The Gun Control Debate

Let’s get this gun control issue right up front and straight forward. I own guns. Many of them. Roughly two-thirds of the time, I am carrying a gun. I will never commit a crime with a gun, as I am a good person. I have a hard time thinking of anyone I know who doesn’t own guns. I cannot think of a single gun-owner I’ve ever known who has used a gun for any criminal purpose. All the anti-gun groups are up in arms this week with outrageous claims about how they can solve all of society’s ills by banning guns. This couldn’t be further from the truth. They do not provide a shred of evidence that this is the case, they simply start calling names and make statements as if they were factual. More smoke and mirrors.

In the wake of the Virginia Tech murders, we already have the anti-gun groups and many liberal politicians crying for a ban on “assault rifles” and “high capacity magazines”. None of this had any bearing on the VT murders, which were committed with common small caliber pistols, which have never been part of any proposed gun ban in the past. The murderer used multiple magazines and probably reloaded his empty ones at some point, so the capacity of them is irrelevant, but I’ll discuss that more a little later.

Assault Rifles isn’t a term and you ain’t supposed to say it. Any “black” rifle with a detachable magazine and a SEMI-automatic operation is labeled by these folks as an “Automatic Assault Rifle”. I own rifles that fall into this category, but they are not automatics. They claim there is no “sporting purpose” for these rifles other than to kill large numbers of people quickly. Hogwash, they have plenty of sporting purpose and are just plain fun and challenging to shoot. Their operation is basically the same as many hunting rifles, they just have a few different cosmetic changes.

Let’s clear this up real quick. An “automatic” firearm means that it will continue to shoot, over and over again, for as long as the operator holds back the trigger. Such firearms were placed under the ATF registration system in 1934. To own one, you must jump through hoards of government hoops and paperwork and pay various hefty fees. A “cheap” automatic rifle, which is often called a “machine gun”, sells for more than the cost of a new car. Not one single registered machine gun has been used in the commission of a crime since the 1930s. I know several people who own registered machine guns. You have to really be into the shooting sports hobby to be a machine gun owner, as it is a costly sport. These guys can spend every available penny and a month’s work in loading ammo, then go down to the range and rip through all that ammo in a matter of minutes. It truly is great fun to fire a machine gun. However, they are not very good choices for committing crimes. They are too large and eat too much ammo with a relatively poor accuracy.

A ban on the import and sale of new machine guns to civilians was put in effect a number of years ago. Only the registered machine guns already in circulation can be transferred between individuals. This had an instant effect on the market value of these guns, but had no impact on crime. It just means that those people who like to own and shoot machine guns are restricted in what they can now purchase. These people are not criminals, just folks with an expensive hobby.

The semi-automatic rifles which are often mislabeled by the media and politicians as “assault rifles” are very rarely used in crimes. They are not concealable and a thug walking down the street with an SKS or AR-15 in his hands would really stand out. Along the same lines, there are no AK-47’s used by criminals in America! The AK-47 is a Russian machine gun that is used predominantly by communist countries and third-world military, rebel, or militia groups. They are illegal in the USA, except for those few that were registered and legally imported prior to the ban I mentioned a moment ago. And as we’ve already said, no registered machine gun has been used in a crime. There is a semi-automatic rifle that looks similar to the AK-47 that is sold in the USA. It is the SKS with a number of different variations and manufacturers available.

Same with the M-16. This is a fully automatic rifle used by our military, though most of the current manufacture is not even capable of fully automatic fire. Instead they use a 3-round burst function so that one pull of the trigger fires three rounds. Fully automatic fire from a light handheld rifle is basically a waste of ammo as you can’t hit anything after the first couple rounds anyway. The semi-automatic version of this rifle is the AR-15 as manufactured by Colt, but it goes by other model numbers from other manufacturer’s of similar looking rifles as Colt holds trademark for the designation AR-15.

These types of rifles are much less accurate than hunting rifles, though there are competition models that do have notable accuracy. Those models are generally much more expensive and are sought after by shooters who like to do longer range accuracy shooting and bulls eye competitions. It takes a high degree of skill and lots of practice for these competitors to make high marks. It is a very challenging sport. It is also a sport that is great for kids.

I have taught 4-H shooting sports and have worked with kids who are not even teenagers yet to learn the fine art of precision rifle shooting. It is a very rewarding sport that is practiced by millions of kids and adults alike in this country. Some people like to golf, some like to bowl, and then there are those of us to like to shoot. It is simply a sport. And it is a very safe and fun sport at that. At competitions, ranges, and shooting groups in general, there are some very strict safety rules that are followed. Shooting accidents in these settings is almost never heard of. Those that are involved have great respect for the firearms and teach this to the new generation entering the sport. These anti-gun groups want to take that away from us. They want to take my hobby away from me. They would rather the kids sit at home in front of the TV getting fat than to get outside and take up a perfectly safe, physically and mentally challenging sport. I don’t tell you what kind of golf clubs you can use for your sport, so don’t tell me what kind of firearm I can use for mine.

One of our current democratic presidential hopefuls, has an anti-gun article on his site which claims that if we were to ban high capacity magazines, the Virginia Tech shooting would only have “2 or 3” victims instead of 32. How can anyone who passed Kindergarten class come to this conclusion? Even with the 94 ban that restricted new magazines to 10 rounds, he would have been able to do just as much damage. It is quite apparent that our murderer had multiple magazines (Glocks are shipped with 2, as are most other semi-auto pistols) and he took the time to reload at least one magazine at some time during the event (simple math on the number of victims and injuries will tell you this). An empty 15-round Glock magazine can be loaded from loose ammo in a pocket in less than 25 seconds. A magazine swap in the gun can be done in about 4 seconds. Same with a 10-round magazine except that an empty one can be filled up a little faster. I timed myself a few minutes ago loading a 10-round Glock magazine in 16 seconds without much of a rush. Of course, I can also execute a magazine change in about 2 seconds, as I practice my shooting skills a lot. And it’s not just semi-auto handguns, but even reloading a 6-shot revolver can be done in a matter of seconds with a little practice. One of the top competition revolver shooters does these reloads in less than a second! Quite frankly, the size of your magazine has very little to do with how many victims could be injured or killed by a criminal with the intent.

They also like to talk about how America has so many people killed by guns while England doesn’t. However, on the per capita basis, England has just as much non-gun murder as we do in America. There are over 200,000,000 guns in America, while there are only about 2,500 registered guns in England. Of course there are illegal guns coming into England via black market all the time. Looking at the gun murder rate, there are about 10,000 in the US while there are about 60 in England. But we are comparing apples and oranges here. We have nearly six times the population, but that doesn’t really level the playing field either. Looking at it from a gun population, only about 0.00005% of the guns in the US are used in a murder. In England, about 0.023% of them are used. These figures are not exact because we cannot account for the actual population of illegal firearms in either country, but they give you the basic principle. In comparing these two figures, we find that a gun in England is roughly 460 times more likely to be used in a murder than a gun in America.

It is amazing that we even consider banning any guns in America when only five one-hundred thousandths of one percent of them are used by criminals to commit murder! And this doesn’t even touch the number of crimes that are stopped by law-abiding gun owners with their legally purchased and carried firearms. So stop blaming the gun for the actions of evil people. In the absence of guns, they will take up other weapons, like they did in England, and it will create a huge black market for an illegal gun trade. Just like it did with alcohol and drugs.

Let’s refocus our debate from the gun to the criminals. There are evil people out there that need to be stopped. Taking my guns from me doesn’t help put these criminals in prison. It simply leaves me defenseless when an evil person shows up to do me or my family harm.