NCJ Number
175793
Journal
Fordham Urban Law Journal Volume: 22 Issue: 2 Dated: Winter 1995 Pages: 441-451
Date Published
1998
Length
11 pages
Annotation
Gun control is discussed in terms of the reasons for the wide gap between gun owners and groups lobbying for gun control, as exemplified by Richard Aborn's essay about the Brady bill and the future of advocacy for gun control.
Abstract
Aborn's essay appeared in the same journal as the present article. Aborn's organization, Handgun Control, Inc., is one of the main advocates of a regulatory formula that aims to ban or severely regulate the types of guns considered to be bad guns. However, this formula obfuscates what ought to be an honest debate and an affirmative societal choice between an armed citizenry or a disarmed one. The rhetoric suggests that bad guns are the ones that criminals prefer. However, the bad gun regulatory formula is a recipe for the creeping disarmament of good people; this connection explains much of the opposition to regulation under the bad gun formula. The incremental disarmament of the bad gun formula prevents society from ever openly choosing disarmament and alienates an essential constituency, blocking political consensus on methods for addressing criminal misuse of firearms. Crucial issues submerged by the bad gun formula includes the limited ability of the police to protect peaceable citizens from violent threats, the inability of legislative commands to control criminality, and the impossibility of controlling international smuggling if the manufacture of certain weapons is prohibited. Other crucial issues include potential public disaffection, incentives to criminals to commit more crimes if citizens are disarmed, the corrosion of civil liberties, and resource misallocation resulting from the large expenditures needed to enforce disarmament. Perhaps the greatest barrier to a unified response to gun crime is the anti-gun lobby's approach to the Second Amendment. Aborn's essay suggests no real change in the future debate about gun control. Footnotes