I picked this up originally from the OFAH web site. Thought some of you might be interested.
"Gun control myths
Author: Michael Taube
Source: Windsor Star Thurs. November 28, 2002
I have never owned a gun. I have never fired a gun. I have never even held a gun. But I am firmly against gun control, a concept that infringes on an individual's right to possess a firearm. Gun control legislation maximizes the state's influence over its citizens, minimizes personal freedom and does not reduce crime levels in an urban or rural community.
For years, advocates of gun control have tried to establish a non-existent co-relation between violent crime and gun ownership. They have set up firearms registries that primarily target honest, law-abiding citizens such as hunters, farmers and gun collectors. They have even accused gun owners of creating an environment that is unsafe for adults, children, women, minorities and so on.
The amount of misinformation about gun control in North America is nothing short of staggering. As Richard Poe wrote in his book, The Seven Myths of Gun Control (2001), "ignorance, fear and hysteria are poor foundations upon which to base such a weighty decision."
Let's break down the biggest myth right away: violent crime and gun ownership are co-related. This is not true at all. In reality, violent crime and gun ownership are two separate entities.
Criminals do not register their guns with the proper authorities. They acquire them on a regular basis by illegal means, such as the black market.
When a citizen does register a firearm, you can count on him or her being a law-abiding gun owner who believes in the principles of democracy and freedom. Some use guns for their livelihood (native Canadians, farmers), some for sporting purposes (wild game hunters) and the rest for personal, non-violent use (gun collectors).
Not surprisingly, some gun control advocates are opposed to the use of firearms to kill animals for food, sport or profit. In this case, a co-relation between gun control advocates and animal activists seems to exist.
If only law-abiding gun owners are registering their guns and not violent criminals, there cannot be any sort of a reduction in violent crime levels. The same principle also applies to petty crime, since petty criminals don't register their guns, either.
Crime levels
Meanwhile, the process of registering firearms has not helped decrease crime levels. Consider the flaws in the registration of the most basic of items, handguns. As Lorne Gunter of the Edmonton Journal wrote in a Nov. 15 column, handguns have been registered since 1934 in Canada, but this has not prevented them "from being used in nearly two-thirds of the firearms murders in the country each year."
So, it appears that the need for gun control is forcing the wrong group of people to register, while the real criminals are still lurking the streets with their unregistered weapons.
This breaks down another myth about gun control: that it supposedly helps protect citizens from those who are unable to be trusted with guns.
Yale University economist John R. Lott, in his book More Guns, Less Crime (1998), discovered that the U.S. states "experiencing the greatest reductions in crime are also the ones with the fastest growing percentages of gun ownership."
As Lott noted, violent crime dropped by four per cent in the U.S. for each one-per-cent increase in gun ownership. Moreover, states that allowed its citizens to conceal handguns between 1977-1994 witnessed a 10-per-cent drop in murders and 4.4-per-cent drop in overall violent crime.
These drops may have occurred because of awareness by would-be criminals in these states that more people were now in possession of handguns and could defend themselves.
It also appears to show that many gun owners are responsible individuals, not the gun-toting maniacs as they are so often portrayed in the media. To quote David B. Kopel from a 1998 Cato Institute paper, "Gun control does not reduce crime; gun ownership does."
Owning a gun is a responsibility of an individual, not the state. By giving law-abiding citizens the right to bear arms, they will be given the freedom to protect themselves against certain types of criminal elements. This will also free up time and resources for the police to stop the growth of violent crime in a liberal democratic society.
It is time for the gun control advocates to stop worrying about the creation of a so-called "gun culture," and start understanding that gun owners are generally decent, honourable people.
Gun owners have friends, families and children. Most respect the law and the rights of others.
I don't intend to ever own a gun, but I understand and respect the position of individuals that choose to own a gun.
This article appeared in the Windsor Star on Wednesday November 27, 2002."
