By Glen Wunderlich Outdoor Columnist Member Professional Outdoor Media Association
With the Supreme Court’s historic decision this past Monday, gun owners will have the law on their side when confronting onerous city and state gun regulations, such as has been the case in Chicago. With a claim that firearms violence was of such great proportion in its city, Chicago’s lawyers argued that the handgun ban struck down two years ago in Washington’s District of Columbia shouldn’t extend to the states. What these policy activists fail to acknowledge is that the very laws preventing firearms for self defense in the home may be the primary cause of their own excessive murder rates. Mounting evidence continues to show that where gun bans exist, crime soars – and, the evidence is overwhelming.
For example, in England, where handguns were outlawed in 1997, deaths and injuries from gun crime increased 340 percent from years 1998 to 2005. And, when in 1983, Chicago banned virtually all handguns, it began to reverse a trend which showed murder rates falling from 39 to 22 per 100,000 in the 8 years before the ban. After the ban, when the rest of the country experienced a 31 percent decrease in its murder rate, Chicago’s murder rate fell below what it was before the ban in only one of 17 years!
In the District of Columbia’s Metropolitan Police Department’s crime data, an interesting and predictable decline in homicide rates (different than murder rates, because it includes all killings – justified and otherwise) is reflected. Through year 2008 (during the gun ban), the lowest homicide count was 169 in year 2006. In years 2007 and 2008 the count was 181 and 186, respectively. In the very first year after residents were allowed handguns in their homes, the homicide rate in year 2009 dropped to its lowest to level in the past 20 years (and, probably well beyond that) to only 143. This year, through the first six months, only 59 homicides have been recorded, making for an annual projection of approximately 120 homicides.
But, empirical evidence such as this never stops the likes of people in the gun ban crowd like Kristen Rand, legislative director of the Violence Policy Center, which supports the strictest of gun control laws. “People will die because of this decision. It is a victory only for the gun lobby and America’s fading gun industry”, she remarked. First of all, the gun lobby gets its clout from its millions of members – American members. And, if the gun industry is fading, as she claims, well then, I guess the firearms manufacturers haven’t gotten the memo yet, because they are all posting record profits.
Back-door efforts by governmental authorities will continue to be pushed, as will the meaning of weasel words such as “reasonable”, as in gun laws. The cost of guns, ammo, and gun-related taxes will continue to escalate as a means to control them by left-leaning politicians in spite of documented records.
The argument is no longer about facts and evidence; its about political activism and the original intent of the Constitution. And, that’s what was so telling about this opinion – another 5 to 4 decision with originalists on one side and those working for “fundamental change” on the other – including Obama’s newest pick, Sonia Sotomayor. There’s only one way to insure that the scale of “justice” is not tipped any more to the left and that’s to vote for a president that honors the Constitution, rather than for one who despises its limiting powers to government. I pray that it’s not too late.
