Source: About.com
Gun Control Timeline
A Brief History of Firearms Regulation in America
When did this whole gun control debate start?It could have started shortly after November 22, 1963 when evidence in the assassination of President John F. Kennedy increased public awareness to the relative lack of control over the sale and possession of firearms in America. Indeed, until 1968, handguns, rifles, shotguns, and ammunition were commonly sold over-the-counter and through mail-order catalogs and magazines to just about any adult anywhere in the nation.
However, America's history of regulating private ownership of firearms goes back much farther. In fact, all the way back to...
1791
The Bill of Rights, including the Second Amendment -- "A well regulated militia, being necessary to the security of a free state,
the right of the people to keep and bear arms, shall not be infringed." gains final ratification.
1837 - Georgia passes a law banning handguns. The law is ruled unconstitutional and thrown out.
1865 - In a reaction to emancipation, several southern states adopt "black codes" which, among other things, forbid black
persons from possessing firearms.
1871 - The National Rifle Association (NRA) is organized around its primary goal of improving American civilians' marksmanship
in preparation for war.
1927 - Congress passes a law banning the mailing of concealable weapons.
1934 -The National Firearms Act of 1934 regulating only fully automatic firearms like sub-machine guns is approved by
Congress.
1938 - The Federal Firearms Act of 1938 places the first limitations on selling ordinary firearms. Persons selling guns are
required to obtain a Federal Firearms License, at an annual cost of $1, and to maintain records of the name and address
of persons to whom firearms are sold. Gun sales to persons convicted of violent felonies were prohibited.
1968 - The Gun Control Act of 1968 - "...was enacted for the purpose of keeping firearms out of the hands of those not legally entitled to possess them because of age, criminal background, or incompetence." -- Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, and Firearms The Act regulates imported guns, expands the gun-dealer licensing and record keeping requirements, and places specific limitations on the sale of handguns. The list of persons banned from buying guns is expanded to include persons convicted of any non-business related felony, persons found to be mentally incompetent, and users of illegal drugs.
1972 - The Bureau of Alcohol Tobacco and Firearms is created listing as part of its mission the control of illegal use and sale of
firearms and the enforcement of Federal firearms laws. ATF issues firearms licenses and conducts firearms licensee
qualification and compliance inspections.
1977 - The District of Columbia enacts an anti-handgun law which also requires registration of all rifles and shotguns within the
District of Columbia.
1986 - The Armed Career Criminal Act(Public Law 99-570) increases penalties for possession of firearms by persons not
qualified to own them under the Gun Control Act of 1986. The Firearms Owners Protection Act (Public Law
99-308) relaxes some restrictions on gun and ammunition sales and establishes mandatory penalties for use
of firearms during the commission of a crime. The Law Enforcement Officers Protection Act (Public Law 99-
408) bans possession of "cop killer" bullets capable of penetrating bulletproof clothing.
1989 - California bans the possession of semiautomatic assault weapons following the massacre of five children on a Stockton,
CA school playground.
1990 - The Crime Control Act of 1990 (Public Law 101-647) bans manufacturing and importing semiautomatic assault weapons
in the U.S. "Gun-free school zones" are established carrying specific penalties for violations.
1994 - The Brady Handgun Violence Prevention Act (Public Law 103-159) imposes a five-day waiting period on the purchase of a
handgun and requires that local law enforcement agencies conduct background checks on purchasers of
handguns. (ATF's Brady Law web site.) The Violent Crime Control and Law Enforcement Act of 1994 (Public
Law 103-322) bans all sale, manufacture, importation, or possession of a number of specific types of assault
weapons.
1997 - The Supreme Court, in the case of Printz v. United States, declares the background check requirement of the Brady
Handgun Violence Prevention Act unconstitutional. The Florida Supreme Court upholds a jury's $11.5 million
verdict against Kmart for selling a gun to and intoxicated man who used the gun to shoot his estranged
girlfriend.Major American gun manufacturers voluntarily agree to include child safety trigger devices on all
new handguns. Page 1 of 2
1998 – June - - - A Justice Department report indicates the blocking of some 69,000 handgun sales during 1977 while Brady Bill
pre-sale background checks were required.
1998 – July - - -An amendment requiring a trigger lock mechanism to be included with every handgun sold in the U.S. is
defeated in the Senate.But, the Senate approves an amendment requiring gun dealers to have trigger locks
available for sale and creating federal grants for gun safety and education programs.
1998 – October - - New Orleans, LA becomes the first US city to file suit against gun makers, firearms trade associations, and
gun dealers. The city's suit seeks recovery of costs attributed to gun-related violence.
1998 - November 12 - - Chicago, IL files a $433 million suit against local gun dealers and makers alleging that oversupplying
local markets provided guns to criminals.
1998 - November 17A negligence suite against gun maker Beretta brought by the family of a 14-year old boy killed by another
boy with a Beretta handgun is dismissed by a California jury.
1998 - November 30 Permanent provisions of the Brady Act go into effect. Gun dealers are now required to initiate a pre-sale
criminal background check of all gun buyers through the newly created National Instant Criminal Background Check (NICS) computer system.
1998 - December 1 The NRA files suit in federal court attempting to block the FBI's collection of information on firearm buyers.
1998 - December 5 President Clinton announces that the instant background check system had prevented 400 illegal gun
purchases. The claim is called "misleading" by the NRA.
1999 – January Civil suits against gun makers seeking to recover costs of gun-related violence are filed in Bridgeport,
Connecticut and Miami-Dade County, Florida.
1999 - May 20 By a 51-50 vote, with the tie-breaker vote cast by Vice President Gore, the Senate passes a bill requiring trigger
locks on all newly manufactured handguns and extending waiting period and background check requirements to
sales of firearms at gun shows.
1999 - August 24 The Los Angeles County, CA Board of Supervisors votes 3 - 2 to ban the the Great Western Gun Show, billed as the "world's largest gun show" from the Pomona, CA fairgrounds where the show had been held for the last 30 years
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Source:
Larry Bell, Op/Ed 2/21/2012
Disarming the Myths Promoted By the Gun Control Lobby
As much as gun control advocates might wish otherwise, their attacks are running out of ammo. With private firearm ownership at an all-time high and violent crime rates plunging, none of the scary scenarios they advanced have materialized. Abuse of responsibility by armed citizens is rare, while successful defensive interventions against assaults on their lives and property are relatively commonplace.
National violent crime rates that soared for 30 years from the early 1960s began to decrease markedly since 1993. Last December the FBI reported that murder and other violent crime rates fell again by 6.4% during the first half of 2011 compared with the same period in 2010. A Gallup poll indicates that “Americans’ preference regarding gun laws is generally that the government enforce existing laws more strictly and not pass new laws.”
Caroline Brewer of the anti-gun Brady Campaign to Prevent Gun Violence has reported that “The research we’ve seen indicates fewer and fewer people owning more and more guns.” Yet one can only wonder where they are getting that information. In reality, public support for personal gun ownership is growing. According to Steve Sanetti, president of the National Shooting Sports Foundation, a trade group that represents about 7,000 firearms manufacturers and related companies, in 1959 some 70% of the American public favored handgun bans, whereas today that number has flipped. This support is reflected in the marketplace. Sanetti observes that the $4.1 billion gun industry “has had nineteen months of growth in an otherwise anemic economy.”
Recognizing these positive trends, most states now issue permits allowing qualified law-abiding people to legally carry handguns outside their homes. Unprecedented numbers are becoming licensed to do so, now totaling an estimated 10 million Americans, contributing, in turn, to a dramatic growth in gun sales.
A record of more than 1.5 million background checks for customers looking to purchase a firearm were requested by gun dealers to the National Instant Background Check (NICS) system last December. About one-third of these occurred during the six weeks before Christmas. They had previously recorded a 49% rise in background checks during the week before President Obama was elected in 2008 compared with the same week one year earlier.
The Brady lobby is upset that there has been no progress in leveraging tighter gun control legislation following the shooting January 8, 2010 rampage that killed 6 people and injured 13, including Democratic Representative Gabrielle Giffords. That tragic incident raised serious questions about background checks after it was determined that the accused shooter, having previously exhibited erratic behavior, legally purchased the weapon he “allegedly” used from a store.
The National Rifle Association clearly agrees that guns should not be sold to individuals found to have serious mental problems, although many states fail to provide mental health records to the federal computerized background check system. According to a November, 2011 report by the Mayors Against Illegal Guns (MAIG), 23 states have shown “major failures” in complying, and four (Alaska, Delaware, Idaho and Rhode Island) submit no records at all. (Although murder has been in decline in New York and other major cities for years, a Pepsi and Honda Super Bowl advertisement spot featured New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg and Boston’s Thomas Menino on a couch calling for stricter government measures to curb illegal gun sales.)
Dennis Henigan, the Brady group’s acting president, told Reuters: “Really it is a national disgrace that the only piece of gun-related legislation to come to a vote since Tucson was this legislation that would have enabled dangerous concealed carriers like Jared Loughner to carry their guns across state lines.” Referring to a proposed
“National Right-to-Carry Reciprocity Act of 2011″ (H.R. 822) which has passed the House of Representatives but stalled in the Senate, the resolution would require states to recognize one another’s concealed carry permits the same way they recognize one another’s driver’s licenses. The intent is to eliminate confusion and potential legal problems for traveling gun owners.
As pointed out in a recent paper titled “Tough Targets” released by the Cato Institute, “The ostensible purpose of gun control legislation is to reduce firearm deaths and injuries. But authors Clayton E. Cramer and David Burnett believe these restrictions put law-abiding citizens at a distinct disadvantage to criminals who acquire guns from underground markets since it is simply
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not possible for police officers to get to every scene where intervention is urgently needed. They also document large numbers of crimes…murders, assaults, robberies…that are thwarted each year by ordinary persons with guns.
A widely-known study conducted by Gary Kleck and Marc Gertz in the 1990s found that there were somewhere between 830,000 and 2.45 million U.S. defensive gun uses annually. A National Crime Victimization Study (NCVS) which asked victims if they had used a gun in self-defense found that about 108,000 each year had done so. A big problem with the NCVS line of survey reasoning, however, is that it only includes those uses where a citizen kills a criminal, not when one is only wounded, is held by the intended victim until police arrive, or when brandishing a gun caused a criminal to flee.
For these reasons, the Cato researchers investigated published news reports which much more often reveal how Americans use guns in self-defense. The data set is derived from a collection of nearly 5,000 randomly selected incidents published between October 2003 and November 2011. Still, the authors also recognize limitations with this approach, since many defensive incidents are never reported by victims, or when they are, never get published. In fact, the overwhelming majority of the successful self-defense outcomes are those where the defendants’ guns are presented but never fired.
Most of the actual self-defense shootings in the Cato study didn’t involve concealed carry licenses, but more typically had to do with responses to residential invasions. Of these, 488 involved home burglaries. In addition, there were 1,227 incidents where intruders were induced to flee the scene by armed inhabitants, circumstances that might otherwise have resulted in injurious assaults including rapes and murders. There were 285 news accounts indicating that the defender had a concealed weapon license, which in the majority of these incidents took place outside a home or place of business. Pizza delivery drivers were common robbery targets.
Whereas gun control proponents often argue that having a gun put people at risk because a criminal will take it away and use it against them, it seems the reality is more often to be the reverse situation. The Cato data contains only 11 stories out of 4,699 where a criminal took a gun away from a defender, but 277 where the intended victim disarmed the bad guy, although the authors acknowledge that these event reports may be printed more frequently due to newsworthiness.
Still, it should also be remembered that the threatened party often has more motivation to fight back than a criminal hoping for an easy score. There were 25 news reports where armed rape attack victims ultimately got the upper hand, and 65 where this occurred in carjacking attempts.
Then there is the argument that more private gun ownership will lead to more accidents because the average citizen isn’t sufficiently trained to use a weapon defensively. While gun accidents do occur, the Cato study indicates that they are the most overstated risks. There were 535 accidental firearms deaths in 2006 within a population of almost 300 million people. Although every lost life is tragic, the proportion is not particularly startling.
On the other hand, Newsweek has reported that law-abiding American citizens using guns in self-defense during 2003 shot and killed two and one-half times as many criminals as police did, and with fewer than one-fifth as many incidents as police where an innocent person mistakenly identified as a criminal (2% versus 11%).
Finally, on the subject of public safety, just how well have gun bans worked in other countries? Take the number of home break-ins while residents are present as an indication. In Canada and Britain, both with tough gun-control laws, nearly half of all burglaries occur when residents are present. But in the U.S. where many households are armed, only about 13% happen when someone is home.
Doesn’t this comparison offer some indication that criminals are getting the message? Don’t you wish those bent on eliminating our Second Amendment rights would also?
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Source : Scott A. Kjar and Jason Robinson.
Gun Control: An Economic Analysis -Gun Control Will Only Lead Would-Be Killers to Use Substitutes
The Freeman Online Magazine: January/February 2009 • Volume: 59 • Issue: 1
Gun Control: An Economic Analysis -Gun Control Will Only Lead Would-Be Killers to Use Substitutes
In Economics 101 we teach students about several fundamental concepts, including the relationship between means and ends, forward-looking behavior, the use of substitutes, opportunity cost, and the role of moral hazard. Further, we insist that these concepts can be used to help understand the world around us and have applicability far beyond the classroom. Yet, all too often, students fail to apply these lessons to serious policy issues. Instead of applying economics, they get blinded by knee-jerk reactions, hysteria, or ideology, reducing serious issues to bumper-sticker slogans. Gun control is one such issue in which a serious economic analysis can provide an important perspective.