Posted on 09/07/2007 11:04:21 AM PDT by neverdem
In asking the Supreme Court to let the District of Columbia ban handguns, the city has a simple argument: Whatever one thinks of the Second Amendment, banning handguns is a "reasonable regulation" to protect public safety. The problem for the city is that anyone who can look up the crime numbers will see that D.C.'s violent crime rate went up, not down, after the ban.
D.C. notes that criminals like to use handguns to commit crimes. We all want to disarm criminals, but, as long as one recognizes the possibility of self defense, at best the city's claim can only be part of the story. As with all gun-control laws, the question is ultimately whether it is the law-abiding citizens or criminals who are most likely to obey the law. If law-abiding citizens are the ones who turn in their guns and not the criminals, crime rates can go up, not down.
The city's brief focuses only on murder rates in discussing crime in D.C. Yet, in the five years before Washington's ban in 1976, the murder rate fell from 37 to 27 per 100,000. In the five years after it went into effect, the murder rate rose back up to 35. But there is one fact that seems particularly hard to ignore. D.C.'s murder rate fluctuated after 1976 but has only once fallen below what it was in 1976 (that happened years later, in 1985). Does D.C. really want to argue that the gun ban reduced the murder rate?
Similarly for violent crime, from 1977 to 2003, there were only two years when D.C.'s violent crime rate fell below the rate in 1976. These drops and subsequent increases were much larger than any changes in neighboring Maryland and Virginia. For example, D.C.'s murder rate fell 3.5 to 3 times...
(Excerpt) Read more at washingtontimes.com ...
No!
Logic dictates that we don't want to disarm criminals, we want to allow prospective victims to arm themselves to give the impression to wannabe criminals that crime doesn't always pay and there is a risk involved in being an infringer on legal citizens rights.
Criminals don't tote a caring attitude toward rights by definition and will always have access to fire arms via illegal promotion without concern.
Anti’s often fall back to the ‘utility’ argument. But rights are not open to bargaining away because some people do not recognize any benefit. It is just nauseating to hear self-righteous people scold us, ‘does anyone really *need* a gun? I don’t think so.”
Yet again, when government moves to seize a private social responsibility, it is not long before nobody can imagine that anyone should be allowed to perform the function on their own. Just as with social security, where too many people could not imagine saving for their own retirement and therefore nobody else should be allowed to either, now we have too many people who just cannot imagine that citizens should be allowed an effective means of self defense. We can only allow officials to protect us.
These people’s intelligence or lack of it just amazes me.
Whoodathunk??
Bachman Turner Overdrive put perspective on this concern to music appropriately with their song "Let It Ride".
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