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By Bill Ferguson
(Published September 23, 2000 in The Fresno Bee)
I just got off the phone with the California Department of Justice in Sacramento. It is responsible for enforcing the California Assault Weapons Registration law, set to go into effect Jan. 1. I asked how many of the roughly 200,000 legal owners of such weapons, now legally classified as ‘‘dangerous,’’ had registered them under this law. As of Aug. 31, about 6,000. What does this mean to the people of California?
Those who favor gun control will tell you gun owners are a lawless bunch and are the cause of crime. Law-abiding gun owners will tell you they fear a government that can easily confiscate legally purchased firearms that have never been used in crimes. Regardless of who is right, we are faced with an act of civil disobedience unprecedented in state history.
Unless a deluge of gun owners are waiting until the last minute, we will have over 190,000 new criminals as of the first of the year facing misdemeanor charges.
Criminals are exempt
Unfortunately, convicted felons are exempt from this law. They cannot be prosecuted for failing to register or for possession of an unregistered weapon, as that would violate their Fifth Amendment rights against self-incrimination. While this is certainly discriminatory, the bigger question is, why would politicians pass a law that doesn’t apply to criminals?
Gun control is not about crime; it’s about rights. Senators Dianne Feinstein and Barbara Boxer, with full support from Bill Clinton and Al Gore, constantly pound out plans to remove guns from the hands of law-abiding citizens, but absent from their many schemes are plans to remove guns from criminals. They obviously believe legally owned, lawfully used guns are the problem. If gun control is not about crime control, it must be about something else.
Sen. Feinstein and state Sen. Don Perata, the author of the registration law, have concealed-carry permits. Outspoken gun- control advocate Rosie O’Donnell thinks it’s OK for her bodyguard to carry a gun, while Clinton and Gore will have Secret Service protection forever. While these prominent public figures have protection few working-class Americans will ever afford, they clearly believe the little people cannot be trusted to make sound judgments concerning the proper possession, storage and use of firearms. This attitude cannot be construed as anything but liberal elitism. What are the facts concerning civilian gun use?
In defending themselves with firearms, Americans kill 2,000- 3,000 criminals each year; three times the number killed by police. Private citizens mistakenly kill innocent victims 2% of the times they shoot someone. The error rate is 11% for police; five times as high. It’s rare that a woman, confronted by a man with a knife, would shoot the wrong person.
Firearms kill 30,000 people each year, including suicides and murders committed by criminals. Firearms are used to defend citizens up to 2.5 million times a year, over 6,000 times a day, and in 98% of those cases, no one gets shot; either a warning shot of merely displaying the weapon is enough to deter the criminal, according to Yale Law School professor John Lott. Any fair analysis of firearms must include their benefits as well as the evil they do.
Jeffrey Snyder, in his 1993 essay, ‘‘A Nation of Cowards’’, wrote, ‘‘While it may well be true that a society in which crime is so rare that no one ever needs to carry a weapon is civilized, a society that stigmatizes the carrying of weapons by the law- abiding, because it distrusts its citizens more then it fears rapists, robbers and murderers cannot claim this distinction.’’
What will come of our new class of ‘‘criminal’’ gun owners? The same thing that will happen to their weapons. Either we change the law or they’ll be taken away. Politicians who enable this are the real danger here; not your neighbors who own guns.
Bill Ferguson is a resident of Fresno.
| ‘‘The world is filled with violence. Because criminals carry guns, we decent law-abiding citizens should also have guns. Otherwise they will win and the decent people will lose.’’ |
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— James Earl Jones |