Tucson and Gun Control: Why More Gun Control Wouldn’t Have Mattered

In just a few hours following the attempted assassination of Representative Gabrielle Giffords and the murders of six other innocents including a federal judge and a nine year-old girl last week in Tucson, Arizona gun control advocates were once again in the news demanding more restrictions on Americans’ right to “keep and bear arms”.  In the time since, debate on whether Americans should be “allowed” to own “high capacity ‘clips’”  and “assault weapons” has once again heated up in public discourse.  Proponents of additional gun control measures have claimed that had the Assault Weapons Ban not been permitted to expire in 2004, Jared Loughner would have been unable to perpetrate the heinous crimes of last week.  Others have argued that the culprit is Arizona’s “lax” gun control measures where permits are no longer required to carry firearms concealed or openly.  However, these arguments are purely driven by emotion and speculation, not on hard facts.  The simple reality is that no gun control measure is likely to have done anything at all to prevent these terrible shootings.  Further, no such measure is likely to prevent such shootings from occurring in the future.  My objective in this essay is to demonstrate the many reasons for this assertion.

1. a.
   First among the reasons why additional gun control would likely have done nothing to prevent the shootings in Tucson is the simple fact that Loughner was not concerned at all with the law.  If Loughner is not inclined to follow the simplest of civil, common, and divine laws, “Thou Shalt not Murder”, it is highly unlikely that he would be concerned with paltry gun control regulations like “thou shalt not be in possession of a high capacity ammunition feeding device which enables a firearm to fire more than 10 rounds without reloading”.
   
   b.
   The same argument can be applied to those who believe that Arizona should rethink its policies on concealed and open carry of handguns.  When Loughner left his home January 8, 2011, he left with the intent to kill.  His plan is not going to be thwarted by a legal declaration that one may not carry firearms in public.  We see this everyday when criminals in states like Illinois and New York (which all but prohibit the carrying of firearms) hold up convenience stores and gun down people in the streets.  If prohibiting concealed carry was the answer, these crimes should never happen.  But they do.
   
   c.
   Even had the 1994 assault weapons ban remained in effect, guns and magazines like those used by Loughner remained legal to possess and use.  The 33 round Glock 18 machine pistol magazine used by Loughner (not to be confused with the semiautomatic Glock 17 or 19) was still legally available to the American public, albeit at a steeply inflated price provided that the magazine was manufactured prior to the ban being enacted.  Further, the semiautomatic Glock 19 used by the killer was available with no further restrictions than it must include a magazine of no more than 10 rounds capacity.  Loughner would have been perfectly capable of attaining both the gun and the magazine under the late ban’s restrictions.
   
   d.
   Further, there is evidence that simply by purchasing the firearm in the first place Loughner was already committing a federal crime.  Classmates have repeatedly described Loughner as a “pothead” who was a regular and unlawful user of marijuana.  When Loughner purchased his Glock 19, he, like all other gun purchasers at federally licensed dealers was required to fill out the BATFE form 4473 which facilitates a background check utilizing the National Instant Criminal Background Check System (NICS) and includes a brief legal affidavit stating that the purchaser is eligible to purchase a firearm under federal law.  On this form, question 11.e. asks: “Are you an unlawful user of, or addicted to, marijuana or any depressant, stimulant, narcotic drug, or any other controlled substance?”  An answer of “yes” on this question disqualifies the purchaser from buying the firearm.  Assuming that the reports are accurate, Jared Loughner lied on his 4473 to illegally obtain a firearm with the objective of using it to kill innocents.  This is a felony punishable under Federal law.
   
2. In terms of firearms, to steal a phrase often associated with nuclear weapons, “the genie is out of the bottle”.  The knowledge of firearms and firearms design is out there.  It is easily found.  There are already millions of firearms in American households.  Even if the government was successful in mass confiscations of firearms, taking all previously owned firearms off of the streets and out of American households, it would take nothing more than a few minutes of searching on the internet for computer schematics of firearms and a few hours on a milling machine to begin producing new, illegal guns.  Less sophisticated guns could be produced even more easily.  During the war which founded the modern day nation of Israel, the Israelis manufactured Sten Guns (a 9mm Parabellum submachine gun of British design utilized in World War Two) in underground workshops out of steel tubing.  They manufactured ammunition out of brass lipstick containers.  In prison, criminals are able to manufacture lethal weapons out of toilet paper and water, do we really expect them to be unable to do better in the freedom of the outside world?  Britain has found its gun bans to be so ineffective that they have had to prohibit the ownership of replica weapons because criminals have converted them into functional firearms.  Not to mention that this ignores the simple impossibility of confiscating all of the extant firearms in the United States.
   
   Additionally, much attention has been made to drug violence in Mexico and the media’s assertion that 90% of firearms seized by the Mexican government originate from the United States.  Of course, this is not true.  90% of guns sent to the BATFE for trace analysis do originate in the United States, but these are only the guns which are already believed to have come from the US.  Those guns which are believed to have originated elsewhere are not sent to the BATFE and therefore are not included in the statistics.  RPGs, hand grenades, AK47s, and other military weapons are not readily available for sale in the United States, contrary to what the media, Left, and gun control advocates would have you believe.  These items are strictly regulated in the United States, requiring several background checks, layers of government approval, and thousands upon thousands of dollars for legal ownership (assuming legal ownership is even possible) with stiff penalties for violations of the National Firearms Act of 1934, Gun Control Act of 1968, and the Firearms Owners’ Protection Act of 1986.  Despite the fact that these weapons are not readily available in the United States, they are readily available in the black markets of Mexico.  Should gun ownership become more stiffly regulated in the United States, it is not unreasonable to believe that the Mexican cartels would expand their business ventures from drug smuggling to gun smuggling.  Where there is a demand, there will be a supply.  We mustn’t forget that drugs are illegal in the United States, yet they are readily available all across the United States, largely due to the actions of Mexican cartels smuggling them over our vast and largely unprotected borders.

If one objectively examines the facts, one is led to the conclusion that no amount of gun control is going to prevent massacres like the one seen January 8, 2011.  We know that Mexico has for all intents and purposes prohibited the ownership of firearms, yet there is not a day which goes by that the news doesn’t have a story of some new cartel related violence.  In other nations (like Britain and Australia) which have enacted draconian gun control laws, gun crime rather than declining has spiked as the numbers of legally armed citizens decrease and the numbers of illegally armed criminals remains static (or perhaps even increases).

Gun control advocacy makes several assumptions  which simply are not borne out in reality.  Gun control assumes that criminals that would engage in armed robbery, murder, rape, assault and the like would choose to abide by an additional law enacted to prevent the very crimes which they are already committing.  If the advocates of gun control are more enlightened, they believe that while criminals may not be induced to follow gun laws it might be possible to put that genie back in the bottle and simply eliminate guns from the picture.  But once again, the illegal acquisition or production of arms is far too easy to make gun control measures effective at reducing any but the most impulsive of crimes committed by otherwise law abiding persons in the heat of the moment.  As the old saying goes, “where there is a will, there is a way”.  The third and second world already has demonstrated that illegal traffic in arms is a lucrative business.  It is folly to assume it would be any less lucrative in the first world, or that government enforcement activities will be any more effective.  It is not as if the War on Drugs has been particularly effective in reducing illegal drug usage in the United States or elsewhere.  We know that alcohol prohibition was equally ineffective.  The assumption that firearms prohibition is likely to be any more effective is simply naive.

Gun control is only effective as a cynical means of garnering favor from an ignorant electorate which demands that something be done about violence.  The restrictions are only effective in preventing law abiding citizens from obtaining firearms deemed too “scary” or “dangerous” by the powers that be due to aesthetics or other minutiae.  Criminals, who by their nature have no respect for the laws of society remain just as free to illegally obtain or manufacture prohibited weaponry as they were prior to the legislation (see the North Hollywood bank shoot out of 1997 for evidence – the perpetrators utilized weapons which were illegal under both Federal [AWB of 1994, NFA of 1934 and GCA of 1968] and California State law).

Also ignored is the fact that so-called “lax” gun laws allow individuals like Joe Zamudio (the 24 year old man who assisted in restraining Loughner until police arrived) the means to end violence with like force when necessary.  Had Joe Zamudio, a lawful gun owner and concealed carry practitioner, arrived on scene mere seconds prior he may have had the opportunity to draw his personal pistol and permanently render Jared Loughner harmless.  Firearms are used for personal protection thousands of times a year, saving countless lives in the process.  Gun control advocates seek the ability to disarm those who would save innocent lives in the futile attempt to disarm those who would take them.  The “Reasonable Restrictions” sought by gun control advocates are nothing short of ineffective feel-good legislation which does nothing more than infringe upon the Constitutionally protected rights of law abiding citizens.