The Battle Over Gun Control

Abstract

Anti-gun organizations and spokesman position themselves rhetorically so as inevitability to cement millions of gun owners into opposition to any sort of gun control with claims that common citizens who want a handgun to protect home and family are sexually aberrant, paranoid, trigger-happy rednecks whom it is imperative to disarm. Handgun ban advocates also support denying permits to those who most require handguns for safety, such as inner-city small business owners or elderly welfare recipients trapped in deteriorating welfare neighborhood even though research shows that handgun-armed citizens actually thwart about as many crimes annually as handgun-armed criminals succeed in committing. Yet, such advocates systematically avoid the key criminological issue of enforceability which leads to the conclusion that the goal is not to change human behavior but to legally enshrine one morality over another.

Keywords: gun control, Second Amendment, anti-gun, crime, inner-city

JEL Classification: K14