Preaching to the Choir

by stonewalrus, Monday, January 30, 2012, 16:39 (4629 days ago)
edited by stonewalrus, Monday, January 30, 2012, 21:53

By a law professor no less and published in a very anti gun newspaper:
(www.tennessean.com)
 
Record check an ineffective nuisance

Tennessee is one of the large majority of states — 34 out of 50 — that doesn’t require a background check when one private individual sells a gun to another. Mayors Against Illegal Guns, founded by New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg, thinks that Tennessee should join the minority.
But the call for stricter gun laws seems like one whose time has passed, and if anyone is going to reform gun rules it should probably be Bloomberg’s New York, which has been the scene of one gun-law horror story after another, with honest citizens facing years of jail time for unwitting violations.
The Mayors’ new approach is a tacit admission that times have changed. Quoted in The Tennessean last week, the group’s executive director, Mark Glaze, said “For our mayors, the tired debate about gun control is over and beside the point.” What he means by that is, they lost. The decades-long trend of increasing restrictions on private gun ownership — begun in a knee-jerk response to the assassinations and urban violence of the 1960s — has come to an end, and America is returning to its traditional attitude in favor of private gun ownership. Formerly stigmatized, gun ownership is now often portrayed positively in sitcoms and women’s magazines.
After Supreme Court decisions holding that gun ownership is a fundamental constitutional right, cities around America are loosening restrictions, not tightening them. And arguments that gun control leads to less crime are foundering on stubborn facts: Though Americans own more guns than ever, crime is down. Meanwhile, in places that have engaged in gun prohibition, like Britain, crime — including gun crime — has gone way up. Shockingly, it turns out criminals are no more likely to obey gun laws than other laws.
It thus seems unlikely that requiring background checks on private gun sales would serve as anything but a nuisance for law-abiding gun owners.
Tennessee instead needs sensible gun laws — which means laws that make it easier for law-abiding citizens to own and carry firearms. Despite all the claims that such practices would lead to Wild West gunfights, every state that has done so has seen no increase in violence. Handgun permit-holders, it turns out, are a very law-abiding group, as you might expect from people who are willing to undergo a background check and training. (A recent study found that mayors belonging to Bloomberg’s group have been arrested at a much higher rate than Tennessee handgun-carry permit holders, for crimes ranging from perjury and embezzlement to child sexual assault. But there’s no background check for politicians.)
Opposition to legal gun ownership has always been a species of magical thinking: To some people, guns symbolize crime and death, leading to an irrational belief that by outlawing them we can somehow outlaw death itself. Experience has been to the contrary, and voters are beginning to notice.
Rather than indulging people’s irrational fears and dislikes, we should be maximizing honest citizens’ ability to defend themselves, their homes and their families.
Glenn Harlan Reynolds is the Beauchamp Brogan Distinguished Professor of Law at the University of Tennessee College of Law.