Gun control

A tower of confiscated smuggled weapons about to be set ablaze in Nairobi, Kenya

Gun control is any law, policy, practice, or proposal designed to restrict or limit the possession, production, importation, shipment, sale, and/or use of guns or other firearms by private citizens among others.

Gun control laws and policy vary greatly around the world. Some countries, such as the United Kingdom, have very strict limits on gun possession while others, such as the United States, have relatively modest limits. In some countries, the topic remains a source of intense debate with proponents generally arguing the dangers of widespread gun ownership, and opponents generally arguing individual rights of self-protection as well as individual liberties in general.

Arguments

Impact on mortality and injury

High rates of gun mortality and injury are often cited as a primary impetus for gun control policies. Gun violence is a serious public health and economic concern, as, for example, in the United States, there are an average of 32,300 deaths (the majority of which are suicide) and approximately 69,000 injuries annually most common in poor urban areas and frequently associated with gang violence, often involving male juveniles or young adult males,, with an estimated annual cost of $100 billion. American society remains deeply divided over whether more restrictive gun control policies would save lives and prevent injuries. Scholars agree the rate of gun violence in the United States is higher than many developed OECD countries that practice strict gun control.the United States' low life expectancy (relative to other wealthy countries) may be attributable to guns, with a reduction in average American lifespan of 104 days. Disagreement exists among academics on the question of whether a causal relationship between gun availability and violence exists, and which, if any, gun controls would effectively lower gun related violence.

The question of whether gun control policies increase, decrease or have no effect on rates of gun violence turns out to be a difficult question. While a variety of disparate data sources on rates of firearm-related injuries and deaths, firearms markets, and the relationships between rates of gun ownership and violence exist, found that while some strong conclusions are warranted from current research, the state of our knowledge is generally poor. This stems in part from successful efforts to suppress research by Congress and the National Rifle Association and in part from complex methodological research concerns that have not been sufficiently considered. Despite the potential for improved research design, the National Research Council review concludes that the gaps in our knowledge on the efficacy of gun control policies are due primarily to inadequate data and not to weak research methods. The result of the scarcity of relevant data is that gun control is one of the most fraught topics in American politics and scholars remain deadlocked on a variety of issues.

The first cross-national overall comparison of deaths caused by guns was published in 1998., and found substantial variation. The possible factors leading to variation in gun violence among different countries was not assessed.

A number of analyses of factors associated with gun violence have been undertaken. In particular, the prevalence of gun ownership has been a major focus of research into the risk factors for gun violence. A preponderance of studies point to a significant relationship between gun availability and gun violence.

The most thorough of these, the 2004 critical review by the National Research Council concluded that, "higher rates of household firearms ownership are associated with higher rates of gun suicide, that illegal diversions from legitimate commerce are important sources of crime guns and guns used in suicide, that firearms are used defensively many times per day, and that some types of targeted police interventions may effectively lower gun crime and violence."

Another thorough review conducted in 2011 of data from many sources by the Firearm Injury Center at Penn determined that, "[t]he correlation between firearm availability and rates of homicide is consistent across high income industrialized nations: in general, where there are more firearms, there are higher rates of homicide overall."

A 2004 review of the literature conducted by researchers at the Harvard Injury Control Research Center similarly found that, "a broad array of evidence indicates that gun availability is a risk factor for homicide, both in the United States and across high-income countries". Reviews by the HICRC also assessed variation in gun ownership and violence in the United States and found that the same pattern held: states with higher gun ownership had higher rates of homicide, both gun-related and overall.

A 2009 study on assaults found that people in possession of a gun were 4.46 times more likely to be shot during the assault. For those victims who had the chance to resist, the odds of being shot rose to 5.45

A review published in 2011 found that the health risks of a gun in the home are greater than the benefits, based on evidence that the presence of guns increases the risk of completed suicides and evidence that guns increase the intimidation and murder rate of women. The researchers found no credible evidence that guns in the home reduce the severity of injury in a break-in or confrontation or act as a deterrent of assault. A previous study (2003) had similarly found that the presence of a gun in the home significantly increased the risk of suicide and adult homicide.

A number of studies have examined the correlation between rates of gun ownership and gun-related, as well as overall, homicide and suicide rates internationally. Martin Killias, in a 1993 study covering 21 countries, found that there were significant correlations between gun ownership and gun-related suicide and homicide rates. There was also a significant though lesser correlation between gun ownership and total homicide rates A later study published by Killias et al. in 2001, based on a larger sample of countries found, "very strong correlations between the presence of guns in the home and suicide committed with a gun, rates of gun-related homicide involving female victims, and gun-related assault." The authors suggest that the correlation between the presence of guns in the home and suicide and homicide of females is best explained as causal, i.e. the presence of guns is the cause of the mortality and not the reverse. The study found no correlation for similar crimes against men, total rates of assault or for robbery, however, the authors note that the relationship between availability of guns and male homicide is complex, and the data may be affected by wars, organized crime, street crime and crime rates among various countries. They also note that, "the absence of significant correlations between gun ownership and total homicide, assault, or suicide rates...[leaves] open the question of possible substitution effects." (In other words, other means could have been substituted for firearms used in the commission of homicide or suicide.)

A number of scholars have reported that the rate of gun availability is either neutral or associated with less gun violence. These include Don Kates, Gary Mauser, John Lott, David Mustard, Joyce Malcolm and Gary Kleck.

For example, a 2002 review of international gun control policies and gun ownership rates as these relate to crime rates by Kates and Mauser, published in the Harvard Journal of Law & Public Policy (a student run journal devoted to conservative and libertarian legal scholarship) argues that, "International evidence and comparisons have long been offered as proof of the mantra that more guns mean more deaths and that fewer guns, therefore, mean fewer deaths. Unfortunately, such discussions are all too often been [sic] afflicted by misconceptions and factual error and focus on comparisons that are unrepresentative." Kates and Mauser point out in Europe, there is no correlation whatsoever between gun ownership rates and homicide rates (see table "European Gun Ownership and Murder Rates").

Joyce Malcolm reviewed the subject of crime rates and homicides in England and found that, "data on firearms ownership by constabulary area," show, "a negative correlation...[that is], where firearms are most dense violent crime rates are lowest, and where guns are least dense violent crime rates are highest."

A 1990 study by Rich et al. on suicide rates in Toronto and Ontario and psychiatric patients from San Diego reached the conclusion that increased gun restrictions, while reducing suicide-by-gun, resulted in no net decline in suicides, because of substitution of another method—namely leaping. Killias argues against the theory of complete substitution, citing a number of studies that have demonstrated, in his view, "rather convincingly", that suicide candidates do not consistently turn to other means of suicide if their preferred means is not at hand. A more extensive study published in 1993, however, covering far more areas and controlling for the effects of many other gun laws, found that gun control laws generally have no detectable effect on total suicide rates.

Other researchers have argued that suicide is largely impulsive, and since guns are highly effective, completed suicide is the risk of gun ownership, for gun owners as well as spouses and children of gun owners.

In 2011, economists Richard Florida and Charlotta Mellander investigated a variety of factors associated with firearm mortality other than gun availability. They found no association with the proportion of mental illness or neurotic personalities, stress levels, illegal drug use, prevalence of unemployment or higher levels of economic inequality. They did find significant associations between gun deaths and poverty, economies dominated by working class jobs and the frequency of gun-carrying high school students. They further found a positive association between gun deaths and states that voted for John McCain and a negative association in states that voted for Barack Obama. Gun deaths were found to be less likely in states with a higher frequency of college graduates, more creative class jobs, higher levels of economic development, higher levels of happiness and well-being, and larger immigrant populations. The study also found that states that have banned assault weapons, require trigger locks, and mandate safe storage of firearms are all significantly lower in gun-related mortality.

Associations with authoritarianism

Historically, totalitarian regimes have passed gun control legislation, which was later followed by confiscation, with Fascist Italy and Nazi Germany during World War II (as well as some communist states) being well known examples. Once the Nazis had taken and consolidated their power, they proceeded to implement gun control laws to disarm the Jewish population and wipe out the opposition, and the genocide of disarmed Jews, gypsies, and other "undesirables" followed.

According to the Weimar Republic 1928 Law on Firearms & Ammunition, firearms acquisition or carrying permits were "only to be granted to persons of undoubted reliability, and—in the case of a firearms carry permit—only if a demonstration of need is set forth." The Nazi Weapons Law of March 18, 1938 was very similar in structure and wording, but relaxed gun control requirements for the general population. However, it prohibited manufacturing of firearms and ammunition by Jews. Shortly thereafter, in the additional Regulations Against Jews' Possession of Weapons of November 11, 1938, Jews were forbidden from possession of any weapons at all. On November 9. 1938 , the New York Times reported that "The Berlin Police President, Count Wolf Heinrich von Helldorf, announced that as a result of a police activity in the last few weeks, the entire Jewish population of Berlin had been 'disarmed' with the confiscation of 2,569 hand weapons, 1,702 firearms and 20,000 rounds of ammunition."

Holocaust survivor, Abraham H. Foxman, the National Director of the Anti-Defamation League (ADL) stated in 2013: "The idea that supporters of gun control are doing something akin to what Hitler's Germany did to strip citizens of guns in the run-up to the Second World War is historically inaccurate and offensive, especially to Holocaust survivors and their families." The ADL states that there were probably only about 214,000 Jews in Germany in 1938, and they could not have stopped the Nazi "genocide machine." They claim that "Gun control did not cause the Holocaust; Nazism and anti-Semitism did." However, another Holocaust survivor, Theodore Haas, when asked about gun control advocates in a 1990 interview with Jews for the Preservation of Firearms Ownership, stated: "I would like to say, 'You cowards; you gun haters, you don't deserve to live in America. Go live in the Soviet Union, if you love gun control so damn much.' It was the stupidity of these naive fools that aided and abetted Hitler’s goons and thugs. Anti-gun ownership Holocaust survivors insult the memories of all those that needlessly perished for lack of being able to adequately defend themselves."

Bernard E. Harcourt of the University of Chicago Law School, in discussing the issue of totalitarianism and gun control, has stated: "To be sure, the Nazis were intent on killing Jewish persons and used the gun laws and regulations to further the genocide", but concluded that the firearms laws were not central to implementing the Holocaust. Stephen Halbrook, in the law article "Nazi Firearms Law and the Disarming of the German Jews", asserts that "Gun control laws are depicted as benign and historically progressive. However, German firearm laws and hysteria created against Jewish firearm owners played a major role in laying the groundwork for the eradication of German Jewry in the Holocaust."

In Tzarist Russia personal gun ownership was legal, allowing Bolsheviks and other revolutionaries to import a great number of guns for the purpose of overthrowing the Tzar. For example, in 1905, during the Russo-Japanese War, ship "Sirius" delivered to Russian revolutionaries 8,500 rifles paid by the government of Japan. In December 1918 during the Russian Civil War the Bolsheviks made it a crime for citizens other than members of their own party to own guns. Bolsheviks were allowed to own 1 rifle and 1 revolver. In any case, there was considerable hunting in Russia during the Soviet era. Vasily Zaytsev, the much celebrated Soviet sniper at the Battle of Stalingrad, learned to shoot in the Ural Mountains hunting deer and wolves with his grandfather and younger brother.

Kopel has claimed that the Battles of Lexington and Concord, sometimes known as the Shot heard 'round the world, in 1775, were started in part because General Gage sought to carry out an order by the British government to disarm the populace. According to Harvey, this was not gun control but an act of war: the rebels had already formed a shadow government, were training militias, and tensions between them and the British colonial government were at the breaking point. In either case, Gage sent his troops to Concord to seize and destroy the rebel militia's military weapons depot, and to Lexington to capture two of the rebel leaders, Samuel Adams and John Hancock.

Self-defense

Main article: defensive gun use

As of 2005, 44 U.S. states have passed "shall issue" concealed carry legislation of one form or another. In these states, law-abiding citizens, usually after giving evidence of completing a training course, may carry handguns on their person for self-protection. Other states and some cities such as New York may issue permits. Only Illinois, and the District of Columbia have explicit legislation forbidding personal carry. Wyoming,Vermont, Arizona, and Alaska do not require permits to carry concealed weapons, although Alaska retains a shall-issue permit process for reciprocity purposes with other states. Similarly, Arizona retains a shall-issue permit process, both for reciprocity purposes and because permit holders are allowed to carry concealed handguns in certain places (such as bars and restaurants that serve alcohol) that non-permit holders are not.

Criminologist Gary Kleck has claimed that crime victims who defend themselves with guns are less likely to be injured or lose property than victims who either did not resist, or resisted without guns. He claimed that this was so, even though the victims using guns typically faced more dangerous circumstances than other victims. The findings applied to both robberies and assaults. Other research, by Kleck, on rape, indicated that although victims rarely resisted with guns, those using other weapons were less likely to be raped, and no more likely to suffer other injuries besides rape itself, than victims who did not resist, or resisted without weapons. A recent study from the University of Philadelphia suggests that victims in possession of firearms are 4.5 times more likely to be shot and 4.2 times more likely to be killed than those unarmed.

Professor of Health Policy David Hemenway and other researchers at the Harvard Injury Control Research Center (HICRC) have claimed that the frequency of use of guns for self-defense has been overestimated, and is, in fact, much lower than claimed by Kleck and others. Kleck claims, however, that these criticisms were based on purported flaws in surveys, addressing only minor sources of over-estimation while ignoring sources of underestimation. Two national random-digit-dial surveys directed by the HICRC report that most gun use claimed to be self-defensive, in fact, represents likely illegal use of guns in escalating arguments and that guns used in the home are mostly used to intimidate spouses or relatives rather than to respond to crime. Several further HICRC studies using data from surveys of detainees in prisons and interviews with prison physicians report that very few criminals are actually shot while committing crimes and that those criminals who are shot are typically shot as victims of crime themselves (in incidents unrelated to the crimes that lead to their incarceration) and not by law abiding citizens.

Economist John Lott, in his book More Guns, Less Crime, provides data showing that laws allowing law-abiding citizens to carry a gun legally in public may cause reductions in crime because potential criminals do not know who may be carrying a firearm. The data for Lott's analysis came from the FBI's crime statistics for all 3,054 US counties.

Kleck analysed the impact of 18 major types of gun control laws on every major type of violent crime or violence (including suicide), and found that gun laws generally had no significant effect on violent crime rates or suicide rates. Studies by Arthur Kellermann and Matthew Miller found that keeping a gun in the home was associated with an increased risk of suicide. Other studies, however, found no association between gun ownership and suicide.

University of Chicago economist Steven Levitt argues in his paper, Understanding Why Crime Fell in the 1990s: Four Factors that Explain the Decline and Six that Do Not, that available data indicate that neither stricter gun control laws nor more liberal concealed carry laws have had any significant effect on the decline in crime in the 1990s. A comprehensive review of published studies of gun control, released in November 2004 by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, was unable to determine any statistically significant effect resulting from such laws, although the authors suggest that further study may provide more conclusive information.

Following the Sandy Hook Elementary School shooting in December 2012, where 20 young children were killed, Wayne LaPierre, vice-president of the National Rifle Association (NRA) proposed, at an NRA press conference, that the solution to such tragedies is to place armed officers in schools, saying: "The only way to stop a bad guy with a gun is a good guy with a gun." LaPierre blamed the media, politicians in favor of gun-free zones, U.S. mental health services, and violent movies and video games for the shooting. He introduced an NRA-backed proposal to put armed guards in all schools in the U.S., which he called the National Model School Shield Program. In January 2013, the Newtown school board voted unanimously to ask for police officer presence in all of its elementary schools.

Domestic violence

Gun control advocates claim that the strongest evidence linking availability of guns to injury and mortality rates comes in studies of domestic violence, most often referring to the series of studies by Arthur Kellermann. In response to public suggestions by some advocates of firearms for home defense, that homeowners were at high risk of injury from home invasions and would be wise to acquire a firearm for purposes of protection, Kellermann investigated the circumstances surrounding all in-home homicides in three cities of about half a million population each over five years, and found that the risk of a homicide was in fact slightly higher in homes where a handgun was present, rather than lower. From the details of the homicides he concluded that the risk of a crime of passion or other domestic dispute ending in a fatal injury was much higher when a gun was readily available (essentially all the increased risk being in homes where a handgun was kept loaded and unlocked), compared to a lower rate of fatality in domestic violence not involving a firearm.

This increase in mortality, he postulated, was large enough to overwhelm any protective effect the presence of a gun might have by deterring or defending against burglaries or home invasions, which occurred much less frequently. The increased risk averaged over all homes containing guns was similar in size to that correlated with an individual with a criminal record living in the home, but substantially less than that associated with demographic factors known to be risks for violence, such as renting a home versus ownership, or living alone versus with others.

Other scholars, however, believe that Kellermann misinterpreted his findings. Kleck showed that no more than a handful of the homicides that Kellermann studied were committed with guns belonging to the victim or members of his or her household, and thus it was implausible that victim household gun ownership contributed to their homicide. Instead, the association that Kellermann found between gun ownership and victimization merely reflected the widely accepted notion that people who live in more dangerous circumstances are more likely to be murdered, but also were more likely to have acquired guns for self-protection prior to their death.

Other critics of Kellermann's work and its use by advocates of gun control point out that since it deliberately ignores crimes of violence occurring outside the home (Kellermann states at the outset that the characteristics of such homicides are much more complex and ambiguous, and would be virtually impossible to classify rigorously enough), it is more directly a study of domestic violence than of gun ownership. Kellermann does in fact include in the conclusion of his 1993 paper several paragraphs referring to the need for further study of domestic violence and its causes and prevention. Researchers John Lott, Gary Kleck and many others dispute Kellermann's work.

Kleck found that the vast majority of defensive gun uses do not involve the defender killing or even nonfatally wounding the offender.

Civil rights

Template:Globalize/US Some in the United States view gun ownership as a civil right, where the Second Amendment to the United States Constitution guarantees the right of citizens to keep and bear arms.

One of the earliest U.S. gun-control legislation at the state level were the black codes (laws that replaced the pre Civil War era slave codes which, among other things, prohibited black ownership of firearms) in an attempt to prevent blacks' having access to the full rights of citizens, including rights guaranteed under the Second Amendment. Laws of this type later used racially neutral language to survive legal challenge, but were expected to be enforced against blacks rather than whites.

One target of gun control has been so-called "junk guns," which are generally cheaper and therefore more accessible to the poor. However, some civil rights organizations favor tighter gun regulations. In 2004, the NAACP filed suit against 45 gun manufacturers for creating what it called a "public nuisance" through the "negligent marketing" of handguns, which included models commonly described as Saturday night specials. The suit alleged that handgun manufacturers and distributors were guilty of marketing guns in a way that encouraged violence in black and Hispanic neighborhoods. "The gun industry has refused to take even basic measures to keep criminals and prohibited persons from obtaining firearms," NAACP President/CEO Kweisi Mfume said. "The industry must be as responsible as any other and it must stop dumping firearms in over-saturated markets. The obvious result of dumping guns is that they will increasingly find their way into the hands of criminals."

The NAACP lawsuit was dismissed in 2003. It, and several similar suits—some brought by municipalities seeking re-imbursement for medical costs associated with criminal shootings—were portrayed by gun-rights groups, most notably the National Rifle Association, as "nuisance suits," aimed at driving gun manufacturers (especially smaller firms) out of business through court costs alone, as damage awards were not expected. These suits prompted the passage of the Protection of Lawful Commerce in Arms Act (PLCAA) in October 2005. The passage of the PLCAA has been criticised as providing protection from litigation for the arms industry that most other industries do not have, for stifling innovation in making firearms safer to use, and for not allowing victims of firearm violence compensation for actual negligence on the part of gun manufacturers and sellers. On January 22, 2013, congressman Adam Schiff introduced a bill in U.S. House of Representatives to counter the PLCAA, the The Equal Access to Justice for Victims of Gun Violence Act.

Martin Luther King said, "By our readiness to allow arms to be purchased at will and fired at whim... we have created an atmosphere in which violence and hatred have become popular pastimes." At the same time, Dr. King applied for a permit to carry a concealed firearm after his house was bombed in 1956. Professor Adam Winkler recounts that "William Worthy, a journalist who covered the Southern Christian Leadership Conference, reported that once, during a visit to King's parsonage, he went to sit down on an armchair in the living room and, to his surprise, almost sat on a loaded gun. Glenn Smiley, an adviser to King, described King's home as 'an arsenal.'"

Similarly, the Dalai Lama said, "If someone has a gun and is trying to kill you, it would be reasonable to shoot back with your own gun." speaking at the "Educating Heart Summit" in Portland, Oregon, when asked by a girl how to react when a shooter takes aim at a classmate.

Mahatma Gandhi said "Among the many misdeeds of the British rule in India, history will look upon the Act depriving a whole nation of arms, as the blackest." in his autobiography.

Civic duty

In several countries, such as Switzerland, firearm politics and gun control are partially linked with armed forces' reserves and reservist training. Switzerland practices universal conscription, which requires that all able-bodied male citizens keep fully automatic firearms at home in case of a call-up. Every male between the ages of 20 and 34 is considered a candidate for conscription into the military, and following a brief period of active duty will commonly be enrolled in the militia until age or an inability to serve ends his service obligation. During their enrollment in the armed forces, these men are required to keep their government-issued selective fire combat rifles and semi-automatic handguns in their homes. They are not allowed to keep ammunition for these firearms in their homes, however; ammunition is stored at government arsenals. Up until September 2007, soldiers received 50 rounds of government-issued ammunition in a sealed box for storage at home. Swiss gun laws are considered to be restrictive. Owners are legally responsible for third party access and usage of their weapons. Licensure is similar to other Germanic countries. In a referendum in February 2011 voters rejected a citizens' initiative which would have obliged armed services members' to store their rifles and pistols on military compounds, rather than keep them at home.

Statistics

Private ownership

As of 2011, approximately 47% of American adults report that they have a gun in their home or elsewhere on their property.

In the United States, if you do not have a criminal record and have not been adjudicated as mentally incompetent, you can buy guns. In 2011, the FBI's National Instant Criminal Background Check System (NICS) ran 16,454,951 background checks for firearms purchases. Of these purchases, 78,211, or about 0.48 per cent, were denied.

Production data from firearm manufacturers suggested in 2004 that roughly 258 million firearms were owned by civilians in the United States as of 1999.

U.S. gun ownership varies most strongly by gender -- 45% of men versus 15% of women personally own guns. Being married and from the South are also major predictors of gun ownership -- 64% of Southern married men own guns.

Gun safety and gun laws

In 2009, according to the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime, 66.9% of all homicides in the United States involved use of a firearm. There were 52,447 deliberate and 23,237 accidental non-fatal gunshot injuries in the United States during 2000. Two-thirds of all gun-related deaths in the United States are suicides. In 2010, there were 19,392 firearm-related suicide deaths, and 11,078 firearm-related homicide deaths in the United States.

Evanston, Illinois, a Chicago suburb of 75,000 residents, became the largest town to ban handgun ownership in September 1982 but experienced no change in violent crime. The ban was lifted after a federal lawsuit was filed by the National Rifle Association (the day after the District of Columbia v. Heller Supreme Court case was entered. Among the 15 states with the highest homicide rates, 10 have restrictive or very restrictive gun laws. Twenty percent of U.S. homicides occur in four cities with just 6% of the population—New York, Chicago, Detroit, and Washington, D.C.—and each has or, in the cases of Detroit (until 2001) and D.C. (2008) had, a requirement for a license on private handguns or an effective outright ban (in the case of Chicago).

In Britain (England, Wales and Scotland), the private ownership of most handguns was banned in 1997 following a gun massacre at a school in Dunblane and a 1987 gun massacre in Hungerford in which the combined deaths was 35 and injured 30. Gun ownership and gun crime was already at a low level, which made these slaughters particularly concerning. Only an estimated 57,000 people —0.1% of the population owned such weapons prior to the ban. In the UK, only 8 percent of all criminal homicides are committed with a firearm of any kind. In 2005/6 the number of such deaths in England and Wales (population 53.3 million) was just 50, a reduction of 36 per cent on the year before and lower than at any time since 1998/9. In 2007, the number of deaths in Britain (population 60.7 million) from firearms was 51. In 2007 in the U.S. 12,632 murders were committed using firearms, 613 persons were killed unintentionally, and 17,352 committed suicide by firearms. In 2008 the number of deaths from firearms in Britain was 42, a 20-year low, with vast parts of the country recording no homicides, suicides or accidental deaths from firearms. Violent crime accelerated in Jamaica after handguns were heavily restricted and a special Gun Court established. A high proportion of the illegal guns in Jamaica can be attributed to guns smuggled in from the United States, where they are more freely available.

History

Gun control in the United States

Main article: Gun politics in the United States

Many opponents of gun control consider self-defense to be a fundamental and unalienable human right and believe that firearms are an important tool in the exercise of this right. They consider the prohibition of an effective means of self-defense to be unethical. For instance, in Thomas Jefferson's "Commonplace Book," a quote from Cesare Beccaria reads,

"laws that forbid the carrying of arms ... disarm only those who are neither inclined nor determined to commit crimes ... Such laws make things worse for the assaulted and better for the assailants; they serve rather to encourage than to prevent homicides, for an unarmed man may be attacked with greater confidence than an armed man."

Before the American Civil War ended, state slave codes prohibited slaves from owning guns. After slavery in the U.S. was abolished, states persisted in prohibiting black people from owning guns under laws renamed Black Codes.

The United States Congress overrode most portions of the Black Codes by passing the Civil Rights Act of 1866. The legislative histories of both the Civil Rights Act and the Fourteenth Amendment, as well as The Special Report of the Anti-Slavery Conference of 1867, are replete with denunciations of those particular statutes that denied blacks equal access to firearms.

After the adoption of the Fourteenth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution in 1868, most states turned to "facially neutral" business or transaction taxes on handgun purchases. However, the intention of these laws was not neutral. An article in Virginia's official university law review called for a "prohibitive tax...on the privilege" of selling handguns as a way of disarming "the son of Ham," whose "cowardly practice of 'toting' guns has been one of the most fruitful sources of crime.... Let a Negro board a railroad train with a quart of mean whiskey and a pistol in his grip and the chances are that there will be a murder, or at least a row, before he alights." Thus, many Southern states imposed high taxes or banned inexpensive guns in order to price destitute individuals out of the gun market.

Gun control in Australia

Main article: Gun politics in Australia

In response to the Port Arthur massacre in 1996, gun law proposals developed from the report of the 1988 National Committee on Violence were adopted under a National Firearms Agreement. This was necessary because the Australian Constitution does not give the Commonwealth power to enact gun laws.

The National Firearms Agreement banned all semi-automatic rifles and all semi-automatic and pump-action shotguns, and created a tightly restrictive system of licensing and ownership controls. Because the Australian Constitution prevents the taking of property without just compensation the Federal Government introduced the Medicare Levy Amendment Act 1996 that provided the revenue for the National Firearms Program through a one-off 0.2% increase in the Medicare levy. Known as the gun buy-back scheme, it started across the country on the 1 October 1996 and concluded on the 30 September 1997 to purchase and destroy all semi-automatic rifles including .22 rimfires, semi-automatic shotguns and pump-action shotguns. The buyback was predicted to cost A$500 million and had wide community support.

In 2002, the Monash University shooting led the federal government to urge state governments to again review handgun laws, and, as a result, amended legislation was adopted in all states and territories. Changes included a 10-round magazine capacity limit, a calibre limit of not more than .38 inches (9.65 mm), a barrel length limit of not less than 120 mm (4.72 inches) for semi-automatic pistols and 100 mm (3.94 inches) for revolvers, and even stricter probation and attendance requirements for sporting target shooters. In the state of Victoria A$21 million compensation was paid for confiscating 18,124 target pistols, and 15,184 replacement pistols were imported.

One government policy was to compensate shooters for giving up the sport. Approximately 25% of pistol shooters took this offer, and relinquished their licences and their right to own pistols for sport for five years.

There is contention over the effects of the gun control laws in Australia, with some researchers reporting significant drops in gun-related crime, and others reporting no significant effect in gun related or overall crime rates. The primary source of the controversy is that, while the incidence of firearm deaths has decreased considerably since the 1996 restrictions went into effect, the rates had already been falling for the past two decades prior to the new gun laws. An article by David Hemenway argues that these studies were designed to find nothing. Hemenway writes that the authors of these studies carefully chose the period of study to reflect their desired negative results without giving rationale for the time period they choose to show a supposed decline in Australian gun violence. In Australia, the rate of homicides involving firearms per 100,000 population in 2009 was 0.1, as compared with 3.3 in the United States. The rate of unintentional deaths involving firearms in 2001 was 0.09 as compared with 0.27 in the United States.

See also

• Arms control
• Concealed carry
• Gun politics

External links

• Gun control at Curlie
• GunPolicy.org

National groups

• Gun Control Australia - Supporting Gun Control in Australia
• Coalition for Gun Control - Canada
• Gun Ownership in India
• Stop Gun Caravan - Japan
• Gun Free South Africa
• Coalition to Stop Gun Violence - U.S.
• Brady Campaign to Prevent Gun Violence - U.S.
• Americans for Responsible Solutions - U.S.