Sentencing Americans to death

As noted by Mr. Harry Browne
recently on the pages of WorldNetDaily, the issue of guns and gun
control probably shouldn’t center on the Second Amendment
and our “right” to own a weapon in this country. Sadly, that should be
enough but it isn’t because, as he pointed out, most people are
concerned only about “rights” that directly affect them. And for a
large portion of the country, gun “rights” don’t matter because they
believe politicians who tell them armed police officers will protect
them from anything harmful.

So, if the object of the gun control debate is to win pro-gun
“converts,” Mr. Browne’s strategy of changing the focus from one of
“rights” to “public safety” is spot on target. That’s why it is
imperative to jump on stories like this one
when they are published. Everyone needs to know when some public
official is putting their life at risk.

As the story notes, if the state’s Democrat attorney general, J.
Joseph Curran, gets his way, nearly all Maryland residents will be
handed a potential death sentence soon, their only crime being that of
trusting state officials like him to protect them because they believed
his anti-gun propaganda. This is not a good reason to die for.

According to the Washington Post, Mr. Curran, like Maryland’s
Democrat governor, Parris N. Glendening, is a staunch gun control
advocate and is proposing “sweeping” new legislation whose ultimate goal
is the banning all handguns in the state. Well, not all handguns,
actually — Mr. Curran believes they should only “be the province
of the military or law enforcement or a special segment of people.” And
naturally, true to autocratic form, he wants to decide who the
“special people” are. “King Curran I,” if you will.

To put his proposals into perspective, though, we really need to
first understand the practical applications of them and how they might
translate into actual safety for American citizens, discounting
the empty notion of merely feeling safer.

To begin with, Mr. Curran’s suggestion that handguns belong only in
the hands of one particular group, the military, is inconsequential when
it comes to actually being safe in our homes, on our streets, and
in our communities. Since the military cannot, by law, participate in
civilian law enforcement, this suggestion becomes a moot point. It goes
without saying that the military indeed should be equipped with the very
best and latest small arms and ammunition, since they provide general
security (if not tangible “safety”) to all Americans every day of
every year. Most of us are not too worried, though, about invading
hordes because we’re more worried about practical threats appropriate to
our situation — like some idiot in a dark alley who wants to do us
harm.

Next, Mr. Curran believes that only police officers need to have the
kind of protection (immediate and unencumbered access to a handgun) we
all deserve. By suggesting this, he creates a class warfare
argument: Police officers are more important than regular folks.
And of course, it doesn’t hurt that police officers will be the first
ones called if “hordes” of ticked-off Americans ever sought to harm
precious politicians like Mr. Curran.

But for safety’s sake, says Mr. Curran, if we only allowed the police
to be armed then there wouldn’t be any more crime to worry about and
hence, there would be no legitimate “safety” concern to own, carry and
use a handgun in one’s self-defense. That’s a ridiculous thought
and I realize that, but this is precisely what Mr. Curran is intimating.

Having fleshed out Mr. Curran’s suggestions, it now becomes entirely
appropriate to examine the hard evidence regarding criminal activity in
this country. After all, law-abiding American citizens most often quote
self-defense as the reason why they believe they need to be armed at all
times.

Based on the FBI’s most recent (1998) Uniform Crime Report, the statistics don’t
support his utopian view of the issue of personal safety in the United
States.

Though violent crime is at it’s lowest in years, consider these numbers
and see if it makes you feel safe enough to give up the best form of
personal protection available today, in lieu of being “protected” only
by the police:

• Law enforcement agencies nationwide recorded a 21 percent
  Crime Index clearance rate in 1998, which means that 79 percent of
  crimes went unsolved. The clearance rate for violent crimes was 49
  percent, meaning 51 percent went unsolved, while the figure for property
  crimes was 17 percent cleared and 83 percent uncleared.

• The crime clearance rate was lowest for burglary and motor
  vehicle theft, with 14 percent solved and 86 percent unsolved. How much
  would armed home invasions or carjackings increase if nobody were
  allowed to be armed, except the police?

• There are only 641,208 police officers and 253,327 civilian
  assistance personnel “guarding” over 260 million Americans.
  That’s a whopping 2.5 officers for every 1,000 people — do you feel
  “safe?”

• In “liberal” northeastern states like Maryland, the highest
  officer-to-civilian ratio already exists, with 2.8 officers for every
  1,000 residents. But that’s not good enough for Mr. Curran — he still
  wants residents in his state to be almost totally disarmed, as if this
  “higher” police officer figure is adequate to protect everyone from
  harm, theft, or property crimes.

What makes no sense in Mr. Curran’s proposals to further limit
state residents to handguns is his refusal to recognize one factor that
has worked to reduce crime — access to guns by law-abiding
people. It’s true that more police officers, longer jail sentences,
reductions in drug trafficking and “keeping guns out of the hands of
criminals” have all worked to produce the nation’s lowest crime rate in
years. But as independent crime researcher John R. Lott of Yale
University has proven year after year, concealed carry laws are the
second most important factor — behind more cops — that has
helped reduce the violent crime rate.

It doesn’t take a rocket scientist to realize that less than three
police officers per one thousand people cannot guarantee a crime-free
society. It also doesn’t take a genius to realize that it is impossible
for every citizen to have his own private cop — that is an impractical
and expensive proposition, should anyone seriously contemplate it.

So — in the interest of safety and judging by the FBI’s own
crime stats — does it not make sense to allow people the right to
protect themselves? Or is it better, as Mr. Curran suggests, to sentence
more people to death by making it illegal for them to attain the same
level of protection as that possessed by the “protectors”? Even armed
police officers are (unfortunately) killed from time to time, so how
well would an unarmed populace stand up against a criminal faction that
will get a weapon — gun, knife, baseball bat — somehow,
regardless of any prohibition against them? Is it not already
happening?

Besides, what guarantee does Mr. Curran make that arming only
police officers will make us
— or him, for that matter — safer?

The problem with utopian thinkers like Mr. Curran is that their sense
of logic and reasoning is seldom based on reality. If we could remove
their smug arrogance and elitist mindset and force them to walk the same
streets as unarmed as the rest of us, then believe me, the anti-gun laws
would change. These people — tucked safely away in their Ivory Towers
— have no idea what kind of safety issues normal people have to face
everyday. It’s easy for them to take our guns, but how “safe” do you
think they’d feel if we took guns away from the people who protect
them? “Why, that’s an absurd idea,” they’d wail.

Why, Mr. Curran — because you’re more important than my wife,
my children or me? I don’t think so.

Sentencing more Americans to death is no way to “protect” them and
make them “safer.”