All of us want to prevent crime. We all want to end man-slaughter. A highly debated method to reduce criminal activities is the gun-ban. Anti-gun advocates argue that if we attempt to take guns out of the peoples hands, crime will fall. However, for reasons I am about to reveal, I have found that a gun-ban may actually not work quite as intended.

If we banned guns, what would really change? In the past we have created laws against murder, rape and robbery. Has this put a stop to any of these crimes? Not at all. Similarly, would a gun-ban really stop criminals, terrorists, crime-families and crackpots from attaining guns either? I don’t think so. Why not? Ask yourself this — how do criminals attain their guns currently? According to a report by Senator Charles E. Schumer, Democrat of New York, only 13 percent of guns used in crimes are bought from legal gun dealers. Most of them are in fact bought from the secondary, or black market. Why? I believe the biggest reason for this is that when you buy a gun legally, you have to register it with the government, which is generally not a good idea for a criminal. Also, if you are an underage criminal, gun dealers won’t be allowed to sell you guns. So how would a gun ban effect this than? Criminals will still be able to use the black market, it won’t change that. More people would start creating private gun factories in their basement to sell on the streets. People would start bringing guns over the border to sell to criminals. The black market business would boom. A gun ban would not hinder a criminals ability to get a gun at all. Compare this to drugs. Drugs are currently banned, but are they still available? Almost anyone can get drugs if they know where to look. Guns would be very much the same way if they were banned too.

So what would be happening here? Criminals would start attaining their guns from the black market, while law-abiding citizens will find themselves without guns. If criminals have exclusive guns, what do you think the effect would be? Everything would backfire. Criminals could rob, steal and kill with much less worry than ever before. Think about this for a second. Without a gun ban, you would be as scared as hell to rob a house. What if a neighbor, or the owner of the house had a gun hiding under his pillow? You could easily get yourself killed. Now imagine guns are banned. Now you can be confident that the owner of the house you are about to rob is a law-abider who turned in his gun when they were made illegal. You, however have a gun that you bought from your favorite drug dealer. You have the power now.

Still don’t believe me? Learn from other countries that have previously passed gun bans. In 1996, Australia banned guns. Before the ban, the crime rate had not only been historically low, but it was consistently lowering even more still. An estimate of 2.8 million newly illegal guns were supposed to be surrendered to the government when the ban was ordered1. Who do you think turned in their guns? Not the crack pots, criminals or gang-members. It was the law-abiding citizens. Now what do you think happened to the crime rate? Just after a year from the ban, homicides increased 3.2 percent, assaults increased 8.6 percent, and armed robberies increased by a whopping 44 percent. Just in the state of Victoria homicides with firearms increased by a smashing 300 percent1.

If we ban guns, all it will really do is simply cause some criminals to switch over to the black market as their source of guns. Many countries have tried banning guns in the past and it has never lowered their crime rate, and in some cases it even increased. That is the best evidence you can get. Gun bans do not hinder crime.

Footnotes:

1. Statistics from http://www.geoffmetcalf.com/aus.html