Police officers are not about to go on strike for more gun control. Most believe law-abiding citizens should be able to own firearms for self-defence.
By John Lott
In the wake of the recent
mass shooting in Colorado, New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg called on police to
join him in fighting for more gun control: "I don't understand why the
police officers across this country don't stand up collectively and say we're going
to go on strike." It is illegal for police to go on strike, and Mr.
Bloomberg later backed off his statement. But the mayor is just as far off the
mark in his assumption that police agree with him on gun control.
Take the annual survey by
the National Association of Chiefs of Police of more than 20,000 chiefs of
police and sheriffs. In 2010 it found that 95% believed "any law-abiding
citizen [should] be able to purchase a firearm for sport or self-defense."
Seventy-seven percent believed that concealed-handgun permits issued in one
state should be honored by other states "in the way that drivers' licenses
are recognized through the country"—and that making citizens' permits
portable would "facilitate the violent crime-fighting potential of the
professional law enforcement community."
National surveys of street
officers are rare, but they show officers to be overwhelmingly in favor of
law-abiding civilians owning and carrying guns. A 2007 national survey of sworn
police officers by Police Magazine found that 88% disagreed that "tighter
restrictions on handgun ownership would increase or enhance public
safety." In the same survey, 67% opposed tighter gun control because the
"law would only be obeyed by law-abiding citizens."
Regional or local surveys
show similar patterns. For example, a 1997 survey conducted by the San Diego
Police Officers Association found that 82% of its officers opposed an
"assault weapons" ban, 82% opposed a limitation on magazine capacity,
and 85% supported letting law-abiding private citizens carry concealed
handguns.
These are not views
consistent with Mayor Bloomberg's assertion: "The bottom line is if we had
fewer guns, we would have a lot fewer murders." Police generally
understand that too often the laws disarm law-abiding citizens, not criminals,
and thus make it easier for criminals to commit crime. Police are extremely
important for reducing crime, but they know that virtually always they arrive
at the crime scene after the crime has been committed. When victims face a
criminal by themselves, guns are critical for self-defense.
Mr. Bloomberg's claims
about guns are mere hypotheticals, apparently based on guesses and little
knowledge of what happens in real life. He also uses inaccurate, scaremongering
terminology that suggests he doesn't even understand how guns operate.
He seems to dismiss the
idea of letting people defend themselves when he speculates that if
concealed-handgun permit holders had been present at the Colorado attack, the crossfire
between permit holders and the killer would have been even worse than the mass
shooting itself. But we have the evidence of multiple occasions when mass
shootings were prevented by civilians.
One incident took place at
the New Life Church in Colorado Springs in December 2007. There were 7,000
people inside when an armed man came on the church's property and began
shooting, killing two people and wounding others. What stopped him was a
parishioner who had permission to carry her permitted concealed weapon on
church property. Despite this and other incidents—preventing shootings in
schools, a mall and other public places—there is no case on record of a permit
holder accidentally shooting a bystander.
Mr. Bloomberg keeps
pushing for renewing the federal ban on assault weapons, which expired in 2004
after being enacted during the Clinton administration in 1994. What the mayor
ignores is that no published peer-reviewed research by criminologists or
economists—even that funded by the Clinton administration itself—found
reductions in violent crime from the 1994 ban. It is particularly noteworthy
that the law's sunset in 2004 was not followed by the bloodbath that Mr.
Bloomberg and so many others predicted.
As for assault weapons,
the AR-15s or AK-47s used by civilians are indeed "military-style
weapons." But the key word is "style," since the weapons look
similar but operate differently. The guns covered by the federal
assault-weapons ban were not the fully automatic machine guns used by the
military but semiautomatic versions of those guns, meaning they fire only one
bullet per pull of the trigger. If the mayor wants to ban all semiautomatic
guns—meaning a vast number of civilian-owned weapons that can fire a number of
bullets without reloading—he should say so.
Mr. Bloomberg complains
that "gun manufacturers flooded the market with the type of high-capacity
magazines [the killer in Colorado] used." But we have already tried a
magazine ban as part of the assault-weapons ban, and it won't be any more helpful
now. A magazine, which is basically a metal box with a spring, is trivially
easy to make in any size. Even if large magazines are banned, they will always
be readily available on the illegal market.
Although Mr. Bloomberg
wants to ban "armor-piercing bullets," he doesn't seem to know much
about them, either. First, nobody can get them legally for handguns except the
police. Then the mayor claims that: "The only reason to have an
armor-piercing bullet is to go through a bullet-resistant vest." That is
just not so. Rifles with standard ammunition often can penetrate such vests,
because their bullets travel faster than those fired from handguns. Yet if the
mayor had said that hunting rifles can penetrate these bullet-resistant vests,
his comments wouldn't have generated the same support.
Mr. Bloomberg's emotional
responses are understandable. But facts matter. The mayor should take a private
lesson from his police officers on gun basics.
Related Reading:
'Cuz Nanny Napoleon Doomberg Knows Best...
Would Banning Big Magazines and ‘Assault’ Weapons Cut Down on Gun Violence? Most Cops Say No.
Gun Control By The Numbers
Boom! Gun Sales Soar and Gun Control Fades. It Seems Peeps Would Rather Be Armed Than To Defend Themselves Against Terrorists With Scissors.
Flashback: Noted Nanny-Stating Gun-Grabber Gets Special Exemption For His Bodyguards On Gun-Free Island
Memory Lane: Noted Climate Change Crusader Has A/C Window Unit Installed On His SUV/Limo To "Beat The Heat"
http://tinyurl.com/aveyms5
No comments:
Post a Comment