Swords Don’t Kill, People Do

Seneca the Younger stated that “A sword is never a killer; it’s a tool in the killer’s hands.” To ascribe an action to the possession of an item is to say that humans have no choice over their actions; that Mother Teresa would have become a mass murderer within minutes of touching an assault rifle. If we follow this logic that the item, rather than the person, must be controlled then Urban Assault Vehicles, like the ones that crowd our freeways, should be banned. Surely they are just as capable of inflicting injuries on the population.

The antigun lobby frequently reminds us that England has a lower rate of homicide than the U.S. However, what isn’t mentioned is that robbery, assault, vehicle theft and burglaries are all higher in England. Despite England’s recent enactment of even stricter gun control laws that include a total ban on handguns, its crime rate is rising while ours is falling. Nor do gun control advocates mention Switzerland, which has a very high percentage of gun ownership and which issues fully automatic assault rifles to a portion of its citizenry, yet has a homicide rate that is a fraction of ours.

Israel, with an even lower homicide rate, allows civilians to check out Uzis and other firearms from police stations. This preponderance of gun ownership and possession resulted in one incident in which three terrorists opened fire with AK-47s in a crowded Jerusalem neighborhood; they were stopped by gun-carrying Israeli civilians with the loss of only one Israeli life. Contrast this with the San Ysidro massacre in which James Huberty killed 21 persons and wounded 19 others, because there were no law-abiding armed citizens present to stop him.

The fact that the cities with the highest homicide rates (Chicago, Washington, D.C.) also have much stricter gun control laws than California is seldom mentioned. Likewise the fact that homicide decreased by 34% and robbery by 19% since a concealed carry law was implemented in Florida is not mentioned.

Thomas Jefferson clearly stated the reason for this when he included this quote from Italian Cesare Beccaria in his “Commonplace Book.”He wrote of laws that disarm: “Such laws make things worse for the assaulted and better for the assailants; they serve rather to encourage than to prevent homicides, for an unarmed man may be attacked with greater confidence than an armed man.”

If a reduction in crime is truly desired, perhaps we should all join the NRA in calling for full enforcement of existing gun laws to keep criminals off the street. After all, nearly 75% of all violent crimes--murder, armed robbery, rape, assault--are committed by repeat offenders.

This program, implemented as Project Exile in Richmond, Va., resulted in a 65% drop in the number of homicides in one year.