The NRA is the cause of crime?

If a criminal shoots a law abiding citizen, is that the fault of the NRA?

Coming from me, I know that will sound like a rhetorical question. But what's a rhetorical question for me is a genuine argument for someone else -- in this case a grief-stricken Philadelphia city official.

Among the organizers was city consumer advocate Lance Haver, whose son Daren Dieter, 24, was paralyzed by a gunman in West Oak Lane on Sept. 22 and who remains hospitalized at Albert Einstein Medical Center.

Pausing during the march, a tearful Haver said, "My son is lying in a hospital bed unable to move. He cannot move and cannot breathe, and it's because he was shot with an illegal handgun."

Haver said people should understand that "no young person who is shot and slaughtered has done anything to suggest that that should be their punishment."

Tyree Bohannon, 21, of the 6500 block of North Fairhill Street in East Oak Lane, has been charged in the shooting.

The goal of the rally was to "stop this from happening to anyone else," Haver said. "And to call attention to the fact that Daren was shot by someone he didn't know because our elected officials refused to stand up to the NRA."

(Emphasis added.)

By any standard, the unprovoked shooting and subsequent paralysis of Haver's son is a horrible outrage, and I hope the accused suspect spends the rest of his life behind bars.

I can only begin to imagine the pain and suffering that Mr. Haver and his son are going through. But still, the father is a city official making a very unfair accusation that simply defies analysis. What I want to know is this: by what logic can the murderous actions of a thug, with a criminal record, carrying an illegal handgun, be blamed on the refusal (by elected officials or anyone else) "to stand up to the NRA"?

As a member of the NRA, I can't but find the implications more than a little insulting. If elected officials are to blame for not standing up to the NRA, then the is NRA ultimately responsible, which means that I and all members share in the blame for this horrible crime.

I know this will sound redundant in light of the many blog posts I have written on the subject, but what gun law or laws could conceivably have prevented a criminal from shooting an unarmed law abiding citizen? Today's article lists the current demands of the gun control advocates:

[Former city managing director Phil Goldsmith] said that in 1995 state lawmakers passed legislation that took away the city's right to regulate handguns.

"And what we've seen since then is an increase in handguns and violent incidents on our streets," Goldsmith said.

Sorry, but according to the statistics, there is no such correlation:
Murders peaked at 503 in 1990 for a rate of 31.5 per 100,000, and they averaged around 400 a year for most of the nineties. In 2002 the murder count hit a low of 288, but by 2006 the annual total had surged to 406.
The crime rate actually went down during the time period in which Mr. Goldsmith complains that the city lost its "right" to regulate handguns. (A very interesting view of "rights," to be sure. But this is not the place to write a long essay on it.)

Back to the Inquirer:

He and others called on lawmakers to pass legislation requiring gun owners to report lost or stolen guns.

"This is not a radical suggestion. Connecticut has such a law. The state of New Jersey is about ready to pass such a law," Goldsmith said.

He said the measure had wide support throughout Pennsylvania.

Goldsmith also called for passage of legislation limiting handgun purchases to one a month. He said the majority of Pennsylvanians favored such a measure.

For the sake of argument, let's assume that the elected officials did "stand up to the NRA" and that Pennsylvania residents were legally required to report lost or stolen guns, and were limited to one gun per month. What possible effect could this have on a criminal carrying an illegal gun? He's already not allowed to have one at all, much less one per month. As to reporting lost or stolen guns, I'm assuming that this targets not criminals (the idea that they would report lost or stolen guns is laughable on its face) but the law abiding. I guess that in theory, the idea is that if law abiding people report lost or stolen guns, the serial numbers will be kept in some kind of data base accessible to law enforcement. How would this prevent any criminal from obtaining a lost or stolen gun, much less use it in a crime? All it might do would be to enable the police to track down the original owner of the lost or stolen gun, had he reported it (and had it later been found in the hands of a criminal). Had he not reported the gun lost or stolen, then maybe they wouldn't be able to track him down, or possibly they would be able to track him down, and then they'd be able to charge him with not reporting the loss or theft. At most then, this law adds another possible criminal charge which would only be possible to bring after an illegal gun was found in the possession of a criminal. For the most part, it simply enables serial number tracing after the fact.

I understand that this is an awful crime, and that the father is grieving. But giving his argument every possible benefit of the doubt, I cannot come up with a logical theory under which his son would not have been shot by Tyree Bohannon had elected officials "stood up to the NRA," and the one-gun-per-month, mandatory reporting laws had been passed.

The argument simply boils down to saying that the NRA is responsible for urban gun crime, and I think it's outrageous. As a matter of fact, I'd be willing to bet that if the NRA had been allowed to appoint the judges, there'd be fewer criminals running around with illegal guns in the first place.

There is no question that criminals use guns. But the focus on guns almost always ignores the fact that criminals aren't allowed to have them, and that there are too many criminals walking around free.

Once again, 80% of the shootings are committed by people with criminal records. Why focus on guns they're already not allowed to have?

Wouldn't it be more productive to focus on the criminals than to blame the NRA?

posted by Eric on 10.17.07 at 09:43 AM





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Comments

Of course it would make more sense to target the criminals, except:

1) It's the guns these "marchers" are really after.

2) A certain minority group is, um, ah, "overrepresented" in the population of criminals involved in these shootings.

M. Murcek   ·  October 17, 2007 03:04 PM

The cause is not the availability of guns though:

http://www.classicalvalues.com/archives/2007/02/making_race_rel.html

Eric Scheie   ·  October 17, 2007 03:36 PM

True, guns are not the cause, but they are a convenient scapegoat. 'Specially if those nasty, deep-pocketed gun makers can be sued...

M. Murcek   ·  October 17, 2007 03:47 PM

Banning them seems to lead to another sort of crime

urthshu   ·  October 18, 2007 06:36 PM

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