Criminals Don't Follow Laws. Pass Them Anyway.

Because not everyone who commits a gun murder is previously a criminal

I have heard many people make the assertion that gun control laws are useless because “criminals don’t follow laws.” I have heard this argument many times over the years, but lately I have been hearing it constantly—perhaps because we didn’t have Twitter when the Columbine massacre happened, but today when a mass shooting occurs, which is often, we now have a way to vent our simplistic views on the subject in a 24/7 forum.

I have been holding my tongue when I hear the “criminals don’t follow laws” argument. Not because I am afraid of people disagreeing with me. I actually enjoy exchanging different views, and people have every right to express theirs, no matter how extreme or ill-considered. But I suppressed my response because I figured that there was no use in saying anything; people have made up their minds and no amount of argument, no matter how rational and logical, would convince die-hards on either side.

But not everyone is a die-hard. Some people are open-minded enough to consider reasonable arguments and adapt (if not wholly change) their views to accommodate them. So here is my best try.

For one thing, the assertion that we should not enact gun laws because criminals don’t follow them must be an exaggeration. If people really thought that gun laws were completely useless in preventing gun violence, there would be no reason for them to support background checks. After all, a determined criminal will always be able to get a gun, so we need not bother with mandatory background checks. For that matter, all military weapons should be legal for civilian possession—machine guns, rockets, grenades. After all, criminals will always be able to get them, and law-abiding people might need to defend themselves.

Of course, this would be an absurd argument, as even pro-gun people must admit that background checks at least make it more difficult for a person with a criminal record to get a gun. It is also true that many pro-gun people are against background checks for private sales and gun shows, but at least in principle, they support the policy of not allowing guns to be sold to criminals. Moreover, pro-gun people are not saying that all military-type weapons should be legal for civilians to own. They understand in principle that at least some laws can be enforced and can be effective. So even according to gun enthusiasts, it cannot be true that gun laws are completely useless.

But if you concede that certain laws can help prevent gun violence, you must abandon glib statements and address the merits of proposed laws on a case-by-case basis.

But isn’t it true that since criminals ignore laws, gun control will only disarm law-abiding people?

No.

In most of the mass shootings that have occurred in the past several years, the killers acquired their weapons legally. And why wouldn’t they? Most of them did not have a criminal record that would have precluded a legal gun purchase. An alienated, disturbed person with violent fantasies but no criminal record can walk into a gun store and walk out with a weapon that fires bullets rapidly. If the law did not allow such a weapon to be sold, the person would at least have to go to greater lengths to obtain the weapon. Perhaps he wouldn’t be able to locate a source for one.  

So it is simply not true that guns used in violent crimes are always illegal guns and thus beyond the reach of gun laws. Many of these guns start out as legal ones, and then they either fall into the wrong hands, or a previously law-abiding person turns violent. That is, having permissive gun laws makes killing easier. More restrictive laws would not make killing impossible, of course—just more difficult. Why shouldn’t we at least do that? If we could have saved even a small number of gun violence victims, would that not have been worth it? If the next Adam Lanza could not easily obtain an AR-15 and instead had to resort to a less powerful weapon, and the killer could murder only 15 people instead of 26, would a stricter gun law not be worth it?

But people need these weapons to defend themselves!

No, they don’t. Suppose a killer walks into a crowded public place and starts firing. For one thing, for the reasons I already said, well-enforced restrictive laws might prevent that from even happening—or he might at least come in with a less-powerful weapon. But even supposing he can still lay his hands on a rapid-firing weapon, what do you suppose the bystanders are going to do? Take their assault rifles off their shoulders and start firing back? Great—now you have a war going on in a dark movie theater—a shopping mall—an elementary school—or a community college. You suppose there won’t be collateral damage from the spraying of bullets in all directions?  

One of the law-abiding civilian soldiers might eventually strike down the killer, and that might be reason enough to allow people to carry around weapons designed for war. But it’s a war that should not be necessary. It’s a war that they don’t have to fight in Australia, which enacted strict gun control in 1996 and has not had a mass shooting since, despite having 112 mass shooting deaths in the same span of time before the legislation. There is no need for people to carry around military weapons if the law keeps society safe. And yes, the law can help keep society safe—by making the most lethal weapons harder to get. And yes, strict gun control makes guns harder to get, even for people who mean to do violence.

Granted, perhaps that assertion is not true for career criminals. Perhaps for people in organized crime or in gangs, it would be just as easy to obtain guns if the laws were restrictive. But not every person who commits a violent gun crime is a career criminal with easy access to weapons. Some are previously law-abiding people who decide for whatever reason to kill innocent people. And we won’t even attempt to make it more difficult for them to get the weapons they need to do it.    

Evidence from Australia supports my argument. Margaret Hartmann writes: “…In 2012 a study by Australian National University's Andrew Leigh and Wilfrid Laurier University's Christine Neill concluded that in the decade after the law was introduced, the firearm homicide rate dropped by 59 percent and the firearm suicide rate fell by 65, with no corresponding increase in homicides and suicides committed without guns.” (Source: http://nymag.com/daily/intelligencer/2015/10/how-australia-and-britain-tackled-gun-violence.html )

Another important point is that the assertion “Guns don’t kill people” is also wrong. True, a person pulls the trigger, and the person is responsible for the act. But once the person pulls the trigger, the gun does the rest of the work. The gun fires the bullet, the bullet tears through the flesh and punctures a vital organ and, yes, kills the victim. So if you take away the gun, in some cases, the killing won’t happen. A fist or a club or a knife might not do it. A headline in 2012 read: “Knife attack at Chinese school wounds 22 children” (Source: http://www.cnn.com/2012/12/14/world/asia/china-knife-attack/). Had the weapon been a gun, “wounds” would surely be “kills” for at least some of those children.

If you are willing to take that risk for the sake of an extreme notion of constitutional liberty, you have every right to feel that way. But at least admit that the cost of this position is to make killing easier and more frequent.