'Imagining gun control in America': Why the idea is imaginary, Part I

February 4, 1:29 AMSt. Louis Gun Rights ExaminerKurt Hofmann

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On Monday, I made a very brief, passing reference to Fordham University Law School Professor Nicholas J. Johnson's "Imagining Gun Control in America: Understanding the Remainder Problem" (pdf file).  Some folks for whom I have a great deal of respect suggested to me that a more detailed look was in order.  It's a pretty hefty bit of scholarship, and as such is probably a bit beyond my ability to analyze as well as it deserves, but it does raise some points I'd like to take a look at, so I'll give it a shot (no pun intended).

The article works from the premise that the desirable end is strict "gun control" (a term I generally avoid, in light of my view that "citizen disarmament" describes the real agenda much more accurately).  Frankly, I can't tell whether or not that's Professor Johnson's personal position, or not--but that's beside the point.  His article explores the outcome of the implementation of such restrictive (I would say "draconian") gun laws, and deliberately "imagines" that any political and Constitutional realities barring the passage of said laws could and would be somehow overcome.

Professor Johnson breaks the article down into four parts, the first being an explanation of the "supply side ideal." 

The conclusion that some horrible gun crime would not have happened if we had prevented the scoundrel from getting a firearm is straightforward and quite natural. This calculation is the foundation for views that advance supply-side gun regulation as a recipe for crime control.  It conforms to simple tests of logic.  Consider two scenarios. In the first, we are sitting in a room with a gun in the middle. In the second, our room is gun free and sealed—the supply-side ideal. The risk of gun violence is obviously higher in the first scenario. Indeed, absent creative cheating, it is zero in the second. Projecting this dynamic to society generally allows the claim that laws limiting the supply of guns in private hands will dramatically reduce gun crime.

That is indeed the assumption upon which most (if not all) gun prohibitionist schemes are based. 

I'm going to save discussion of the impossibility of achieving the "ideal" of the absence of guns for later segments--today let's take a look the "desirability" of such an "ideal."

The problem with "eliminating guns" (remember that we're ignoring the impossibilty of successfully doing that, for the moment) is that doing so would erase all the benefits of gun ownership.  As it turns out, those are considerable, by just about any credible measure.  Opponents of gun rights will dismiss Professor Gary Kleck's studies, for example--which in 1994 estimated  approximately 2.5 milliion defensive gun uses per year (the vast majority of which end without a shot being fired, and with no one injured--the ideal outcome of a defensive gun use) as being agenda driven in favor of armed self-defense. 

So be it--presumably, the 1994 Department of Justice study, which estimated 1.5 million defensive gun uses annually, will not be viewed as having a bias in favor of armed self-defense (does that sound like a characteristic of an agency headed by Janet Reno?).

2.5 million or 1.5 million--either fgure rather dwarfs the total number of deaths and injuries inflicted by gunfire, by criminal assault, accident, suicide etc. (approximately 30 thousand deaths, and perhaps 90 thousand injuries, per year).  Private gun ownership would seem to constitute a rather large net gain for society (we'll ignore for now the question of whether or not one's right to the most effective means of self-defense should be predicated--to any degree--on whether or not society as a whole benefits from that ability; it's an important question, but a bit beyond the scope this discussion).

I'll wrap today's column up here, except to point out that I haven't even touched on the most important (by a wide margin) reason for the right to keep and bear arms--defense against a tyrannical government. 

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Somehow, I failed to notice that I have a new colleague, Dan Bidstrup, of the Denver Gun Rights Examiner.  Please join me in giving him a warn (if belated) welcome.

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