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* The Future of Freedom Foundation * Aug/94 *


Will You Be Safer if Guns Are Banned?: Part II
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by Jarret Wollstein

Gun prohibition threatens your safety and your life. Prohibition
will make it much more difficult for you to defend yourself and
your family from predators. Prohibition will create a violent black
market dominated by criminal gangs. And prohibition will result in
many police assaults and murders of innocent Americans.

Gun-control laws will make our streets safer for violent criminals.
With an estimated 200-700 million guns now in the U.S., an
unpoliceable 12,000 miles of borders and coastline, and the world's
largest stock of precision machine tools, criminals will always be
able to buy, steal, or make guns and ammunition.

As the experience of New York, Washington, D.C., and other cities
with severe restrictions on guns demonstrates, banning guns only
disarms the law-abiding, not the predators. When you disarm
peaceful citizens, crime and violence explode.

Gun prohibition will foster a violent black market. Self-
preservation is the most basic human drive. When Americans cannot
buy guns and ammunition legally to protect themselves, they will
buy them illegally. 

America's experience with alcohol prohibition and the war on drugs
shows us what to expect as guns are banned: lucrative and lawless
black markets in guns and ammunition will develop, dominated by
violent criminal gangs. Black-market gun profits will give
organized crime enormous power. Thousands of people will be
murdered in shoot-outs between rival gun gangs, with innocent
victims often caught in the cross fire. Police, courts, and
politicians will be corrupted by huge gun profits. 

Black-market guns and ammunition will become more lethal (no one is
going to risk going to jail to buy a .22 or a pellet gun; besides,
you will need a machine gun to protect yourself from the gun
gangs). There will be many accidental deaths from defective guns
and ammunition manufactured in underground workshops. 

The enormous violence and destruction created by gun prohibition
will lead to public outcries that the government "do something." 
The government will respond with warrantless searches of cars,
schools, office buildings, and homes for guns. Trial by jury will
be severely restricted for most gun offenses. Hundreds of new
prisons will be built to house millions of Americans arrested for
possession of guns and trafficking.

Gun prohibition will increase police assaults and murders of
innocent Americans. Gun prohibition will ultimately require gun
confiscation and a war on guns, which will surely be even more
bloody than the war on drugs. The violence we have witnessed
between police and drug dealers is nothing compared to the violence
you will see when police try to confiscate people's guns.

The gun confiscations have already begun. According to The
Washington Times, "The 3rd Police District [has] adopted a policy
of observing and questioning anyone who even gives the appearance
of carrying a weapon." CNN News reports that in Boston, police
publicly strip-search "suspicious" teenagers, searching for drugs
and guns. The Police Foundation has called for random use of metal
detectors on the streets to identify anyone who might be carrying
a gun.  Van-mounted magnetometers and other scanners are being
developed to search homes and buildings.

In Chicago, Housing Authority chairman Vincent Lane has organized
door-to-door searches of public-housing apartments, without
warrants, looking for drugs and guns. In Waco, Texas, "suspected
firearms violations" was the justification the FBI and Bureau of
Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms used to attack the compound of the
Branch Davidians, with machine guns, poison CN gas, and tanks. At
least 86 men, women and children were either shot to death,
suffocated, or burned alive.

As gun prohibition intensifies, we can expect many more such
attacks. In Washington, D.C., Mayor Sharon Pratt Kelley has
requested that President Clinton call out the National Guard to
patrol the streets. Ross Perot told Texas Rangers that police
should cordon off entire inner-city communities and conduct door-
to-door searches for illegal drugs and firearms. In a recent speech
in California, President Clinton endorsed police "sweeps" for
illegal drugs and guns.

The war on drugs has established the legal precedents for expanding
such paramilitary attacks. Dr. Arnold Trebach, founder of the Drug
Policy Foundation, describes this scene of military occupation by
the DEA in Northern California under the Campaign Against Marijuana
Planting (CAMP):

The residents of [Trinity County] were considered so hostile to law
enforcement that Mr. Ruzzamenti [of the DEA] had said it was
necessary "to virtually occupy the area with a small army" for
several days each year while eradication activities took place.

Residents were stunned and frightened to suddenly see strange men
in combat uniforms, carrying military weapons, simply take over the
entire area. "Many of these troops pointed their rifles at us, and
one man was waving a .45 pistol at us when they went by. They were
shouting 'War on drugs!' 'War on drugs!' and they took our pictures
and some said they would be back." (Arnold Trebach, The Great Drug
War, pages 198-199.)

The image of paramilitary SWAT teams invading our homes and
confiscating our guns is abhorrent to everything America stands
for. Yet, that is precisely where gun prohibition is leading us.
Many of America's 65 million gun owners are not going to meekly
surrender  their guns. Millions consider gun ownership their
inalienable right, and they will fight to preserve it.

The bitter irony of gun prohibition is that laws intended to reduce
violence could spark the bloodiest violence in our history. We must
stop gun prohibition now, before it is too late. 

Mr. Wollstein is the co-author of two recent books, The Rage of
Islam  and What Really Happens When They Confiscate Your Gold,
published by the  Financial Privacy Report, P.O. Box 1277,
Burnsville, MN 55337.  He is also a director of the International
Society for Individual Liberty, 1800 Market Street, San Francisco,
CA 94102.

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