What is Gun Control? – an introduction to firearms regulation efforts

I was reviewing the search engine statistics for this website, and found that there were quite a few people searching for “What is Gun Control”?  I, and many readers of this website are quite familiar with gun control, however I thought an introduction to gun control might be helpful for some people:

Gun control is the faulty idea that criminals who ignore the laws against murder, rape, or robbery will somehow obey a law that prohibits them from having a gun.
Cities such as the District of Columbia and Chicago have had handgun bans for decades, yet their crime rates have been among the worst in the country.  That is because a criminal willing to commit serious felonies such as murder will not be deterred by gun control laws.  Instead, these criminals will buy their guns on the black market or steal guns (often from the police).  Criminals don’t obey laws, whether it is the law against armed robbery, home invasion, or the laws against gun possession.  Looking to other countries with strict national gun control also supports this conclusion: the UK enacted stringent gun control, yet saw a 40% increase in the use of handguns by criminals.

Gun control is the unjust practice of taking gun rights (and therefore self defense abilities) away from law abiding citizens.
There are hundreds of millions of guns in the United States, and about 1/3 to 1/2 of all households lawfully have guns.  The overwhelming majority of guns are never used in a crime, and are instead kept for self defense or sporting purposes.  Americans use a gun for self defense every 13 seconds, and banning guns will only leave the law abiding citizens vulnerable against criminals.  Guns do not cause crime, and gun control is not a rational response to crime.

Gun control is the use of scare tactics by politicians
Anti gun politicians, such as Chicago’s Mayor Daley, make utterly untrue assertions such as the one that gun owners will open fire on police or postal workers at random.  They will also blame so called “assault weapons” for crime, despite the fact that criminals very rarely use such guns.  Worse yet, these politicians work to pass laws that disarm the law abiding citizens, while they themselves are protected by gun-toting bodyguards at tax payer expense.

Gun control is sexist
Guns allow an elderly lady to fend off a larger and stronger attacker.  They allow a young woman to stop a criminal from attacking her at the door to her home.  Guns enable a pregnant woman to stop two home invaders.  Guns allow a mother to save her children from 2 home invading prison escapees.  In short, guns allow the physically weaker members of society to defend themselves against the physically stronger members of society.  Since, as a matter of biology and perhaps our cultural norms, men tend to be larger and stronger than women, and can often physically overpower women.  That means that banning guns puts the women at a relative disadvantage, even if the gun ban were to keep guns out of the hands of everyone.  Now take into account the fact that criminals will break the law and still have guns, and the disarmed women are at an even greater disadvantage.

Gun control is ignorance
Politicians will go on television to argue in favor of gun bans, without even understanding what they are trying to ban.  An example: Congresswoman McCarthy went on TV to argue in favor of gun control, but didn’t even know what the so called “assault weapon” feature she wanted to ban looks like or does.  When asked what a barrel shroud was, she first dodged the question, then incorrectly stated that criminals frequently use weapons with such a feature, then made a wrong guess as to what a barrel shroud does and where it goes on a gun.  It is simply ridiculous, ignorant, and embarrassing to have strong opinions about guns (or any other issue) unless one is familiar with the issue.  It is even worse to be a member of congress who introduces legislation to ban an object, without even knowing what the object is or does.  Here, the congresswoman wanted to pass a law that would affect millions of law abiding gun owners, and she didn’t even bother to spend 5 minutes learning what it was she wanted to ban.

Gun control is a disrespect for and a threat to our civil rights
Trying to find ways to undercut the Second Amendment right to keep and bear arms sets a bad precedent for the treatment of our other civil rights.  If it is possible, through countless local, state and federal laws, to legislate away the basic right to have a gun for self defense, then the same can be done for other right such as abortion, free speech, due process, the right to have a lawyer, etc.  Furthermore, gun control laws are being used by the police as a pretext to violate the civil rights of citizens.

Gun Control is racist
Some of the earliest gun control laws expressly prohibited recently freed slaves from owning guns, in order to keep them defenseless.  When these laws were later struck down by the Supreme Court, so called “junk gun” laws were passed, which didn’t expressly discriminate by race, but instead banned inexpensive guns, which were the only ones most African Americans could afford.  Over the years, other racist gun control laws would be passed, targeted at Italian and Irish immigrants in New York.  Today, gun control laws serve to disarm many law abiding African American and Hispanic people who live in tough inner city neighborhoods, leaving them vulnerable to the criminals who violate the laws against gun possession, robbery, rape, and murder.  Unfortunately, some prominent civil rights leaders seem to have forgotten these facts.