The Patriot Post® · The Gun Control Debate
By Robert Steven Ingebo
Let’s start with the Democrats’ belief that the right to own firearms is subject to reasonable regulation. They say that they believe in the Second Amendment, which gives every American the right to possess weapons, but they put conditions on it. They justify this by saying that gun violence leads to terrible consequences, therefore the government must place regulations on individuals gaining access to weapons, implying that Americans are too stupid and ignorant to protect themselves. More importantly, who gets to decide what “reasonable regulation” means?
If the Democratic Party ever succeeds in reauthorizing the ban on so-called assault weapons and closes the gun show loophole, not only does it diminish the freedoms granted by the Second Amendment, which were designed to allow American citizens to adequately defend themselves, it also erects barriers against Americans owning the type of guns powerful enough to allow them to defend themselves against the drug cartels and other criminal enterprises that use assault weapons.
That brings up the question: Where do the criminals get their guns?
80% of all firearms used in crimes come from straw buyers and the black market.
10 to 15% of guns used in crimes are stolen according to the ATF estimates.
3.8% of guns used in crimes were purchased in pawn shops.
2.8% of guns used in crimes were purchased at some other legal retail outlet.
1% of guns used in crimes were purchased at flea markets.
0.7% of guns used in crimes came from gun shows.
Based on this data, it’s estimated that at least 93% of all guns used in crimes were obtained illegally. Meanwhile, the Democrats are focused on controlling access to firearms by reauthorizing the assault weapons ban and closing the gun show loophole. The data clearly shows that these weapons are bought illegally, and any criminal can get their hands on an assault weapon. Since gun show sales only represent 0.7% of all sales in the U.S., closing the gun show loophole would do nothing to curb gun crimes. It is clear from the data that none of the Democratic Party’s proposed regulations will do anything to stop the gun violence plaguing the major cities in the United States.
The Democratic Party believes that these laws are necessary for the government to be able to effectively prosecute gun crime at the federal, state and local levels. It believes that strengthening gun control laws reduces violence. The Left’s argument hinges on the data that gun crime was reduced by 35% after the Brady Law and the assault weapons ban were passed.
The Democratic Party uses this data to justify even more stringent rules against Americans who want to buy a firearm. Now it wants to impose mandatory child safety locks, a photo license ID, a background check and a gun safety test in order for an American citizen to be able to qualify to own a handgun.
On Dec. 14, 2012, 20-year-old Adam Lanza fatally shot 20 children between six and seven years old as well as six adult staff members at the Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, Connecticut.
Police say he used a Bushmaster AR-15 “assault-type weapon,” a semi-automatic rifle that could fire high-velocity rounds. Additionally, he possessed magazines that held 30 bullets each.
The Democrats’ response was that it was too easy to acquire weapons that powerful or to possess magazines capable of holding so many bullets.
In response to the Sandy Hook shooting, on Dec. 16. 2012, Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-CA) said she would introduce new legislation banning assault weapons at the next meeting of Congress. President Obama also said that he’d support a federal ban.
In 1994, Congress passed a federal assault weapons ban that lasted 10 years. Experts who have studied the law tend to agree that it was rife with loopholes and generally ineffective at curbing gun violence.
In the recent mass shooting on Oct. 1, 2017, Stephen Paddock fired into the crowd at the Route 91 Harvest music festival for over a period of around 10 minutes, killing 58 people and injuring 527.
On Monday, Oct. 2, in response to the mass carnage in Las Vegas, Press Secretary Sarah Huckabee said, “I think one of the things we don’t want to do is try to create laws that won’t stop these types of things from happening. I think if you look to Chicago, where you had over 4,000 victims of gun-related crimes last year, they have the strictest gun laws in the country. That certainly hasn’t helped there.”
For example, news media outlets have run articles about the takeover of the south side of Chicago by the Mexican drug cartels, which has led to death on a scale unheard of in any city so far in the history of the United States.
Chicago has suffered a massive amount of gun crime recently. In 2016, homicides in Chicago sharply rose by 61% between 2015 and 2016, mostly as a result of gun homicides, as the University of Chicago crime lab found in a January report.
Chicago is well-known for its strict gun control laws. For example, there is an assault weapons ban in Cook County.
What is Rahm Emanuel, the mayor of Chicago, doing about these despicable acts of violence and carnage other than making it harder for innocent civilians to buy the kinds of weapons they need to properly defend themselves and their families from these cartel gang members?
The state of Illinois has tougher gun laws than many other states. The state is one of seven that requires licenses or permits to buy any firearm, and it’s one of five that requires waiting periods for buying any firearm.
Both Wisconsin and Indiana don’t require licenses or permits to purchase a gun, nor do they require waiting periods.
There’s solid evidence supporting the fact that being next door to Wisconsin and Indiana keeps Chicago criminals well-supplied with guns. A 2015 study of guns in Chicago found that more than 60% of new guns used in Chicago gang-related crimes and 31.6% used in non-gang-related crimes between 2009 and 2013 were bought in other states.
Indiana is a particularly heavy supplier, providing nearly one-third of the gang guns and nearly one-fifth of the non-gang guns. This is corroborated by a 2014 Chicago Police Department report which found that Indiana accounted for 19% of all guns recovered by the department between 2009 and 2013.
New firearms trace data from the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives released on the week of Sept. 24 likewise shows that Illinois is facing a massive flood of guns entering the state. Of about 8,700 firearms recovered in Illinois, more than 50% came from out of state. Nearly 16% came from Indiana alone.
By comparison, 82% of the guns recovered in Indiana came from within, suggesting that criminals there don’t have to cross state lines to get their weapons like those living in Illinois.
The logical conclusion of this data is that criminals will go to whatever lengths necessary to gain possession of guns, especially semi-automatics ones, regardless of whatever laws are in place.
Top congressional Republicans signaled last Wednesday that they would be open to banning “bump stocks,” devices that turn semi-automatic weapons into quasi-automatic weapons. Sen. John Cornyn of Texas, the No. 2 Republican in the Senate, said, “It seems like it’s an obvious area we ought to explore and see if it’s something Congress needs to act on.”
That is very unfortunate for the innocent victims of these vile gang members who, because of the strict gun laws the Democrat governors and the mayors of these blue states have enacted, cannot gain access to the type of weaponry necessary to properly defend themselves and are subsequently murdered by criminals with much superior firepower, causing great sorrow to their loved ones.
Robert Steven Ingebo is president of FRI Corporation.