(Columbia) - In Richland County alone, there have been ten murders in the past eleven days. So far the only connection is that a gun was used at each crime scene.
But some are asking if there could be another link? [sic] Paul Helmke, president of the Brady Campaign to Prevent Gun Violence, says he believes there’s a correlation between the murders and South Carolina’s gun laws.
“Anytime we make it easier to get guns, you’re going to see an increase in gun violence,” Helmke said.
Helmke said South Carolina’s laws are some of the most relaxed in the nation because there’s no state background check and no registry that tracks the sale and ownership of all guns.1
The More Things Change…
Brady Campaign replaced one voted-out government official with another as president, and the message hasn’t changed: more guns equals more crime. Using Brady’s own annual reports and FBI crime data, one can quickly determine if this hypothesis is true.
Brady comes out each year with their report card, which analyzes a set of gun-law criteria and arrives at a grade from “A” through “F”. As noted in a previous paper, there is a strong correlation between lower grades and right-to-carry (RTC) status, with shall-issue states regularly assigned “D” and “F” grades.2 Brady graded South Carolina “D+” in 2005, because guns are too freely available, as per Helmke’s statement above.
Since 2001, RTC states, where more people carry guns in public, consistently average a “D”. Brady continues to be unhappy with the country’s direction regarding gun control: between 2001 and 2005, RTC states increased from 32 to 38 and Brady downgraded the U.S. average from “C-” to a “D+”. Their response is curious, since the national violent crime rate fell 7.0% during this time frame.
Even worse for Brady, violent crime trends are not spread equally across all states. RTC states (average Brady grade “D”) saw an aggregate 7.8% drop in violent crime, while non-RTC states (average Brady grade “B”) saw a 5.2% decrease. Even when Brady grades synchronize with violent crime trends, it fails to give an accurate picture: Brady dropped the national average grade from “C-” to “D+” in 2005, the same year that the violent crime rate increased 1.3%. This would seem to make sense, as a lower grade is supposed to reflect less safety for citizens. Unfortunately for Brady, most of that increase occurred in non-RTC states, which saw an aggregate increase of 2.8%, while RTC states increased 0.6%. Using Brady’s criteria of grading each state as an equivalent entity, non-RTC states averaged a 5.6% increase in violent crime, while RTC states averaged a 0.6% increase. Since 2001, the violent crime differential between RTC and non-RTC states increased from 26.0% to 27.5%, meaning that RTC states are becoming relatively more law-abiding compared to non-RTC states.3
Bad News BradyHelmke’s last comment about a registry is the main thrust of the Brady misinformation campaign. He continues:
“If they maintained a registry–had someone saying when they had a gun stolen or gun lost during a certain period of time–those are things that could help police enforce the laws,” Helmke said.4
Gun banners know that registration enhances their chances of enacting confiscation. Since only law-abiding gun owners would register their weapons, the government would know where to go and what to look for, as happened in Britain and Australia. Unfortunately for those promoting the fantasy that a gun registry is useful for any other purpose besides civilian confiscation, there are numerous studies debunking the idea that registries help fight crime:
· The Centers for Disease Control found that firearm registration and licensing of owners had no positive affect on crime;5
· Civilian confiscation around the world placed women in greater danger;6
· Violent crime in Australia and the UK, especially rape of women, increased after confiscation;7
· Canada’s gun registry cost billions and failed to reduce violent crime.8
All That Is Old Is New Again
All we have here is the same empty talking points of the gun ban lobby, but that will not hinder their attempt to portray recent congressional changes as a vote for gun control.
It is incumbent upon you to relay this information to your federal representatives. Brady will continue to repeat misinformation and manipulate partial data sets to “prove” that more guns equals more crime. The good news is that we have the truth on our side, but people will only know this if you do your part.
About the Author
Howard Nemerov is a frequent guest on NRA News. He can be reached at HNemerov [at sign] Netvista.net.
Endnotes1 Would Tougher Gun Laws Decrease Violence? WLTX-19, downloaded November 7, 2006. http://www.wltx.com/news/story.aspx?storyid=43786
2 See Explaining the Brady Campaign Report Card, ChronWatch, January 24, 2005. http://www.chronwatch.com/content/contentDisplay.asp?aid=12569
3 Spreadsheet compiled using Brady Campaign report card data and FBI crime data 2001-2005. Email request for spreadsheet.
4 Would Tougher Gun Laws Decrease Violence? WLTX-19, downloaded November 7, 2006.
5 Task Force on Community Preventive Services, First Reports Evaluating the Effectiveness of Strategies for Preventing Violence: Firearms Laws, Centers for Disease Control, October 3, 2003. http://www.cdc.gov/mmwr/preview/mmwrhtml/rr5214a2.htm
6 See Does the UN Protect Women’s Rights? ChronWatch, September 27, 2006. http://www.chronwatch.com/content/contentDisplay.asp?aid=23948
7 See What Gun Controllers Don’t Want You to Know¸ ChronWatch, June 11, 2004. http://www.chronwatch.com/content/contentDisplay.asp?aid=7862 and The Australian Experiment, ChronWatch, June 23, 2004. http://www.chronwatch.com/content/contentDisplay.asp?aid=8073
8 See Only the Truth Will Set You Free, ChronWatch, May 26, 2006. http://www.chronwatch.com/content/contentDisplay.asp?aid=21413
Editor at Large
Comments Policy
When are these knuckleheads g
December 14, 2006 - 20:41 ET by AvatarWhen are these knuckleheads going to understand that if someone is going to kill with a Gun, they're going to get their hands on one! It's not going to matter whether or not they obtained it legally, they will get one and use it. Quite to the contrary, what if these murdered citizens had been armed? Maybe the killer would be on life support nursing a couple of gunshot wounds, awaiting his trial?
The Avatar
Dear Mr. Paul Helmke,Could th
December 14, 2006 - 20:47 ET by Clear thinkerDear Mr. Paul Helmke,
Could the other possibility for the climbing murder rate is that the population in and around Richland county has been skyrocketing?
Don't you hate it when someone throws in a monkey wrench ; )
The law is far, the fist is near.
December 14, 2006 - 21:08 ET by UnsaneCould it be that if guns aren't available, knives will be used? Will there be a mad rush of people demanding knives be banned?
And let us note all the cases where shootings have occurred where ALL applicable gun control laws were followed to a T.
And one final complication: if guns were the cause of crime, Switzerland should be in total anarchy now.
"The law is far, the fist is near." - Korean proverb
New Orleans with a god know
December 15, 2006 - 03:05 ET by Right2thePointNew Orleans with a god knows how much reduced population is still a free fire zone.
It is one of the citys I used to live in that I have on my browser home page for news headlines.
On any given day I have 10 or 12 headlines from some of the places I have lived or stayed in for a while and for New Orleans you can almost count on the 3 out of 10 headlines being of someone getting shot.
Granted some of them are stories that haven't scrolled off the bottom to be replaced by newer issues, but over time you can see a trend.
Even the area I live now has a large city near me that has a murder rate issue that is in the forefront of the news. Also it is without a doubt mostly due to black on black murders.
When you see members of the community appealing to the city to deal with the issue it is a random sampling of the population , but any enforcement efforts brings out the usual suspects with race baiting cards and all the associated known arguments.
Amazing how that works.
Canada's gun registry is th
December 15, 2006 - 08:56 ET by sarcasmoCanada's gun registry is the one that scares me the most. Think about it...THEIR politicians -- many of them openly-socialist -- were able to waste that much of their crappy money. Then try to imagine how much of our increasingly-crappy money our politicians -- many still claiming to be for "small government" -- would manage to squander! And make no mistake, the UN is promoting this very thing. The news media try to portray pro-gun groups as secretive (but anyone can join) rich (they're not, compared to the UN's dictators-need-protection lobby, anything even approaching rich) and well organized (nonsense, they're a ragtag politically-divided bunch of dissimilar groups) but the same news media invariably ignore the reach & wealth of the international grab-lobby. Finally, today is Bill of Rights Day, and a few of us still celebrate, so if you do too, have a happy one.
JMR
Ever been to Canada? (I know
December 15, 2006 - 14:55 ET by UnsaneEver been to Canada? (I know that FL feels like the 11th Province in winter sometimes!) They are more socialist that their citizenry dares admit. But then, what do you expect of a nation whose founding document calls for "peace, order and good government"?
"Socialism is the philosophy of failure, the creed of ignorance and the gospel of envy." -Sir Winston Churchill, British statesman (1874-1965)
Illegals
December 15, 2006 - 10:33 ET by dmntd1I wonder if the cause for this explosive growth of violent crime can be at all attributed to the nearly 4% growth in Illegal Aliens?
Please make sure your train of thought carries freight.
I guess the first point to ma
December 15, 2006 - 11:46 ET by BruzillaI guess the first point to make is that South Carolina does have an insta-check system and they do perform background checks. The second point is that when a gun is stolen, most owners file a report and the gun's information is kept permanently in the National Crime Information Center (NCIC) database, so there usually is a record of guns that are stolen and that includes make/model, serial number, finish, date it was stolen, owner, etc.
What amazes me about Democrats is that they keep making gun laws when they have no knowledge of guns, and the results are almost always the opposite of what was intended. Take the Assault Weapons Ban (AWB). This law was meant to restrict the number of "assault" rifles on the street. The actual result was that once the guns were banned from import or manufacture, the prices for them shot up, which now made it profitable for businesses to change their business models and take advantage of the new law. For example, it was illegal to import any rifle classified as an assault weapon, but you could buy the rifles overseas (where they've been surplused by the millions), take them apart and remove the receiver (the only part of a gun that's actually considered to be a gun), and legally import the rest of the parts. Then, a manufacturer in the US could make a receiver and some parts here in the US, use them to rebuild the rifle to meet the AWB requirements, and voila! he's beaten the ban. For example, I always wanted an FAL battle rifle that was made by Fabrique Nationale in Belgium, but they cost about $1,200 or so even before the ban. After the ban they went to well over $2,000. This opened up the market for companies to buy military surplus FALs overseas, import them as parts sets and rebuild them, and sell them in the US as L1A1 rifles. The result... I got the same rifle I would have paid $1,200 for before the ban for $299. US companies did the same thing with lots of other foreign rifles, and the AWB got dozens of companies into the AR-15 rifle business as well. So the AWB, which was meant to reduce the number of assault weapons actually increased the number of types of rifles available, increased the quantity of each rifle, and lowered the cost!
Another shining example was the high-capacity magazine ban that limited pistol magazines to ten rounds. For years the demand for bigger and bigger magazine capacities drove pistol design, so pistols kept getting bigger and bigger despite requests for smaller pistols. When the ban came into play, gun makers were able to start making smaller, "pocket" versions of the larger pistols. And these smaller pistols were every bit as reliable, high-quality, and effective as their larger siblings. This enabled criminals to forgo their crappy, unreliable, small caliber pocket pistols that fired lethal (but only marginally) .22, .25, or .32 caliber bullets when they did work, for highly-lethal 9MM, .40 S&W, and .45ACP pistols with all the bells and whistles and that were guaranteed to work everytime. So a law that was meant to make things harder on criminals ended up giving them large-caliber, highly-reliable, pistols that they can easily hide in a pocket. Way to go Dems!