gun control myths

MYTH: Keeping guns in the home increases personal protection.
TRUTH: Obviously, self defense is not a good argument against gun control since those who own firearms are actually more likely to be victims of homicide. Two studies published in The New England Journal of Medicine revealed that keeping a gun in the home increases the risk of both suicide and homicide.

Keeping a gun in the home makes it 2.7 times more likely that someone will be a victim of homicide in your home (in almost all cases the victim is either related to or intimately acquainted with the murderer) and 4.8 times more likely that someone will commit suicide . Guns make it more likely that a suicide attempt will be successful than if other means were used such as sleeping pills.

MYTH: Guns are used defensively 2.5 million times each year in the US.
TRUTH: Gary Kleck conducted a survey which concluded that 2.5 million people in the US each year use guns to defend themselves. One percent of the US population is between 2 and 3 million. So if only one percent of the survey respondents had answered the survey dishonestly that would make the results of the survey inaccurate by millions. According to the NCVS (National Crime Victim Survey) guns are used defensively less than 100,000 times each year. The NCVS surveyed over 90,000 people. In contrast, Kleck only surveyed about 5,000 people.

Thus it would be reasonable to conclude that the NCVS provides a more reliable estimate of the number of defensive gun uses in the US. An article published in the Journal of Criminal Law and Criminology (Northwestern)87 (1997): 1430 revealed that using methods similiar to Kleck's, it could be concluded that nearly 20 million Americans have seen aircraft from another planet and that one million Americans have had contact with aliens.

MYTH: A decrease in crime in Kennesaw, Georgia after it passed a law which required people to keep a firearm in their homes shows that guns reduce crime.
TRUTH: Philip J. Cook and Jens Ludwig explain, "The case of Kennesaw, Georgia, which adopted an ordinance in 1982 requiring every household to keep a gun, has been prominent. There have been several published analyses of the burglary trends in Kennesaw around the time of the ordinance, with contradictory results. In any event, this is not a good test of the deterrence hypothesis, since the ordinance was purely symbolic.

Most homes in Kennesaw already had a gun before the ordinance, and it seems unlikely the ordinance had any effect on prevalence since there was no penalty specified in the law for refusal to comply." ("Guns and Burglary", Evaluating Gun Policy, pages 81-82)

MYTH: People in Switzerland are heavily armed. There is an assault weapon in every Swiss home.
TRUTH: It's true that Swiss soldiers are required to keep their assault rifles at home. How big is the Swiss Army? 400,000 . There are about 3 million Swiss households . 400,000/3,000,000= 0.133. Therefore, there is a military assault rifle in about 13% of Swiss homes. Switzerland also has rather strict gun control laws. In Switzerland a permit is required in order to purchase a weapon (The permit shows that you are at least 18 and don't have a criminal record).

A permit is also required to carrry a weapon. Such a permit is mostly issued to people who work in security-type occupations. To obtain this permit, you have to demonstrate that you need to carry a weapon and that you know how to handle a gun safely and have knowledge of the law regarding firearms use. Soldiers in the Swiss Army are required to store their military weapons at home under lock and key and to undergo regular training. Strict gun laws in Switzerland minimize the dangers of gun ownership.

However, such dangers can not be completely eliminated as illustrated by the case of Friedrich Leibacher who rushed into a session of parliament in the Swiss town of Zug. He used his Swiss Army assault rifle and a grenade to murder fourteen people. Eleven of these people were lawmakers.

MYTH: The 1976 handgun ban in Washington D.C. caused an increase in crime.
TRUTH: The handgun ban has prevented 47 deaths each year Gun control has saved lives. Let's look at a graph that displays information about the homicide rate in the District of Columbia a decade before the ban and a decade after. There are random fluctuations in the crime rate from year to year so it's best to look at homicide data from many years. In the decade preceding the ban, the homicide rate exceeded 35 per 100,000 4 times. In the decade following the ban this happened only once.

The average homicide rate of the ten years that followed the ban was lower than the homicide rate of the previous decade. Was this part of a general decrease in homicide that would have happened without the ban? If that were so you would expect the non-gun homicide rate to have declined as well as the gun homicide rate. However, there was only a statistically significant decrease in the number of homicides that involved firearms.

MYTH: If you outlaw guns only the outlaws will have guns.
TRUTH: If you outlaw guns, very few criminals will have guns. In America guns start out legal. Then they enter the black market one way or the other . So if you have less legal guns then there will less guns entering the black market and consequently less outlaws owning guns. Think about it. Nations with very strict gun control laws such as the UK, Australia, and Japan have much lower gun crime rates than the US.
The most probable explanation for this is that criminals in the US have much greater access to guns due to less gun control. Saying "If you outlaw guns only the outlaws will have guns" is very misleading and completely absurd. If you outlaw guns, less outlaws will have guns. Would you rather have more or less outlaws owning guns? The answer is obvious.

MYTH:Gun ownership is a protection against political tyranny.
TRUTH: Private ownership of guns was very common under Saddam Hussein's regime .It certainly didn't protect the Iraqi people against political tyranny. Gun ownership was legalized in Germany in 1928, five years before Hitler rose to power. Despite the claims of pro-gun activists, gun ownership did nothing to stop a tyrant like Hitler from seizing power. In 1938, Germany's gun laws were relaxed except in the case of Jews.

Although the gun lobby has tried to associate racism with gun control, white supremacists have often praised the Nazis for being pro-gun and have opposed gun control. An example of that is this quote: "If you register your gun with anybody, you're a nut! When the conspiracy comes for your firearm, give it to 'em like this grand dragon is going to - right between the eyes." -Klu Klux Klan (Richmond Times- Dispatch, July 5, 1967)