“Gun Crime” In the Media

When a gun is used to commit a crime, the focus is placed on the gun, but no focus is placed on the other tools criminals use to commit crimes. When a criminal uses a handgun to shoot a their victim, politicians and many members of the media will call for stricter gun control. This can be seen frequently in Chicago, a city which bans handguns but has hundreds of murders each year committed by criminals using handguns. Instead of recognizing that a person bent on committing murder and/or suicide won’t be deterred by a misdemeanor handgun possession charge, and that crime is caused by socioeconomic factors rather than the existence guns, they call for more gun control.

When criminals use tools other than guns, there is almost always no emphasis placed on the tool. Lighter fluid and gasoline are not blamed for arson. Cars are not blamed for a hit and run. Hammers and lead pipes are not blamed when someone is beaten to death. Knives are not blamed for stabbings. Bath tubs are not blamed when parents drown their children. Telephones and computers are not blamed when people commit fraud. Indeed, I could spend hours listing the many tools which criminals use to commit their crimes, but of all these tools only guns seem to receive blame.

This blaming of the gun rather than addressing the societal problems which lead to crime is worse than pointless. Many uninformed people will hear politicians and the media speak about “gun crime”, and will believe that taking away guns from law abiding citizens will somehow solve the problem. The fact is that it won’t, and the high murder rates in Chicago and Washington D.C. show that banning handguns will not keep them out of the hands of criminals, who can smuggle them in with drugs or steal one of the hundreds of millions of guns already in the country. The low crime rates in many rural areas which have virtually no gun laws also show that gun control does not mean less crime. The true cause of crime is not the presence of guns, but rather socioeconomic conditions. By declaring a war on guns, rather than a war on poverty, illiteracy, and unemployment, these politicians and media representatives are taking away the ability of law abiding citizens to defend themselves, and wasting resources that could be spent solving the real causes of crime. Please act to protect our gun rights, and insist that your elected officials focus on the real cause of crime rather than a convenient scapegoat.

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Comments (5)

  1. Hi, thanks for such an informative website, even on issues with which I may disagree. I'm not a gun owner, but I don't think that automatically makes me "anti-gun" and I am open minded to all perspectives.

    One observation struck me on this particular page, and that is why I decided to comment. You say that "when criminals use tools other than guns, there is almost always no emphases placed on the tool." That is probably because all the other "tools" you mention are not designed to cause injury or death. If a parent uses a bathtub to kill a child, obviously they are not using the bathtub for its designed purpose. But a gun is designed to fire a projectile into a person or animal and cause injury or death. So when a criminal uses a gun to harm others, they are using the tool as it was intended.

    Yes, a gun may used "defensively" — which means threatening the assailant or criminal that you will use the gun for the purpose it was designed for, or by actually causing injury or death in self-defense. And I suppose you could say that shooting a gun on a range is entertainment, even though guns are not generally designed for entertainment purposes. But there is no other primary purpose for a gun, you can't use it to chop up meat like a knife or for plumbing, like a lead pipe.

    The gun makes it much easier to commit crime. If the most deadly thing anyone could get their hands on was a bathtub, it would be pretty difficult to hold up a bank.

    Thanks for listening.

  2. Jay,

    Thanks for the comment. I would just note that the overwhelming majority of the hundreds of millions of guns in the country are never used in a crime. Instead, most rounds fired from a gun are used in target practice, where neither a human nor animal is shot. So it seems that the "primary" purpose is target shooting…

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