One difficulty the world has always been faced with is crime. We have put penalties on crime, such as flogging and beating in the older days, and today we have more civilized methods such as jailing and the death sentence. But we still have crime. It would be ridiculous to think that we will ever fully get rid of crime in this imperfect world. Even so, we are still always striving to come up with new ways to lower the crime rate. One much disputed method to reduce crime is a gun ban – to ban all guns. Banning guns is a very dramatic thing to do and it deserves to be thought out. Something that seems to be neglected by a lot of anti-gun advocates is that criminals will still have the black market as a way to attain their guns even if they are banned, and for this reason I do not think a gun ban would turn out as expected.

One important item to study if I am to argue against a gun ban is how criminals are attaining their guns currently. According to Dan Noyes, most criminals in fact attain their guns through the illegal market (pbs.org). Criminals are avoiding legal gun shops for a number of reasons. First, many criminals are barred from legal gun purchases due to prior convictions (Riviera). Second, most criminals are poor, and prefer cheaper, inferior guns that are sold on the black market. Criminals often dispose of their guns after using them in a crime anyways and thus don’t want to spend a lot of money on a gun that will only be used once (Riviera). According to a report by Senator Charles E. Schumer, Democrat of New York, actually only 13 percent of guns used in crimes are bought from legal gun dealers (nytimes.com).

You are probably wondering why it is important that we know how criminals are currently getting their guns. Well, if we declare a total gun ban, what does that mean? It means that it will be illegal to possess or attain guns. However, criminals already get their guns illegally. Naturally, than, how would a gun ban help?

Ok, so if we banned guns all currently legal gun factories in the US would be shut down and we would stop importing them from China, legally. All legal gun trading would be over. The 13 percent of criminals who attained their guns legally will not be able to get them the same way. Likewise, the law abiders who have guns will also have to give them up. However this does no good.

How would criminals get guns in a gun ban? I mean even if they got them illegally from illegal street dealers and other such illegal ways, how would the people they bought them from get the guns they sold? Well, this question is similar to the question of how people get illegal drugs. I have a major argument here. Drugs are imported illegally, everyone knows that. I don’t even have to cite a source for that. What would keep guns from being imported illegally just like the drugs? Nothing. They’d come in right with the drugs, probably in the same crates that drugs are smuggled in. People would start creating private gun factories in their basement to sell to others, and the black market would boom.

Some of us law abiders also like to keep guns, for self defense, for hunting, or incase we need to take up arms against an invading country if our government were to fail. In addition we sometimes have guns to defend against robbery. Now imagine guns were banned. All guns currently in possession of civilians must be turned in and gun stores must be shut down. As a law abider I would turn in my gun. Most of the law abiders would turn in their guns. On the contrary though only a few of the criminals would turn their guns in. If they attained a gun legally, it may be on file, and they would know that. To not get in trouble, the 13 percent mentioned earlier may turn their guns in. However the next day they may get a new gun that was smuggled.

Ok, so now what. Law abiders turned in their guns and criminals have not. Talk about literally giving power straight to the criminals. Criminals are now free murder and steal with less worry than ever before. Criminal activity may even increase.
A gun ban would increase criminal activities? That’s what I believe. There’s evidence too - in 1996, Australia passed a gun ban (geoffmetcalf.com). Not a total gun ban mind you – but a ban on most of them. Before the ban the crime rate had been historically low – and it was lowering even more, steadily. Estimates of 2.8 million of now illegal guns were supposed to be surrendered to the government when the ban was ordered (geoffmetcalf.com). Who do you think turned in their guns? Not the crack pots, criminals or gang-members. Rather it was the law-abiding citizens that turned their guns in. Now the results have come in – 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. In the state of Victoria alone the homicide rate with firearms increased by a smashing 300 percent (geoffmetcalf.com).

If we ban guns, I strongly believe that all it would do is remove guns from the law-abiders’ hands alone. Many countries have attempted to ban guns in the past with no better results than Australia had. With this evidence I believe that a gun ban will not hinder crime in the least bit, and may even increase it.

Works Cited

• Butterfield, Fox. “Gun Flow to Criminals Lain to Tiny Fraction of Dealers”. The New York Times. 8 July 1999. Retrieved 4 May 2008. http://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html?res=9903EEDE173DF932A35754C0A96F958260.
• Noyes, Dan. “Hot Guns: How Criminals Get Guns”. PBS. Not Dated. http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/shows/guns/procon/guns.html.
• Tidswell, Keith. “AUSTRALIA: The Results Are In”. Sporting Shooter’s Association. Retrieved 4 May 2008. http://www.geoffmetcalf.com/aus.html.
• Riviera, Sudo. TTY interview. 11 May. 2008.