Criminals and Crime
Criminals
and Crime
by
Clyde
H. Spencer
Copyright
2000
There are fundamentally two kinds of people in the world: those who respect the life and property of others and those
who do not. Laws to control the
behavior of the former are unnecessary. Laws
to prohibit the possession of certain items by the latter are futile.
It is after all, the characteristic behavior of hard-core criminals that
they take by force or deceit, that which they have no right to.
They deprive any and all of their property, freedom, and occasionally
their life.
Therein lies a kernel of wisdom on how to control crime. There must be a disincentive to engage in illegal activity.
That disincentive must include a high-probability that any attempt at
crime will either be unsuccessful, or in the situation where it is successful,
punishment will be swift and sure and therefore the penalty for the theft will
be much greater than the temporary gain by the perpetrator.
Since police can not be everywhere and protect us all the time, there
must be a greater level of personal responsibility than is typical today.
Restraints on the ability of people to protect themselves must be
removed. People should be able to
freely carry concealed weapons necessary to protect themselves.
Blanket prohibitions on firearms and martial arts weapons become a tool
of the criminal in that they are primarily victim disarmament laws observed only
by the law-abiding. In turn,
weapons used in the commission of crimes should increase the penalty
sufficiently that the potential of increased punishment for their use outweighs
any advantage provided to be more effective in the criminal act.
The attempts at blanket prohibition of firearms by well-meaning but
misguided liberals is not only ineffective, but actually counterproductive.
There is plenty of evidence that where crime has stimulated the passage
of restrictive firearms laws, the local crime rates have continued to increase
unabated and exceeded that of areas where such restrictions have not been
imposed. Bogus arguments comparing
culturally different countries' firearm crime rates are used as a
rationalization for such laws. However,
comparisons among U.S. cities and states suggest that firearm restrictions
exacerbate the crime rates within our culture.
There is even strong evidence that making firearms more readily available
to the law-abiding citizen reduces crime.
Yet, with a long history of failed attempts at reducing crime with
prohibitions of objects capable of being used in a harmful way, there is a
demand among liberals for the federal government to step in and pass blanket
prohibitions of questionable constitutionality.
The excuse is, that incremental improvements have not been observed
because the restrictions were not severe enough to cross a critical threshold at
which they would be effective. Not
at all unlike, and as irrational, as someone claiming they have a cure for
cancer and the reason no one has been cured is because they haven't taken enough
of the medicine. It turns out that
enough of the medicine would also produce toxic effects that would kill the
patient. But not matter, at least
the patient wouldn't die of cancer.
In light of the evidence that citizens frequently use firearms to protect
themselves and property, and a keystone of democracy is the ability of the
citizenry to be able to effectively overthrow any tyranny, it may well be that
the cure for crime suggested by some – prohibition of firearms – would be
worse than the disease.
Those promoting firearms prohibitions are all too commonly disingenuous.
They cite discredited studies, inflate statistics, and provide examples
of tragedies involving firearms while ignoring the tragedies averted by the use
of firearms. They appeal to the
emotions of voters while ignoring the real facts.
I have observed this behavior so frequently that I have begun to
characterize liberals as individuals who truly believe that the end justifies
the means.
