained in safety -use of force”.

Respondent 239 – At the bottom of the third page below question 34 this officer wrote “JUST KEEP THE LAWYERS AWAY FROM IT & INTERPRET IT THE WAY IT WAS WRITTEN!”.

Respondent 243 – In response to questions 36 and 37 this officer wrote “If ordered I’d have no choice in the matter?”.

Respondent 268 – Under question 34a this officer wrote “They are given by God, not the Gov’t!”.

Respondent 287 – Next to question 17 he wrote “Just put it out of view”, he modified the words gun ownership in question 27 with the word “legal”, under question 28 he wrote “If they are not ready to properly use said firearm & it [is] taken away from them by the ‘Bad Guy'”, and in response to questions 34c and 34d he indicates that the Bill of Rights is not an outdated document.

Respondent 293 – This officer wrote many comments throughout the questionnaire. Next to 6 he wrote “the[y’re] criminals”, under 28 he wrote “A responsible civilian gun owner is educated in the firearm he owns +/or carries”, under 29d he wrote “one reason 200+ years ago, the colonists believed so!”, he replaced the word “privileges” in 34a with the word “rights”, in response to 36 and 37 he wrote “tricky question” and “only with a valid 4th Amendment search warrant”, and at the end of the questionnaire he wrote ” Steve: Very interesting survey – good luck. You should ask for a follow up written answer on some of these questions. You might find out that many cops are very pro-Constitution + very rights opinionated; opposite of the way the media portrays them”.

Respondent 304 – This officer crossed out a typo in question 24 and wrote the following at the end of the questionnaire: “China has the right idea. Only the police and the military have guns and there is very little gun related crime/accidents!”

Respondent 348 – This officer put his name and telephone number on the questionnaire and challenged me to “debate some issues”. He wrote several paragraphs addressing his perception that the questionnaire was worded in such a way as to elicit a specific set of responses. In his words “they are negative form questions.” He also wrote “Criminals do not own legally received weapons. They steal them & then use them for a purpose.” He also asked “Is this survey another tactic to support the N.R.A.?” At the end of the questionnaire he had some advice “You should ask questions [such as] why do we have the increases in crime today – attitudes, drugs, culture, etc.?”

Respondent 349 – This officer was in the same police department as respondent 348. At the end of the questionnaire he wrote “Your survey results are going to be seriously skewed because of the wording of a majority of your questions. I think you would be a hell of a lot more responsible if you had asked questions about hand guns as opposed to ‘long’ guns and/or ‘assault weapons’.”

Respondent 367 – This officer wrote “NO WAY” next to questions 36 and 37.

Respondent 371 – This officer had no knowledge of GCA 68 in questions 9a, 9b, and 9c. At the bottom of page one he wrote in response to questions 9 and 10 “Ask me what I think about these laws if in fact they are laws and I’ll tell you what I think about them.”


Anecdotal Comments

Surprisingly to me, a great many of the chiefs to whom I spoke and those few officers I came in contact with when I picked up the completed surveys expressed great support for my project. There were many comments to the effect that it was about time someone asked them what they thought about the issues. The general feeling was that the media took the easy way out by asking these kinds of questions only of the big police organizations such as the national union leadership of the Fraternal Order of Police or the National Association of Chiefs of Police.

“No King but Jesus”

Gun Control in the American Colonies
By Jim Higginbotham

I hope you will forgive my diversion from the normal subject matter to share with you a story that I have always considered important to all Americans and one pivotal to the history of the world. You may not have heard the “rest of the story”! This month the entire newsletter is about the “quote of the month”.

Some time in March of 1775 the Governor of Connecticut, Jonathan Trumbal set aside a “Day of Public Fasting and Prayer…that God would graciously pour out his Holy Spirit on us, to bring us to a thorough repentance and effectual reformation;…That He would restore, preserve and secure the liberties of this, and all the other American Colonies, and make this land a mountain of Holiness and habitation of righteousness forever…” The day he selected for that “Day of Fasting and Prayer” was Wednesday, 19 April 1775.

On the evening of April 18, 1775 John Adams and John Hancock met at the home of the local militia leader – and “coincidentally” Pastor of a Lexington, Mass. church – Jonas Clark. Unaware that at that very moment British Regulars were setting out to confiscate the arms of the Patriots, one of the visitors asked Rev. Clark if the people of Lexington would fight if necessary. The Rev. replied ” I have trained them for this very hour!” Later that night who but Paul Revere should arrive to let them know that the Redcoats were indeed on the march.

The Militia was mustered out at 1 AM on April 19 under the field command of Deacon Parker and by 2:00 there were 130 men under arms on the green near Rev. Clark’s meeting-house, with Adams, Hancock and Clark present, but the redcoats were nowhere to be found. So the men were dismissed with order to assemble at the beat of the drum.

Later that morning, a six company detachment of British Light Infantry, under Major Pitcairn was dispatched toward Concord to capture and hold two essential bridges. He kept his movement relatively secret by capturing and holding all persons he encountered in route but alas a messenger on horseback finally got away and raised the alarm in Lexington. By then Adams and Hancock had been persuaded to quit to a neighboring town because they would surely be a target of the British. After the alarm was given, only 70 people were near enough to assemble by the time the British arrived. There was an immediate face off and what followed has been told with slight differences by several different people. Of course I cannot say, not being there, but this is a summation of what most likely happened. Frankly, I do not know if the Rev. Clark or Deacon Parker did the talking for the Minutemen.

Upon seeing a mass of armed men Major Pitcairn shouted, “Disperse, ye villains Lay down your arms in the name of George the Sovereign King of England”. The response, as reported by more than one source (coming from Parker or Clark depending on the source) was ” We recognize no Sovereign but God and no King but Jesus!”. Who fired the first shot will always be in doubt. What is not in doubt, is that the initial skirmish was carried by the British with the colonists suffering 18 casualties ( 8 KIA, 10 WIA). Deacon Parker dispersed his men, seeing the untenable odds but he did not surrender his arms. The British did not get the arms of the citizenry they desired – at least not in the form they desired! And the return trip caused them much grief as the patriots began to increase in number and harass them all the way back to Boston. Shortly the Redcoats would “win” more battles and skirmishes costing them in the neighborhood of 1100 casualties – there were only 7500 of His Majesty’s troops on the continent!

Later, the Reverend Jonas Clark would preach: “From this day will be dated the liberty of the world!” . This year, as in 1775, April 19th falls on Wednesday. It would not be untoward, I think, to pause and reflect that 225 years ago, several plain ordinary folks – farmers, parishioners, clergymen – interrupted their normal lives to “turn the world upside down” when one of them likely fired the “Shot Heard ‘Round The World”.

For Further research I would commend:

America’s Providential History, by Mark A. Beliles and Stephen K. McDowell, Providence Foundation, 1989
The Light and the Glory, by Peter Marshall and David Manuel, Flemming H. Revell Co., 1977
God and Government, Gary Demar, American Vision Press, 1982

My Home Defense

By Ben L. Sechrist

Dear Criminals,

Don’t worry about learning the high technology alarm systems on the market today with an eye towards disabling them.

I am a Computer Network Administrator in a VERY HIGH TECH WORLD and knowledgeable about differing types of high tech home defense systems including ADT and others of that type. The reason I mention this is because of my choice for burglar alarms and home defense. I choose the low tech home safety devices.

My home has probably the safest, most reliable, and manageable home defense programs ever invented. It has never gone off due to error, loss of power, or any other reason unless needed. It is not connected to phone lines, databases, or warning systems outside of my home.

It is simply a VERY large Chow dog, three 12 gauge shotguns, two 15 year old boys (twins) that know how to use them (much to the horror of the local school system), two automatic handguns (45s) for me, and a revolver for my wife. All are loaded (including the dog with a set of VERY BIG TEETH) and ready. Coupled with neighbors that depend on each other and watch out for the properties around us it is more than enough to defend our homes.

Whenever we are home, or when we aren’t, we have plenty of warning when someone approaches, and we are capable of defending ourselves if needed. We live in the country on some acres that are in East Texas. I live far enough out of any town that I actually built a good shooting range in the back area of my acres. This gives all of us a place to practice, gives us a family pastime that we all enjoy, and most of all we keep ourselves ready to use the weapons whenever they are needed to protect our home. Someone that owns a gun should always keep in mind that the gun’s use requires a familiarity with the weapon. Without the familiarity, you are almost as dangerous to yourself and family as you are to a criminal.

To put it simply, a criminal would either be crazy or have a death wish to rob my home. The dog alone would probably cause the criminal to search for another place to rob (or maybe lose some body parts if he tried to rob our home). The dog is house trained and stays indoors most of the time). However, if they decide that they can brave the dog, the criminals still have to avoid the owners, each of whom do not appreciate the downtrodden criminal that wants to rob us with possible physical harm in doing so.

Fortunately we live in an area that does not require us to be defenseless like that caused by anti-gun laws in Washington D.C., New York City, or Chicago to mention some of the more famous anti-gun (read defenseless American) cities. This is one of the reasons I live in Texas and in the country.

To put it mildly, the home alarm companies, Sheriff’s Office, or any other organization that would be the recipient of a 911 call would not be able to find my home.

My neighbor recently (6 months ago) called 911 for a medical emergency, 1 1/2 hours later the neighbor drove his family member to the hospital because the emergency medical central office in our county could not locate the address. I imagine that the police would have the same difficulty with a personal experience to prove my surmise.

I have called the Sheriff’s Office once in the seven years I have lived here, and it only took them three hours to respond. Of course that call was only for a theft/burglary happening next door (next door is 1/2 mile away) so it wasn’t urgent I guess. The thieves were able to drive off with a large 20 X 20 shed full of tools after loading it onto a trailer. Makes sense to depend on the 911 system doesn’t it? If the law had allowed I would have gone there to stop the thieves, but since I am not a law enforcement officer all I could legally do (since they were not threatening me personally) was to note license tag numbers, descriptions of the thieves, time of day, and make a call to 911. If I had tried to stop them the law says I would be assaulting the thieves (makes sense right?). I can gather the information but, if I try to make a citizen’s arrest, the criminal will have the right to sue me, although I cannot think of a reason some lawyer would be glad to sue me. If for no other reason, I invaded the criminal’s privacy and pursuit of happiness, I guess.

Needless to say, if it were not for families such as mine, men of principle like you and I, and the honest people of America defending themselves, the criminals would be doing whatever they wanted and anarchy would be the result. Not just a robbery of an empty home, but as England and Australia have seen since the citizens have been disarmed by the government, a horrendous increase in break-ins and physical harm of honest people and their homes. The criminals don’t have to worry about someone that has a gun in those countries anymore. After all, why should they wait until the owners are gone?

I suppose I should tell you one more thing about myself and family (this includes my twin sons as well as my wife too). First, I am a veteran that took an oath to defend the US Constitution (and nowhere in the oath did it say I had a time henceforth where the oath was invalid). My wife, as a veteran, took the same oath, and my sons have already started planning on which service to join. My oldest twin will go into the US Army like I did, and my youngest twin will go into the Air Force as his uncle did. Yes, I brought them up as American Patriots with a determination to be Americans. They believe in the freedoms I do.

In the anti-gun Brady Bunch’s estimation, I am a bad father. What can I say? I make a lousy victim, which is probably why I vote Republican most of the time even though I am in Independent by nature. Scary thought isn’t it? If enough Independents were to get together and vote the way we feel, we would be the major party of America. There are Independents in the Republican and Democratic Parties. They are the ones that are the “swing voters”.

We should all be ready to defend our homes. I am lucky enough to have had parents that believed in personal defense as well as the ability to own and use weapons sensibly. I have been trained in defense and weapons as long as I can remember. I have instilled this in my sons. They and I believe in the ability not to sit and be victims. That includes watching others become victims. That is why I have a low tech defense system. The system works, is never out of action due to power loss, and best of all not dependent on anyone except the home owners. If you decide to get a home alarm system I suggest one like the one I use, of course the weapons to back that home defense up, and the skills needed to use them. It is a system that so far has never failed my family.