(Some interesting insights into just a few of the practicle problems of making a gun control law work.)

A WORLD WITHOUT GUNS

Posted By: RMNewsUpdates
Date: Friday, 7 December 2001, 5:17 p.m.

From: "Steve"
Date: Wed Dec 5, 2001 5:07 pm
Subject: A World Without Guns

A World Without Guns
Be forewarned: It's not a pretty picture

By Dave Kopel, Paul Gallant, and Joanne Eisen of the Independence Institute
December 5, 2001 9:40 a.m.
http://www.nationalreview.com/kopel/kopel120501.shtml

Imagine the world without guns" was a bumper sticker that began making the
rounds after the murder of ex-Beatle John Lennon on December 18, 1980. Last
year, Lennon's widow, Yoko Ono, followed up on that sentiment by announcing
she would become a spokeswoman for Handgun Control, Inc. (which later
changed its name to the Brady Campaign to Prevent Gun Violence, and which
was previously named the National Council to Control Handguns).

So let's try hard to imagine what a world without guns would look like. It
isn't hard to do. But be forewarned: It's not a pretty picture.

The way to get to a gun-free world, the gun-prohibition groups tell us, is
to pass laws banning them. We can begin by imagining the enactment of laws
which ban all non-government possession of firearms.

It's not likely that local bans will do the job. Take, for example, New
York's 1911 Sullivan Law, which imposed an exceedingly restrictive
handgun-licensing scheme on New York City. In recent decades,
administrative abuses have turned the licensing statute into what amounts
to prohibition, except for tenacious people who navigate a deliberately
obstructive licensing system.

Laws affect mainly those willing to obey them. And where there's an
unfulfilled need - and money to be made - there's usually a way around the
law. Enter the black market, which flourishes all the more vigorously with
ever-increasing restrictions and prohibitions. In TV commercials that aired
last August, New York City Republican (sort of) mayoral candidate Mike
Bloomberg informed voters that "in 1993, there were as many as 2 million
illegal guns on the street." The insinuation was that all those guns were
in the hands of criminals, and the implication was that confiscating the
guns would make the city a safer place. What Bloomberg never explained was
how he planned to shut down the black market.

So let's imagine, instead, a nationwide gun ban, or maybe even a worldwide
ban.

Then again, heroin and cocaine have been illegal in the United States, and
most of the world, for nearly a century. Huge resources have been devoted
to suppressing their production, sale, and use, and many innocent people
have been sacrificed in the crossfire of the "drug war." Yet heroin and
cocaine are readily available on the streets of almost all large American
cities, and at prices that today are lower than in previous decades.

Perhaps a global prohibition law isn't good enough. Maybe imposing the
harshest penalty possible for violation of such a law will give it real
teeth: mandatory life in prison for possession of a gun, or even for
possession of a single bullet. (We won't imagine the death penalty, since
the Yoko crowd doesn't like the death penalty.)

On second thought, Jamaica's Gun Court Act of 1974 contained just such a
penalty, and even that wasn't sufficient. On August 18, 2001, Jamaican
Melville Cooke observed that today, "the only people who do not have an
illegal firearm [in this country], are those who do not want one." Violent
crime in Jamaica is worse than ever, as gangsters and trigger-happy police
commit homicides with impunity, and only the law-abiding are disarmed.

Yet the Jamaican government wants to globalize its failed policy. In July
2001, Burchell Whiteman, Jamaica's Minister of Education, Youth and Culture
spoke at the U.N. Disarmament Conference to demand the "implementation of
measures that would limit the production of weapons to levels that meet the
needs for defence and national security."

And as long as governments are allowed to have guns, there will be gun
factories to steal from. Some of these factories might have adequate
security measures to prevent theft, including theft by employees. But in a
world with about 200 nations, most of them governed by kleptocracies, it's
preposterous to imagine that some of those "government-only" factories
won't become suppliers for the black market. Alternatively, corrupt
military and police could supply firearms to the black market.

We'd better revise our strategy. Rather than wishing for laws (which
cannot, even imaginably, create a gun-free world), let's be more ambitious,
and imagine that all guns vanish. Even guns possessed by government agents.
And let's close all the gun factories, too. That ought to put the black
market out of business.

Voil�! Instant peace!

Back to the Drawing Board

Then again.....it's not very difficult to make a workable firearm. As J.
David Truby points out in his book Zips, Pipes, and Pens: Arsenal of
Improvised Weapons, "Today, all of the improvised/modified designs [of
firearms] remain well within the accomplishment of the mechanically
unskilled citizen who does not have access to firearms through other
means."

In the article "Gun-Making as a Cottage Industry," Charles Chandler
observed that Americans "have a reputation as ardent hobbyists and
do-it-yourselfers, building everything from ship models to home
improvements." The one area they have not been very active in is that of
firearm construction. And that, Chandler explained, is only because
"well-designed and well-made firearms are generally available as items of
commerce."

A complete gun ban, or highly restrictive licensing amounting to near-ban,
would create a real incentive for gun making to become a "cottage
industry".

It's already happening in Great Britain, a consequence of the complete ban
on civilian possession of handguns imposed by the Firearms Act of 1997. Not
only are the Brits swamped today with illegally imported firearms, but
local, makeshift gun factories have sprung up to compete.

British police already know about some of them. Officers from Scotland
Yard's Metropolitan Police Serious Crime Group South recently recovered 12
handgun replicas which were converted to working models. An auto repair
shop in London served as the front for the novel illegal gun factory.
Police even found some enterprising gun-makers turning screwdrivers into
workable firearms, and producing firearms disguised as ordinary key rings.

In short, closing the Winchester Repeating Arms factory - and all the
others - will not spell the end of the firearm business.

Just take the case of Bougainville, the largest island in the South
Pacific's Solomon Islands chain. Bougainville was the site of a bloody,
decade-long secessionist uprising against domination by the government of
Papua New Guinea, aided and abetted by the Australian government. The
conflict there was the longest-running confrontation in the Pacific since
the end of World War II, and caused the deaths of 15,000 to 20,000
islanders.

During the hostilities, which included a military blockade of the island,
one of the goals was to deprive the Bougainville Revolutionary Army (BRA)
of its supply of arms. The tactic failed: the BRA simply learned how to
make its own guns using materiel and ammunition left over from the War.

In fact, at the United Nations Asia Pacific Regional Disarmament Conference
held in Spring 2001, it was quietly admitted that the BRA, within ten years
of its formation, had managed to manufacture a production copy of the M16
automatic rifle and other machine guns. (That makes one question the real
intent behind the U.N. Conference on the Illicit Trade in Small Arms and
Light Weapons in All its Aspects, which followed several months later: the
U.N. leadership can't be so daft as to fail to recognize the implications
for world disarmament after learning of the success of the Bougainville
Revolutionary Army.)

If this single island of Bougainville can produce its own weapons, the
Philippine Islands have long had a thriving cottage industry to manufacture
firearms - despite very restrictive gun laws imposed by the Marcos
dictatorship and some other regimes.

It looks like we'll need to revisit our fantasy, yet again.

Okay. By proclamation of Kopel, Gallant, and Eisen, not only do all
firearms - every last one of them - vanish instantly, but there shall be no
further remanufacturing.

That last part's a bit tricky. Auto repair shops, hobbyists,
revolutionaries - everyone with decent machine shop skills - can make a gun
from something. This takes us down the same road as drug prohibition: With
primary anti-drug laws having proven themselves unenforceable, secondary
laws have been added to prohibit possession of items which could be used to
manufacture drugs. Even making suspicious purchases at a gardening store
can earn one a "dynamic entry" visit from the local SWAT team.

But laws proscribing the possession of gun-manufacturing items would have
to be even broader than laws against possession of drug-manufacturing
items, because there are so many tools which can be used to make guns, or
be made into guns. What we'd really have to do is carefully control every
possible step in the gun-making process. That means the registration of all
machine tools, and the federal licensing of plumbers (similar to current
federal licensure of pharmacies), auto mechanics, and all those handymen
with their screwdrivers. And we'd need to stamp a serial number on pipes
(potential gun barrels) in every bathroom and automobile - and everywhere
else one finds pipes - and place all the serial numbers in a federal
registry.

Today, the antigun lobbies who claim they don't want to ban all guns still
insist that registration of every single gun and licensing of every gun
owner is essential to keep guns from falling into the wrong hands. If so,
it's hard to argue that licensing and registration of gun manufacturing
items would not be essential to prevent illicit production of guns.

Thus, we would have to control every part of the manufacturing process.
That would add up to a very expensive, complicated proposition. Even a 1%
noncompliance rate with the "Firearms Precursors Control Act" would leave
an immense supply of materials available for black-market gun making.

In order to ensure total conformity with the act, it's difficult to imagine
leaving most existing constitutional protections in place. The mind boggles
at the kinds of search and seizure laws required to make certain that
people do not possess unregistered metal pipes or screwdrivers!

For example, just to enforce a ban on actual guns (not gun precursors), the
Jamaican government needed to wipe out many common law controls on police
searches, and many common law guarantees of fair trials. We'd have to trash
the Constitution in order to completely prevent a black market in gun
precursors from taking hold. Still, as the gun-prohibition lobby always
says, if it saves just one life, it would be worth it.

But, what if, despite these extreme measures, the black market still
functioned - as it almost always does, when there is sufficient demand?

It's time to seriously revisit our strategy for a gun-free world. Maybe
there's a shortcut around all of this.

Okay. We're going to make a truly radical, no-holds-barred proposal this
time, take a quantum leap in science, and go where no man has gone before.
There may be those who scoff at our proposal, but it can succeed where all
other strategies have failed.

We, Kopel, Gallant, and Eisen, hereby imagine that, from this day forth,
the laws of chemical combustion are revoked. We hereby imagine that
gunpowder - and all similar compounds - no longer have the capacity to burn
and release the gases necessary to propel a bullet.

Peace for Our Time

Finally, for the first time, a gun-free world is truly within our grasp -
and it's time to see what man hath wrought. And for that, all we have to do
is take a look back at the kind of world our ancestors lived in.

To say that life in the pre-gunpowder world was violent would be an
understatement. Land travel, especially over long distances, was fraught
with danger from murderers, robbers, and other criminals. Most women
couldn't protect themselves from rape, except by granting unlimited sexual
access to one male in exchange for protection from other males.

Back then, weapons depended on muscle power. Advances in weaponry primarily
magnified the effect of muscle power. The stronger one is, the better one's
prospects for fighting up close with an edged weapon like a sword or a
knife, or at a distance with a bow or a javelin (both of which require
strong arms). The superb ability of such "old-fashioned" edged weapons to
inflict carnage on innocents was graphically demonstrated by the stabbing
deaths of eight second graders on June 8, 2001, by former school clerk
Mamoru Takuma in gun-free Osaka, Japan.

When it comes to muscle power, young men usually win over women, children,
and the elderly. It was warriors who dominated society in gun-free feudal
Europe, and a weak man usually had to resign himself to settle on a life of
toil and obedience in exchange for a place within the castle walls when
evil was afoot.

And what of the women? According to the custom of jus primae noctis, a lord
had the right to sleep with the bride of a newly married serf on the first
night - a necessary price for the serf to pay - in exchange for the promise
of safety and security (does that ring a bell?). Not uncommonly, this
arrangement didn't end with the wedding night, since one's lord had the
practical power to take any woman, any time. Regardless of whether jus
primae noctis was formally observed in a region, rich, strong men had
little besides their conscience to stop them from having their way with
women who weren't protected by another wealthy strongman.

But there's yet another problem with imagining gunpowder out of existence:
We get rid of firearms, but we don't get rid of guns. With the advent of
the blow gun some 40,000 years ago, man discovered the efficacy of a tube
for concentrating air power and aiming a missile, making the eventual
appearance of airguns inevitable. So gunpowder or no gunpowder, all we've
been doing, thus far, amounts to quibbling over the means for propelling
something out of a tube.

Airguns date back to somewhere around the beginning of the 17th century.
And we don't mean airguns like the puny Daisy Red Ryder BB Gun with a
compass in the stock, longed for by Ralphie in Jean Shepard's 1984 classic
A Christmas Story ("No, Ralphie, you can't have a BB gun - you'll shoot
your eye out!").

No, we're talking serious lethality here. The kind of powder-free gun that
can hurl a 7.4 oz. projectile with a muzzle energy of 1,082 foot-pounds.
Compare that to the 500 foot-pounds of muzzle energy from a typical .357
Magnum round! Even greater projectile energies are achievable using gases
like nitrogen or helium, which create higher pressures than air does.

Before the advent of self-contained powder cartridge guns, airguns were
considered serious weapons. In fact, three hundred years ago, air-powered
guns were among the most powerful and accurate large-bore rifles around.
While their biggest disadvantages were cost and intricacy of manufacture,
they were more dependable and could be fired more rapidly than firearms of
the same period. A butt-reservoir .31 airgun was carried by Lewis and Clark
on their historic expedition, and used successfully for taking game. [See
Robert D. Beeman, "Proceeding On to the Lewis & Clark Airgun," Airgun Revue
6 (2000): 13-33.] Airguns even saw duty in military engagements more than
200 years ago.

Today, fully automatic M-16-style airguns are a reality. It was only
because of greater cost relative to powder guns, and the greater
convenience afforded by powder arms, that airgun technology was never
pushed to its lethal limits.

Other non-powder weapon systems have competed for man's attention, as well.
The 20th century was the bloodiest century in the history of mankind. And
while firearms were used for killing (for example, with machine guns
arranged to create interlocking fields of fire in the trench warfare of
World War I), they were hardly essential. By far, the greatest number of
deliberate killings occurred during the genocides and democides perpetrated
by governments against disarmed populations. The instruments of death
ranged from Zyklon B gas to machetes to starvation.

Imagine No Claws

To imagine a world with no guns is to imagine a world in which the strong
rule the weak, in which women are dominated by men, and in which minorities
are easily abused or mass-murdered by majorities. Practically speaking, a
firearm is the only weapon that allows a weaker person to defend himself
from a larger, stronger group of attackers, and to do so at a distance. As
George Orwell observed, a weapon like a rifle "gives claws to the weak."

The failure of imagination among people who yearn for a gun-free world is
their naive assumption that getting rid of claws will get rid of the desire
to dominate and kill. They fail to acknowledge the undeniable fact that
when the weak are deprived of claws (or firearms), the strong will have
access to other weapons, including sheer muscle power. A gun-free world
would be much more dangerous for women, and much safer for brutes and
tyrants.

The one society in history that successfully gave up firearms was Japan in
the 17th century, as detailed in Noel Perrin's superb book Giving Up the
Gun: Japan's Reversion to the Sword 1543-1879. An isolated island with a
totalitarian dictatorship, Japan was able to get rid of the guns. Historian
Stephen Turnbull summarizes the result:

[The dictator] Hid�yoshi's resources were such that the edict was carried
out to the letter. The growing social mobility of peasants was thus flung
suddenly into reverse. The ikki, the warrior-monks, became figures of the
past . . . Hid�yoshi had deprived the peasants of their weapons. I�yasu
[the next ruler] now began to deprive them of their self respect. If a
peasant offended a samurai he might be cut down on the spot by the
samurai's sword. [The Samurai: A Military History (New York: Macmillan,
1977).]

The inferior status of the peasantry having been affirmed by civil
disarmament, the Samurai enjoyed kiri-sute gomen, permission to kill and
depart. Any disrespectful member of the lower class could be executed by a
Samurai's sword.

The Japanese disarmament laws helped mold the culture of submission to
authority which facilitated Japan's domination by an imperialist military
dictatorship in the 1930s, which led the nation into a disastrous world
war.

In short, the one country that created a truly gun-free society created a
society of harsh class oppression, in which the strongmen of the upper
class could kill the lower classes with impunity. When a racist,
militarist, imperialist government took power, there was no effective means
of resistance. The gun-free world of Japan turned into just the opposite of
the gentle, egalitarian utopia of John Lennon's song "Imagine."

Instead of imagining a world without a particular technology, what about
imagining a world in which the human heart grows gentler, and people treat
each other decently? This is part of the vision of many of the world's
great religions. Although we have a long way to go, there is no denying
that hundreds of millions of lives have changed for the better because
people came to believe what these religions teach.

If a truly peaceful world is attainable - or, even if unattainable, worth
striving for - there is nothing to be gained from the futile attempt to
eliminate all guns. A more worthwhile result can flow from the changing of
human hearts, one soul at a time.


Source: Rumour Mill News

See what would happen should guns actually be banned!
http://www.the-eggman.com/rants/gun_ban.html

Egg

I see America's pioneer values are still respected over 100 years after the conquest of the North American West.

I see German speaking peoples conformist values are still respected over 50 years after the conquest of the third reich.

Don't ever call me a Nazi after all the discussions I've had with Defiant over this. You should know better than to think I'm a purist.

Im not saying youre a nazi, you don't have a shred of nationalism about you. however you are a conformist.

A conformist to what? Society? After all I've criticized morality and collective values?

A conformist to the state.

you're a socialist you dont believe in the death penalty, you don't believe guns should be owned by private citizens, you are exactly what your govenment intended to make you.

I think the government endorses the selling of guns, in the US that is, because of the huge lobby of the armament industry. As for the death penalty, that is simply a respect for human rights, which Americans with their corrupt system of justice obviously have no clue of.

That was an incredibly good article. I agree that imposing gun annihilation is pointless, I also agree that if everyone just had a larger lust for peace there would be little need for gun control. Personally I'd prefer only military and law enforcement personnel to be allowed to possess fire arms, however that article pointed out two things, thievery and corruption within the institutions. Probably the best solution to gun control is more attention and resources put into illegal purchases and illegal possession of firearms, and also increased requirements for accountability of gun manufacturing locations and gun storage locations. This wouldn't come anywhere close to solving the problem, but it should hinder the problem.

first of all, your red herrings, IE the death penalty barb, are tiresome you selfrighteous socialst; there is a topic in the politics forum on the subject of capital punishment refer to it to bitch. secondly the government allows the sale of arms because it is a sovereign right of a people to defend themselves against all enemies, foreign and domestic; you'll notice our nation has never fallen to totalitarian factions foreign or domestic.

But that is a product of other factors, not your pioneer spirit.

If by pioneer spirit you mean strong individualist innovative spirtit, than that is what kept us from being conquered for that is what made us great. do you so detest strength that you must create euphemisms for it to mock. For I tell you that the individualism that has made us great Is hardly obsolete IT exist in every technological advance we make and every great work we create. One day our day in history will be over and perhaps we shall exist as a nihilistic shell like the hasbeen nations of Europe, But I thank god I will not live to see that day.

[This message has been edited by Alan Smithee (edited 12-27-2001).]

Considering that presently there is greater respect for freedom, human rights and individuality in Europe I consider myself luckier than you.

Thats just your coy little way of saying Im superior because I dont put mass murderers to death. we have a topic on it ya wee girl, post there.

a world with out guns is a world with bricks and sticks

A world without guns in the hand of the private citizen is definitely a better world.

...for criminals and despots.

Whereas a world where guns are readily available is a haven for industry and funeral parlors.

Guns are not the real problem in the world today... it's people. I say even if every gun on this planet were to vanish, the murder rates would continue to raise, as it has risen, and will rise. Its a moral decline that is to blame. People simply don't care about each other. That is the real problem. Guns are simply the tools used through hate, and are unfairly labled as a scapegoat for a failing human race. A tool is a harmless object, it is the person who is using it that makes it a weapon. The only way things will ever change is if people start caring, and unfortunately that will never happen.

Not really messer gun deaths are about as prevelent as being struck by lightning not really A large market share for the funeral buisness. also It can't really help the funeral industry since its not like someone who died from gunshot wasn't going to die sooner or later.

But onto the origional arguement your country has less crime because your socialist country gives the poor adequet support because our socialst country spends most of our tax dollars defending your collective asses. I am wholly convinced that putting the assets used for war back into the regular economic system and letting the rest of you rott is the best course of action.

Actually, you spend more money in developing defense for your own country, not NATO, with the building of useless missile defense systems, whereas we spend our money in structural development programs.

no, kosovo, Iraq, the current conflict, all of them we were drawn into because of our alliances.

The post that originally started this thread pointed out, very specifically, the practicle problems that would have be solved before any comprehensive gun control Act could be made to work.

I have two questions for you Messer.

1. What specific measures do you propose to make gun control work?

2. What evidence can you produce to show that gun control is even possible?

Europe is my example, Western Europe. Crime rates there are much lower than in the US in part because of gun control. As to measures to eliminate guns, I can see this as being a very difficult process, especially where people have entrenched themselves in their right to bear firearms. The youth must be informed of the danger these guns actually represent and in future the only guns to be licensed are those for hunting, which I see as an inevitable evil. And not a semi-automatic M16A either.

once again it is numerous social differences of the nations which make the difference in crime rates; the fact that we get less of what our government robs from us, taxes, back In usable service, because 42 percent of it goes to defend you people. If you had to bear the weight of your own defense then we would be much better off. Also your nations rehabilitate drug criminals instead of locking them up, which only displaces the truely violent offenders, and creates violent offenders out of drug offenders. If the American nation were to be brought back to a more libertarian government we as a people would be much more prosperous and far more safe.

Messer:

"Europe is my example, Western Europe. Crime rates there are much lower than in the US in part because of gun control."

What evidence can offer to support this claim?

Given your unbounded confidence in the effectiveness of gun conntrol you should be capable of providing us with something more than your unsupported opinion on the matter.

eg: Links to International Crime Statistics, or academic studies which offer support for your pontifical assertions.

I offer you specific examples of why gun control does not work.

I invite you to offer specific examples how it can be shown to work.

This is apparently your idea of a specific example:


"As to measures to eliminate guns, I can see this as being a very difficult process, especially where people have entrenched themselves in their right to bear firearms."

Question:

Since it is going to be so difficult to eliminate guns "especialy where people have entrenched themselves in their right to bear firearms", what do you propose be done to all those backward Americans who won't co-operate with your gun free Utopia?


"The youth must be informed of the danger these guns actually represent......."


So whenever there is no objective evidence to support the case for gun control, the likes of Messer will use the media and the public education system to spread their propaganda among those young enough and impressionable enough to accept their lies without question.


"....and in future the only guns to be licensed are those for hunting, which I see as an inevitable evil. And not a semi-automatic M16A either."

So we aren't talking about "eliminating guns" after all, just talking about restricting them to a privilleged few.

Superior folk will be licenced to hunt in Messer's post Hitlerian Paradise. It is after all an "inevitable evil."

What sort of people do you see as trustworthy
enough to bear arms Messer?

And what criteria do you propose for selecting them?

PS

I am very releived that no one will be allowed to hunt with ". ... a semi-automatic M16A either."

There ain't no such animal as a "semi-automatic M16A" Messer.

the AR 33 would roughly fit that criteria. also every one here whos country never collapsed to the forces of fascism please raise your hand.

Was the US ever subjected to a peace treaty like Versailles?

Was France, Italy, Poland, Checkloslavakia, Belgium, or the Neatherlands?

Messer informs us that countries with repressive gun laws have lower crime rates than the United States.

Messer talks unmitigated crap!
--------------------------------------------

Actually, crime rates are the same in Switzerland, Israel and Norway, where gun laws are relatively mild, as they are in England, Italy and Japan, where guns are almost entirely prohibited.

In Switzerland, most citizens are members of the national defense force and are issued fully-automatic rifles and ammunition, to be kept at home, ready to be put into use in a national emergency. Outside their formal military duties, the Swiss expend about 60 million rounds of ammunition with the guns each year, mostly for target practice. Crimes with the guns are virtually unheard of. By comparison, "Italy's gun law, 'the most restrictive in Europe,' had left her southern provinces alone with a thousand firearm murders a year, thirty times Switzerland's total."1

England annually has twice as many homicides with firearms as it did before imposing its tough laws. Furthermore, "crime rates for robbery, assault, burglary, and motor vehicle theft are higher in England (including Wales) than in the United States." And while U.S. crime rates have been declining significantly, the reverse is true in England and Wales.

According to a late 1998 study by the Bureau of Justice Statistics, "For most U.S. crimes . . . the latest crime rates (1996) are the lowest recorded in the 16-year period from 1981 to 1996. By comparison, English crime rates as measured in both victim surveys and police statistics have all risen since 1981." The murder rate is higher in the U.S. than in England and Wales, but the U.S. rate has been declining, while the rate in England and Wales has remained unchanged.2

Ironically, it is because Japan's crime rates are rising despite its severe gun control laws, that that country is trying to lead a call for worldwide gun control through the United Nations. But, as law professor David Kopel noted in a work voted 1992 Book of the Year award by the American Society of Criminology's Division of International Criminology. Japanese-style gun control requires measures that could not be imposed in the U.S.

In Japan, citizens have fewer protections of the right to privacy, and fewer rights for criminal suspects, than in the United States. Japanese police routinely search citizens at will and twice a year pay "home visits" to citizens' residences. Suspect confession rate is 95% and trial conviction rate is more than 99.9%.

The Tokyo Bar Association has said that the Japanese police routinely engage in torture or illegal treatment. Even in cases where suspects claimed to have been tortured and their bodies bore the physical traces to back their claims, courts have still accepted their confessions. Amnesty International, Kopel noted, calls Japan's police custody system "a flagrant violation of United Nations human rights principles."

But, Kopel wrote, "Without abrogating the Bill of Rights, America could not give its police and prosecutors extensive Japanese-style powers to enforce severe gun laws effectively. Unlike the Japanese, Americans are not already secure from crime, and are therefore less likely to surrender their personal means of defense. More importantly, America has no tradition like Japan's of civil disarmament, of submission to authority, or of trust in the government." Thus, "Foreign style gun control is doomed to failure in America. Foreign gun control comes along with searches and seizures, and with many other restrictions on civil liberties too intrusive for America. . . . It postulates an authoritarian philosophy of government and society fundamentally at odds with the individualist and egalitarian American ethos."3

Perhaps Don. B. Kates, a noted civil rights lawyer, best put the international comparison myth in perspective, writing, "In any society, truly violent people are only a small minority. We know that law-abiding citizens do not commit violent crimes. We know that criminals will neither obey gun bans nor refrain from turning other deadly instruments to their nefarious purposes. . . . In sum, peaceful societies do not need general gun bans and violent societies do not benefit from them."4

1. Richard A.I Munday, Most Armed & Most Free? (Brightlingsea,Essex: Piedmont Publishing,1996)

2. Bureau of Justice Statistics, "Crime and Justice in the United States and in England and Wales, 1981-1996," Oct,1998

3. David Kopel, The Samurai, The Mountie, and the Cowboy: Should America adopt the gun controls of other democracies? (Buffalo, N.Y. Prometheus Books, 1992) pp.431-322

here, here