[In presenting this op-ed, I hope to introduce the ``Goldilocks Gun Control: some guns are too big; some guns are too small'' sound bite. I hope also to remind the public that the common exemption allowing the police to use otherwise outlawed affordable guns is the ``smoking gun'' evidence of the prohibitionists' deceit regarding their claims that cheap guns are ``unsafe'' and ``inaccurate.'' -- Edgar]
Some guns are ``too big'' (``assault weapons''); some guns are ``too small'' (handguns). Some ammunition penetrates ``too much'' (armor piercing ammo); some ammunition penetrates ``too little'' (``hyperdestructive'' hollow point ammo). Some guns are ``too inaccurate'' (``Saturday Night Specials''); some guns are ``too accurate'' (scoped hunting rifles or ``sniper rifles'' that don't give Bambi ``a chance'') -- or so the Goldilocks gun banners say.
What the anti-self-defense lobby never tells us in their fairy tale is what guns and ammunition are ``just right'' -- because, for these extremists, there is no gun or ammunition that is ``just right.'' Not target rifles, not hunting rifles, and certainly not self-defense guns. Goldilocks gun banners attach some nasty emotion-laden buzzword to whatever class of firearms they are targeting to ban -- moving towards incrementally banning all guns -- all the while ignoring the enormous body of research data showing the net protective benefit of guns in America.
Having been called last year by the California Assembly to testify on the research showing the protective benefits of guns (including inexpensive guns), I saw the false mask of ``reasonable gun control'' stripped from the face of the Goldilocks gun ban extremists. State Senator Polanco was promoting his bill to the California Assembly Public Safety Committee as an effort to ban ``inaccurate'' and ``unsafe'' guns, but he became very flustered when then-Assemblyman Rainey noted that the gun he carries as our retired Contra Costa Sheriff would have been banned by Polanco's bill. Polanco became more visibly agitated when other Committee members noted that the guns they carry as retired police and the ``back up'' guns carried by most street cops would have been banned by Polanco's bill (not unlike the recent embarrassing discovery that the new law preventing domestic violence misdemeanor offenders from possessing guns may cause thousands of misdemeanor-convicted police officers to lose their jobs).
Hurriedly Polanco shuffled through his presentation notes, obviously unprepared for this turn of events. He offered to amend his bill with an exemption for police officers to carry the guns that only minutes before he had, pounding the table red-faced, described as ``unsafe'' and ``inaccurate.''
Was the Assembly Committee to believe that Polanco wanted police officers to carry unsafe or inaccurate guns? Were they to believe that Polanco wanted unsafe guns to blow up in the face of police officers or to injure innocent bystanders? Or that, in the hands of police officers, the mechanics and metallurgy of ``dangerous'' guns magically became ``safe?'' Not at all. The Assembly Public Safety Committee saw Polanco's charade for what it was, the latest effort to incrementally ban all guns. Polanco and the Committee knew that no safety issue was involved. The Committee voted down Polanco's ban on affordable guns.
Interestingly, today's efforts to ban inexpensive guns has a historical parallel. After the Civil War, the recalcitrant racist South enacted the Black Codes that banned gun ownership by Blacks. After the 14th Amendment outlawed such explicitly racist laws, the Reconstruction South outlawed all but the most expensive pistols, calling the inexpensive pistols ``Suicide Specials.'' Sound familiar? It should. Historians have noted that today's epithet attempting to stigmatize inexpensive pistols as ``Saturday Night Specials'' derives from the deplorable racist epithet ``Niggertown Saturday Night.''
The Goldilocks gun banners never mention the 2.5 million Americans every year who use guns to protect themselves, their families, and their livelihoods. They close their eyes and ears to the lives saved, injuries prevented, medical costs averted, and the property protected using guns. The recent University of Chicago study of FBI crime data in every U.S. county showed that every category of violent crime is lower in the 31 states that allow mentally-competent, law-abiding adults to carry concealed guns where they are most at risk -- outside their homes. These benefits dwarf the highly sensationalized ``costs'' of guns, inexpensive or otherwise. The research shows that, if California and the other minority of states would reform their laws and allow us access to the safest and most effective means of protection, there would be an annual net savings of about 2,000 lives and an enormous reduction in other violent crimes -- intelligent reasons for Californians to send the Goldilocks gun banners packing and to put their prohibitionist fearmongering to rest with the bogeyman.