Like many of my generation, when I was a young man I was considerably more more liberal on many issues than I am today. In my twenties I was pro-choice, today I am not. I also believed then that public lands should be completely off-limits to industrial use of any kind (logging, mining, drilling, etc.) today I think that position is needlessly restrictive. I also believed, even into my forties, that handguns should be banned and was even a member for a time of Sarah Brady's organization Handgun Control Inc, (HCI).
What began my change of mind about this last issue was a column by the late Chicago newspaperman Mike Royko arguing that women would be a lot safer in our society if they owned guns and knew how to use them. I thought he made a good case, and as time went on I came to think that it was simply unjust for the government to deprive citizens of the ability and right to protect themselves and their families.
By the time John Lott came out with his book More Guns, Less Crime in which he shows that communities that allow people to own and carry arms are much safer than those in which they are not, I had long since given up my opposition.
Syndicated columnist John Stossel has evidently made a journey similar to my own and writes a column about why he no longer believes what he once did about guns. Here's part of it:
I was totally wrong about guns. Now I know that more guns means -- hold onto your seat -- less crime. How can that be, when guns kill almost 30,000 Americans a year? Because while we hear about the murders and accidents, we don't often hear about the crimes stopped because would-be victims showed a gun and scared criminals away. Those thwarted crimes and lives saved usually aren't reported to police (sometimes for fear the gun will be confiscated), and when they are reported, the media tend to ignore them. No bang, no news.
This state of affairs produces a distorted public impression of guns. If you only hear about the crimes and accidents, and never about lives saved, you might think gun ownership is folly.
But, hey, if guns save lives, it logically follows that gun laws cost lives.
Suzanna Hupp and her parents were having lunch at Luby's cafeteria in Killeen, Texas, when a man began shooting diners with his handgun, even stopping to reload. Suzanna's parents were two of the 23 people killed. (Twenty more were wounded.)
Suzanna owned a handgun, but because Texas law at the time did not permit her to carry it with her, she left it in her car. She's confident that she could have stopped the shooting spree if she had her gun. (Texas has since changed its law.)
Now a 76 year-old Chicago man named Otis McDonald, who was denied the ability to buy a gun to protect his home from the thugs that infest his neighborhood, has taken his case to the Supreme Court. The Court's decision will be handed down this week and if they rule in favor of McDonald the expectation is that restrictive gun laws that prohibit citizens from owning the means of protecting their lives and property will begin falling all across the nation. If Lott is right, and his statistics certainly make a strong case, crime rates will fall as well.
There was a time when it seemed to me that it was irrational to allow citizens to carry weapons in public. That opinion fell by the wayside many years ago as evidence mounted that armed and licensed citizens have saved thousands of lives, including their own, simply by virtue of possessing a weapon, even if it was merely displayed and not used. My former view was finally buried by reading Lott's More Guns, Less Crime, a book I recommend to anyone who doubts that a society in which citizens are armed is actually safer for everyone than one in which only criminals carry weapons.
Update: the Supreme Court has this morning passed down a 5-4 decision striking down the ban imposed by the city of Chicago on gun ownership. This effectively makes any such laws anywhere in the country unconstitutional.
RLC