Gun Control: What Is the Agenda?
by Paul Craig Roberts
[Subscribe online to Chronicles: A Magazine of American Culture. Click here for details].
Some years or decades ago, I researched and reported on the Sullivan Act, one of America’s first gun-control laws.
New York state Sen. Timothy Sullivan, a corrupt Tammany Hall politician, represented New York’s Red Hook district. Commercial travelers passing through the district would be relieved of their valuables by armed robbers. In order to protect themselves and their property, travelers armed themselves. This raised the risk of, and reduced the profit from, robbery. Sullivan’s outlaw constituents demanded that Sullivan introduce a law that would prohibit concealed carry of pistols, blackjacks and daggers, thus reducing the risk to robbers from armed victims.
The criminals, of course, were already breaking the law and had no intention of being deterred by the Sullivan Act from their business activity of armed robbery. Thus, the effect of the Sullivan Act was precisely what the criminals intended. It made their life of crime easier.
As the first successful gun-control advocates were criminals, I have often wondered what agenda lies behind the well-organized and propagandistic gun-control organizations and their donors and sponsors in the United States today. The propaganda issued by these organizations consists of transparent lies.
Consider the propagandistic term “gun violence,” popularized by gun-control advocates. This is a form of reification by which inanimate objects are imbued with the ability to act and commit violence. Guns, of course, cannot be violent in themselves. Violence comes from people who use guns and a variety of other weapons, including fists, to commit violence.
Nevertheless, we hear incessantly the Orwellian Newspeak term “gun violence.”
Very few children are killed by firearm accidents compared to other causes of child deaths. Yet, gun-control advocates have created the false impression that there is a national epidemic in accidental firearm deaths of children. In fact, the National MCH Center for Child Death Review, an organization that monitors causes of child deaths, reports that seven times more children die from drowning and five times more from suffocation than from firearm accidents. Yet we don’t hear of “drowning violence,” “swimming pool violence,” “bathtub violence” or “suffocation violence.”
The National MCH Center for Child Death Review reports that 174 children 18 years old and under died from firearm accidents in 2000. The National Center for Injury Prevention and Control reports that 125 children 18 years old and under died from firearm accidents in 2006. In 2006, there were 77,845,285 youths in that age bracket.
In 2006, violence-related firearm deaths of 18-year-olds and under totaled 2,191. A large percentage of these deaths appear to be teenagers fighting over drug turf.
According to the White House Office of National Drug Control Policy, drugs are “one of the main factors leading to the total number of all homicides….Murders related to narcotics still rank as the fourth most documented murder circumstance out of 24 possible categories.”
According to the National Drug Control Policy, trafficking in illicit drugs is associated with the commission of violent crimes for the following reasons: “competition for drug markets and customers, disputes and rip-offs among individuals involved in the illegal drug market (and) the tendency toward violence of individuals who participate in drug trafficking.”
Another dimension of drug-related crime is “committing an offense to obtain money (or goods to sell to get money) to support drug use.”
Obviously, decriminalizing drugs would be the greatest single factor in reducing incarceration rates, the crime rate and the homicide rate. Yet, gun-control advocates do not support this obvious solution to “gun violence.”
Those who want to outlaw guns have not explained why it would be any more effective than outlawing drugs, alcohol, robbery, rape and murder. All the crimes for which guns are used are already illegal, and they keep on occurring, just as they did before guns existed.
So what is the real agenda? Why do gun-control advocates want to override the Second Amendment? Why do they not acknowledge that if the Second Amendment can be overridden, so can every other protection of civil liberty?
There are careful studies that conclude that armed citizens prevent 1 million to 2 million crimes every year. Other studies show that in-home robberies, rapes and assaults occur more frequently in jurisdictions that suffer from gun-control ordinances. Other studies show that most states with right-to-carry laws have experienced a drop in crimes against persons.
There are careful studies that conclude that armed citizens prevent 1 million to 2 million crimes every year. Other studies show that in-home robberies, rapes and assaults occur more frequently in jurisdictions that suffer from gun-control ordinances. Other studies show that most states with right-to-carry laws have experienced a drop in crimes against persons.
Why do gun-control advocates want to increase the crime rate in the United States?
Why is the gun-control agenda a propagandistic one draped in lies?
The NRA is the largest and best-known organization among the defenders of the Second Amendment. Yet, a case might be made that manufacturers’ gun advertisements in the NRA’s magazines stoke the hysteria of gun-control advocates.
Full-page ads offering civilian versions of weapons used by “America’s elite warriors” in U.S. Special Operations Command, SWAT and covert agents “who work in a dark world most of us can’t even understand” are likely to scare the pants off people who are afraid of guns.
Many of the modern weapons are ugly as sin. Their appearance is threatening, unlike the beautiful lines of a Winchester lever-action or single-shot rifle, or a Colt single-action revolver, or the World War II 45 caliber semi-automatic pistol—guns that do not have menacing appearances. Everyone knows that they are guns, but they are also works of art.
A little advertising discretion might go a long way in quieting fears that are manipulated by gun-control advocates.
The same goes for hunters. Recent news reports of “hunters” slaughtering wolves from airplanes in Alaska and of a hunter—indeed, a poacher—who shot a protected rare wolf in the U.S. Southwest and left the dead animal in the road enrage people who have empathy with animals and wildlife. Many Americans have had such bad experiences with their fellow citizens that they regard their dogs and cats, and wildlife, as more intelligent and noble life forms than humans. Wild animals can be dangerous, but they are not evil.
Americans with empathy for animals are horrified by the television program that depicts hunters killing beautiful animals and the joy hunters experience in “harvesting” their prey. Many believe that a person who enjoys killing a deer because he has a marvelous rack of antlers might enjoy killing a person.
This is not a screed against hunters. There are many families with the tradition of bringing in the venison once or twice a year. With the near extermination by man of deer predators, deer are so abundant in many localities as to have become a nuisance and a danger to motorists. Nevertheless, the defense of gun rights has little to gain from TV programs depicting the fun of killing Bambi’s mother.
In the United States, shooting is a hand-eye coordination sport. It is likely that 99 percent of all ammunition is fired at paper targets, metal silhouettes or clay and plastic discs. It is a sport for amateur physicists who are interested in ballistics and who experiment with different combinations of powder and bullet seeking the most accuracy for their rifle or pistol. Few of these shooters hunt, as their interest in shooting is unrelated to killing.
Shooting is a sport that offers comradeship and competition in which even old people can participate, people who do not or cannot play golf or tennis or bowl. There is a vast variety of events, from black powder muskets to antique military and frontier weapons to distance shooting.
Sports shooters punching holes in paper targets comprise the vast majority of active gun owners. They are a threat to no one. Accidents are extremely rare at gun clubs. A large network of small businesses provide the parts and supplies necessary for shooting. There is no reason to strip gun owners of their hobby and possessions and family businesses of their livelihood, as has been done in Great Britain and as the gun control lobby intends to do in the United States.
The NRA is correct to insist that “when guns are outlawed, only outlaws will have guns.” We have known this since the Sullivan Act.
COPYRIGHT 2009 CREATORS SYNDICATE INC.
[Subscribe online to Chronicles: A Magazine of American Culture. Click here for details].
1 Comment by Andrew Stanton on 1 July 2009:
I’m still waiting for the news report of someone killed by “knife violence”, “baseball bat violence”, “auto violence”, etc. Yes the “ugly” looking guns are the first to be demonized but only because they’re low lying fruit so to speak. The goal, as so vividly demonstrated in other countries, is all weapons. I don’t think the rulers want more crime; they want subjects not citizens and unarming them is the necessary precursor.
2 Comment by John Seiler on 1 July 2009:
This just in from the Houston Chronicle, June 30: “Success on the front lines of a government blitz on gunrunners supplying Mexican drug cartels with Houston weaponry hinges on logging heavy miles and knocking on countless doors. Dozens of agents from the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives — sent here from around the country — are needed to follow what ATF acting director Kenneth Melson described as a ‘massive number of investigative leads.’
“All told, Mexican officials in 2008 asked federal agents to trace the origins of more than 7,500 firearms recovered at crime scenes in Mexico. Most of them were traced back to Texas, California and Arizona.
“Among other things, the agents are combing neighborhoods and asking people about suspicious purchases as well as seeking explanations as to how their guns ended up used in murders, kidnappings and other crimes in Mexico.”
“Combing neighborhoods” — like the Gestapo.
As if Mexico’s problems — caused by the U.S. drug war in the first place — were any of our business. As if we could trust Mexico’s corrupt “officials” to be honest. And is if a “border” that can’t stop drugs and people coming North could stop guns from going South.
Besides, what’s wrong with Mexicans themselves owning guns? As it is, Mexico’s gun control laws are among the most restrictive in the world — meaning victims are disarmed against assault from criminal and government gangs, which increasingly are the same.
The U.S. raids also perpetuate the lie that Mexico’s supposed problem mainly stems from guns from U.S. citizens. As Fox News reported on April 2, “While 90 percent of the guns traced to the U.S. actually originated in the United States, the percent traced to the U.S. is only about 17 percent of the total number of guns reaching Mexico.”
“Combing neighborhoods.” What you gonna do when they come for you?
3 Pingback by U.S. Gestapo “combing neighborhoods” — yours next? « JohnSeilerBlogs.com on 1 July 2009:
[...] Bush-Obama tyranny, an assault on Americans’ right to keep and bear arms. Paul Craig Roberts describes this new attack on our [...]
4 Comment by Clyde Wilson on 1 July 2009:
Maybe the problem is not that citizens exercise their right to possess arms but that too many non-citizens are now “citizens.”
5 Comment by Ray Olson on 1 July 2009:
Sorry, gentlemen, but I’ve never for a moment thought, nor do I believe much of anyone else thinks, that “gun violence” means anything other than violent human behavior in which guns are used. To pretend to believe the phrase means guns becoming animated and firing on their own initiative seems, besides silly, entirely uncalled for if all you mean to do is to effectively counter the arguments of gun-control absolutists.
Consider this a salvo in my assault against cant.
6 Comment by Daniel Maxwell on 1 July 2009:
Mr. Roberts could have saved the webspace by answering his own question: Disarmament.
7 Comment by Mark Higdon on 1 July 2009:
@5: Your point is taken, up to a point. The problem with the term “gun violence” is that use of it allows opponents to the 2nd Amendment to set the tone of the debate by coining one of its crucial terms. Similar to the prevalent use of “anti-abortion” instead of “pro-life,” or “public education” instead of “coercive government schooling.” Similar examples abound.
Sure, most posters on this site know the actual meaning behind “gun violence.” But we also know the intention behind its use. Cant counts.
8 Comment by Jim on 1 July 2009:
@5 — As usual, Ray, you are correct but the anti-gun crowd can be a bit obtuse on the issue. I recall a fatuous article by Richard Reeves a decade ago in which he compared the gun deaths in Seattle and Vancouver and concluded that the vastly higher number of gun deaths in Seattle were due to more guns in the city.
I always wanted to ask him how he would explain the additional fact that there were a lot more knife deaths in Seattle. Did he think Vancouver prohibits knives too? Ditto for other kinds of death too.
It never occurs to the anti-gun crowd that it might just be the character of the people; therefore: it has to be the GUNS!
9 Comment by R. McCabe on 2 July 2009:
Isn’t there a larger issue here towards the concept of “violence” itself? PCR seems to miss this a little maybe. Guns actually are violent by nature. If you’ve ever fired a powerful gun, you would never describe it as a peaceful experience. It is not by the virtue that they might cause death that makes them violent, it is the way they do it. Swimming pool violence isn’t talked about because death by swimming pool is not a violent death.
Anti- and pro-gun nuts aside, the issue really needs to revolve around justifiable violence. In America, we have lost nearly all moral sense of this and confuse pacifism with the opposite of immoral violence. We don’t even kill our own food anymore in acts of moral violence. It is then easy to trick people into banning tools.
If we understood better that violence and accidents are parts of life, then guns would not really be an issue, or just a superficial one, and you would not have people saying ridiculous things about us clinging to our guns and religion.
10 Comment by Ed Roberts on 2 July 2009:
As to the NRA’s advertisers frightening hoplophobes, the NRA is itself the largest and best funded gun control lobby in America. Every existing item of federal legislation aimed at restricting the citizenry’s ownership of firearms was written and/or lobbied for by the NRA.
The NRA’s main purpose is to hand over campaign contributions to republican political candidates, especially GOP incumbents with lousy records on guncontrol.
11 Comment by Charlemagne on 2 July 2009:
Ed @ 10,
Oh really? Mind providing example(s)?
12 Comment by Mark Higdon on 2 July 2009:
@10 & 11: Historically, the NRA’s PAC has been to the 2nd Amendment what the National Right to Life Committee’s PAC has been to the “right to life”: perpetual fund raising machines whose goal is to claim enough political “victories” to motivate donors to bankroll even more fund raising solicitations, whose purpose is to convince their donors to keep giving so that future “victories” can be attained. It’s an intentional, never-ending loop: dependent–in both examples–upon mitigated failures for its continuity. These mainstream, politicized organizations are no more apt to achieve ultimate victory in their causes than the American Cancer Society is apt to achieve a cure for cancer.
13 Comment by Etienne Gervaise on 3 July 2009:
@12 Mark
I once worked a conservative conference and manned a table next to some “conservative” organization — can’t recall the exact name off-hand — and asked the fellow what he did there. He said we send out fund-raising letters. I asked what he did with the funds, to which he replied, “I said, we send out fund-raising letters.”
I was flabberghasted. Not even a newsletter! That had to violate some sort of panhandling legislation. There are no shortage of these outfits operating out of townhouse basements on Capitol Hill. The operators can easily get starry-eyed young grads eager to be in Washington to man the phones and stuff envelopes, and then move on to something else with the tax-free skimmings.
14 Comment by Charlemagne on 4 July 2009:
Mark @ 12,
No kidding. That’s obvious, but a far cry from “the largest and best funded gun control lobby in America.” Some of these post are absurd.
We actually had a reasonable Democrat for Governor of Georgia once, Roy Barnes, whom was pro second amendment and was heavily endorsed by the N.R.A. Not quite in the mold of Mr. Roberts’ N.R.A. as toadies for the G.O.P.
Try basing suppositions on fact, not U.F.O. sightings….