Sangamon County Rifle Association
Right Reason on Second Amendment Rights
Springfield, Illinois


Jim Butler



The Fallacy of Gun Control

by Jim Butler, President SCRA
February 2010 GunNews







Anti-gun control laws are often rammed through in the wake of some tragedy in an atmosphere of hysteria by irresponsible politicians more interested in grandstanding than in serious legislation.

These laws are often poorly written by well-intentioned, but bigoted anti-gun crusaders who are profoundly ignorant of firearms as technological objects, of gun owners as people, and of how and why guns are owned and used.  Their laws attack inanimate objects (firearms) instead of the relatively small minority of extreme aberrants who murder or commit violent crimes. Criminologist Don B. Kates, Jr., in his book The Great American Gun Debate, coauthored by Florida State University criminologist Gary Kleck, documented that "the average age of adult murderers is 27 years and his six adult years has an official record of four major felony arrests."

Gun prohibitionists would have you believe that most murders occur between ordinary citizens, their relatives or acquaintances because they own a gun.  This belief is ridiculous when you consider that millions of guns are owned by ordinary citizens.  According to their flawed logic millions of ordinary Americans would die each year because of owning firearms.  It just doesn't happen!

However, hardened criminals who are the real problem, also have relatives and acquaintances who they do murder or commit violent crimes against.  Victims of their violence include fellow criminals, drug dealers, their customers  and competitors, and violence between members of the same and rival gangs.  Over 20,000 gun laws have failed to target and discourage these violent sociopathic predators who already ignore laws against murder and drug trafficking.  Gun control advocates have yet to explain how passing another law to this already vast number of laws will disarm these criminal predators.

Crime and homicide rates are also highest in jurisdictions where restrictive gun licensing, registration and prohibitive schemes exist, such as Chicago, New York City, Washington, D.C., and Detroit to name a few.  These are localities where victims are unarmed and defenseless against the brazen predators who ignore these schemes.  These cities represent just six percent of our nation's population, but are responsible for a staggering 20% of U.S. homicides!

In truth, the fact that these cities deprive their law-abiding citizens of the means to effectively defend themselves is not civilized but barbarous, becoming an accomplice of murderers, rapists, and thugs. It reveals their totalitarian nature by accepting the disorganized random havoc created by criminals as less of a threat to them than law-abiding men and women who are willing to defend their freedom and independence.

As the Founding Fathers knew well, a government that doesn't trust its honest law-abiding, taxpaying citizens with the means of self-defense is not itself worthy of trust.  Laws disarming honest citizens proclaim that the government is the master, not the servant of the people.  

As Charlton Heston remarked:  "The purpose of every line of the Bill of Rights was to protect people from the state. Our Founders refused to ratify a Constitution that didn't protect individual liberties.  They were just a bunch of old dead white guys, but they invented this country, and they meant what they said.  The Second Amendment isn't about the National Guard or the police or any other government entity.  It is about law-abiding private U.S. citizens.  Period."

The fallacy of gun control laws is that they end up disarming only those who are neither inclined nor determined to commit crimes, instead of the real criminals who routinely ignore them.


Jim Butler's Commentaries

Sangamon County Rifle Association Home Page