An exposé on ridiculous gun slogans and some reality behind illegal guns in America and Amercan's love affair with the gun.

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The first part of this article will discuss another great myth of the progun lobbyists. This presupposes a condition that could never exist in reality in the US of today, that of all private gun ownership being illegal. As hilarious as this statement sounds, it is believed and repeated by tens of millions of Americans as one of their fundamental reasons why gun control laws are bad. They equate any gun control law with this cliché as if no other type of gun safety provisions could ever exist.

 

Let's review this absurd abomination and its roots. One of the earliest known references to such an illogical and impossible situation appears to come from a somewhat obscure American essayist from the latter half of the 20th Century. According to Wikipedia, Edward Abbey was an American author and essayist noted for his advocacy of environmental issues and criticism of public land policies. His best-known works include the novel The Monkey Wrench Gang, which has been cited as an inspiration by radical environmental groups, and the non-fiction work Desert Solitaire. Writer Larry McMurtry referred to Abbey as the "Thoreau of the American West".

 

But his progun quote of fame comes from another, less well known essay called "Abbey's Road." In 1979, Edward Abbey wrote, "Let us hope our weapons are never needed --but do not forget what the common people knew when they demanded the Bill of Rights: An armed citizenry is the first defense, the best defense, and the final defense against tyranny. If guns are outlawed, only the government will have guns. Only the police, the secret police, the military, the hired servants of our rulers. Only the government -- and a few outlaws. I intend to be among the outlaws." He is also quoted in "The Right to Bear Arms," from the same year as saying, "The tank, the B-52, the fighter-bomber, the state-controlled police and military are the weapons of dictatorship. The rifle is the weapon of democracy. If guns are outlawed, only the government will have guns. Only the police, the secret police, the military. The hired servants of our rulers. Only the government - and a few outlaws. I intend to be among the outlaws." 

It is easy to make the not-so-mental leap to the quote we see slapped on bumper stickers all over America and especially on the bumpers of pickups carrying gun racks, far too many guns, and signs of the Confederate States of America in obvious places, though the latter is not an obligation, but a birthright. Even though the statement is absurd and describes a situation that could never occur in the US while the second amendment remains in effect, the main concept that progun proponents are trying to convey is that the outlawing of ALL guns would create a situation where the only people who would have access to guns of any kind are the criminal elements of society and that the good, law-abiding citizenry would be basically defenseless against their aggression. Of course, we must first discard the obvious fact that law enforcement agencies around the country would probably still maintain their weaponry. It is then true that a situation where the citizenry has absolutely no access to guns, yet guns remain accessible to those who want to obtain them illegally, would necessitate the result that the criminals would have a great advantage over the average citizen.

However, by breaking down the various elements within the quote itself, this straw man is shown to be baseless. We are all very aware what an outlaw is. The name became synonymous with criminals living in the Old West who would ride in on their trusty deeds and terrorize the locals. Let's now look at the second key element of this straw man, outlawed guns. Any gun used in the commitment of an illegal act by someone other than its owner can be designated an "outlawed gun," or "illegal gun." Thus, many progun lobbyists maintain that most of the guns used in criminal acts around the US are actually illegal guns and they are stolen from their rightful owners and then sold to the highest bidder on the gun black market.

Several years ago, PBS aired a special on illegal guns. One of their findings was that the myth about guns getting into criminal hands via theft is wrong. While the local policeman might agree with the progun lobbyists, the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms (ATF) do not. According to agent Jay Wachtel, most guns used in crimes are not stolen out of private gun owners' homes and cars. "Stolen guns account for only about 10% to 15% of guns used in crimes."

 

If that's the case, where are these illegal guns coming from? They aren't manufactured illegally. If there are thousands of illegal manufacturers of guns in America, why isn't our law enforcement agencies closing them and putting their illegal manufacturers behind bars? Where is our law enforcement if we have tons of illegal arms being manufactured on a daily basis and being sold to criminals? The answer is simple. Guns ARE NOT manufactured illegally. Guns almost never start off as illegal. Guns are made legally.

Then how do they attain their illegal status? According to the Violence Policy Center, VPC, one of the principle answers is the holiest of holies, the gun show. Their report, Illegal Trafficking at Gun Shows, demonstrates how illegal firearm transactions at gun shows produce an abundance of guns ripe for the gun black market. These trades usually occur in one of three ways:

 

Straw man purchases

Out-of-state sales

Sales from "personal" collections

Straw man purchases happen when someone who is prohibited from buying guns gives the money to another person who can buy guns. Very few people are ever brought up for charges of this type even though it often takes place right under the dealer's nose. The VPC states, "At a 1993 hearing on federal firearms licensing before the crime subcommittee of the House Judiciary Committee, one of the few convicted criminals for this offense, Edward Daily III, testified that he regularly used straw purchasers to buy handguns at gun shows in Virginia. The 22-year-old Daily traded the guns for narcotics in New York City. At the hearing, then-House Crime Subcommittee Chair Charles Schumer (D-NY), who has played a leading role in documenting gun show abuses, questioned Daily as to the role gun shows play in criminal trafficking. Daily testified, "At each gun show, there were about, maybe 250 tables with different gun dealers, and we would visit maybe 20, 30 tables. Some of them saw me every weekend, and they knew me....'Hi. How's it going....Are you picking up any guns today?'" Representative Schumer asked Daily whether "this was always at gun shows?" Daily responded, "Always at gun shows."

 

The VPC points out one common story as told by the National Association of Stocking Gun Dealers' Bill Bridgewater who asserts that gun show violations occur all the time. "If you can't see them you're blind. When you go to a [North Carolina] gun show and you see every state licensee around you for 250 to 300 miles and you chat with various folk standing behind their table of handguns...[from Ohio, Florida, Virginia], does that give you a clue? There are a lot of [illegal sales being committed] under the color of an FFL traveling state to state every weekend and attending firearms shows and selling firearms unlawfully in those states. The principal reason they do is that at every gun show in this nation no one pays any attention to the law." Another FFL dealer, Richard Yarmy, illegally sold guns to New York City criminals for years before being caught.

 

Personal collections, VPC concludes, are also another good source for gun trafficking. Many unscrupulous dealers use their family and friends as purchasers who are merely augmenting their own hobby while others state that they are merely selling their very own collection. In defining the threshold of activity one must cross to be categorized as a "dealer," The Firearm Owners Protection Act, also known as the McClure-Volkmer Act, specifically excludes a person who makes "exchanges or purchases of firearms for the enhancement of a personal collection...or who sells all or part of his personal collection of firearms."

Therefore, private individuals selling firearms at gun shows from their "personal collections" are not required to obtain a Federal Firearms License, and as noted earlier, need not comply with the recordkeeping and reporting requirements that apply to license holders. In addition, unscrupulous dealers can thwart gun control laws by transferring weapons to relatives' or friends' "personal collections," to be resold with no record of the ultimate purchaser.

 

Progun lobbyists will also argue that we already have enough gun laws out there and that they are good enough to protect us going forward. But as in the cases cited above, where people circumvent the law on purpose, a law is only as good as its enforcement. When the letter of the law becomes a shallow and moot point, it ceases to be effective. Let's look at just one case where a person commits a crime using a firearm in the murder of others, is arrested and convicted, and then returns to their vice upon release back into society.

 

We need to look no further than www.justicejournalism.org's discussion of an all-but-forgotten story of absurdity about our quasi nonexistent gun control laws. This real-world example highlights the absurdity of some firearms protocols in America, whether you are pro-gun or pro-gun control. On March 23, 1998, two boys in Jonesboro, Ark., stole into the woods and hunkered down on a hill that afforded a good view of a local school. One of them, Mitchell Johnson, 13, directed the other, Andrew Golden, 11, to go inside the building and activate a fire alarm. Golden then ran to rejoin Johnson at the vantage point. As students and teachers began filing out of the building, Johnson and Golden opened fire with three rifles they took from the home of Johnson's grandfather. They fired for 5 minutes as terrified kids scrambled for cover. The boys killed four girls and a female teacher and injured 10. They were prosecuted and convicted of murder, but under the state and federal laws that the applied, the boys could be held only until they turned 21.

 

Johnson was freed on his birthday in 2005. Arkansans were stunned to learn that no law would prevent him from buying and owning firearms. His mother assured the edgy city that young Johnson had discovered God and planned to study to become a minister. On Jan. 1, 2007, police in Fayetteville, Ark., pulled over Mitchell Johnson's van for a traffic violation. He was carrying a loaded 9mm pistol. Of course he was never going to buy a gun again, and even if he did, he'd never use it again, right? Would YOU feel safe and secure knowing that YOUR neighbor spent seven years behind bars for killing people with a gun and now owns guns again? Would you applaud the US and Arkansas legal systems for their handling of this case and their 'reform' of this person?

 

It used to be that citizens were worried about rampant violence and people out of control who decided to take the law into their own hands. In the 1800s, American states began reining in vigilantism and Wild West lawlessness by limiting the rights of citizens to carry concealed weapons. That pendulum began to swing back in 1987 when Florida became the first state to enact a "right-to-carry" law. About half of all states now have some form of the law, with most enacted since 1995. It is estimated that as many as 400,000 or more people in Florida carry concealed weapons. However, currently there are no statistics to track their usage. There is no way of knowing whether these guns are reducing crime or increasing it and if the NRA and other progun lobbyists have their way, there will never be any statistics to prove it one way or another. About the only study to date reviewing such data, More Guns, Less Crime, by John Lott, actually concluded that "getting rid of older black women will lead to a more dramatic reduction in homicide rates than increasing arrest rates or enacting shall-issue laws." Americans are creating more and more illegal guns in our society and as a result, are buying more and more guns to protect themselves from the illegal guns they themselves create.

 

One more example of the absurdity of the American gun culture. A New York Daily News criminal reporter, David J. Krajicek, was sent to Georgia a few years back to follow up on reports that gun dealers there were selling guns to New Yorkers who paid below city prices for the guns and who would, upon their return to NYC, turn around and sell them to miscreants including Jamaican Posse members to be used in commissions of crime. Before he left Georgia to return to NYC, he stopped in Atlanta to interview a regional official of the federal Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms. The reporter was blown away by the ATF officer's remarks by saying that violence in New York was not necessarily a concern in Georgia. The officer said, "Why should people down here care if a bunch of Jamaicans in New York are shooting themselves up? Why should law-abiding citizens give up their ability to buy firearms because one posse shoots another posse in Brooklyn with a gun somebody happened to buy in Georgia?" If that's the response of our "protectors of our society," then we can only sit and watch capitalism at work unchecked. As long as the guns are taken illegally out of the state and use in crimes in other states, the legal authorities turn a blind eye.

 

In reality, the idea of the US making ALL guns illegal is totally absurd. Only the brain dead would ever believe this possibility could even exist. There are, however, many who champion this statement and perpetuate it wherever possible, and many of them are gun dealers. Every few years rumors begin to circulate that the current standing president is going to prohibit ALL guns in private hands. Proof is never given of this, of course, but there are many misquotes, and innuendos for the investigative and logically challenged members of society to begin their famous headless chicken routine and open up their wallets and credit cards in order to get "their last possible purchases" before the curtain falls. When the curtain doesn't fall, these people completely forget the lies, innuendos and false statements which ultimately led to their illogical headless chicken routine, and the rumors start once again. I know of no other industry that can constantly dupe tens of millions of Americans in this manner on such a consistent basis and in such a lucrative way.

It is obvious to one and all that the second amendment exists and has never been threatened in the entire history of the US. It is also obvious that the gun culture which currently exists in the US would be far too aggressive for any American government to ever contemplate revising the second amendment or banning all guns. It is equally obvious that the progun lobbyists are easily manipulated and controlled and with the use of mere illogical and absurd bumper stickers, they can be made to spend billions of dollars on more weaponry at the drop of a hat.

In England and Wales with a total population of 55 million people, a place with extremely restrictive gun laws, only 7 shooting related deaths occurred during the entire month of May, 2009. In order to keep pace, the US, with 300 million people, would need to show only 42 gun related deaths over the same time frame. Instead, the number is in the thousands. Yet, if you ask progun lobbyists, they will blurt out that gun violence is on the rise in England because of the gun laws they enacted over ten years ago. One can only imagine what the totals must have been if this "rise in gun violence" has lead to only seven deaths.

As long as law enforcement turns a blind eye to guns being illegally sold in one state in order to commit crimes in another, gun violence in the US will continue to produce tens of thousands of dead each year. As long as there's no registration of guns, there's no tracking of guns, and there's no legal enforcement of the laws already on the books, the US will be known around the world as one of the most violent nations in existence. As long as absurd statements like, "guns don't kill people, people kill people," and "when guns are outlawed, only outlaws will have guns," are believed, the private gun industry will have a very lucrative future on both sides of the law. As long as stupid rumors of imminent gun confiscation run rampant, the US will stay at or near the top in gun violence, firearm murders, firearm crime and other violent crimes.

As long as progun lobbyists demonstrate selective amnesia and lack of common sense as their primary motive, tens of millions of Americans will continue to purchase more and more armaments and will, as a direct result, furnish the criminal black market with guns and an ever increasing inventory of weapons for them to choose from.

Authors Bio:

66 year old Californian-born and bred male - I've lived in four different countries, USA, Switzerland, Mexico, Venezuela, and currently live in the Dominican Republic - speak three languages fluently, English, French, Spanish - have worked as a journalist for Empower-Sport Magazine. I am a retired Supply Chain Specialist.