John Singleton with Bob HowardRip Van Australia (Stanmore: Cassell Australia, 1977), pp. 113-15, under the heading “Gun Control”.

The issue of gun control provides an excellent illustration of many of the points discussed in this book.

1. Gun control is a classic example of the knee-jerk reflex. If some people are killed with guns — particularly if they are important people, such as J.F. Kennedy or Martin Luther King — the cry immediately goes up to control or ban guns.

This is the obvious simple solution and it has great appeal to simple minds. The only problem with it, though, is that it is dangerous, immoral and won’t work.

2. Gun control is dangerous because it is based on the principle of guilty until proven innocent, and where governments begin to act on that premise, the door is wide open for totalitarianism. We are all assumed to be potential criminals, and have to “prove” that we aren’t before we are given permits to own certain types of guns.

The innocent and the guilty are all lumped together, and, like little children, go cap in hand to the “teachers” in the bureaucracy to get permission to buy and use guns. If we have been “good” we get our merit in the form of a gun permit. Now we are free to be bad because we have been good(?)

3. Gun control is immoral because owning and using the weapons affected by the controls becomes, in most cases, a victimless activity. Using a gun is only a “crime” when its use violates someone else’s rights: if it is used to commit murder, robbery or rape, for example. But it’s the violation of rights that is the crime, not the owning of the gun.

Of course, it is better to prevent crimes from occurring, rather than simply cleaning up the mess after they have occurred. But, there are moral means of self-defence and immoral means. For example, there are two possible ways to prevent your house from being burgled: (1) lock the rest of the population up, so that no one is free to burgle it; or (2) put bars on the windows and locks on the doors. The former method is immoral, and the latter moral.

The same applies to crimes involving guns. We should take steps to defend ourselves, but if we take immoral steps then we ourselves become guilty of violating the rights of others and we ourselves become the criminals. Gun control laws belong in the “locking everyone up” category.

Everyone has a right to buy guns and to peacefully use them. That’s free trade and freedom of action — no rights violated. To say that someone might use guns to commit crimes is to use the reasoning of a Stalin, a Hitler, or any dictator since time began. To have people put away because they might do something is hardly compatible with a free society.

4. The knee-jerk gun control solution is ineffective because it simply doesn’t work. Criminals will always get guns.

All gun control does is effectively disarm the criminals’ victims. (For the same reason, it also makes it easier for a government to turn totalitarian). In the United States, for example, the State of New York has what are supposed to be the toughest gun control laws in the country (under the Sullivan Act). But in 1971 it had one of the highest records for homicides, per head of population, of all the States — far higher than, for instance, Arizona, which has been criticised for its lax gun laws.

Senator Bill Richardson, of the California Senate, a couple of years ago published some statistics: from 1958 to 1967, major crimes in the whole of the U.S.A. solved by tracing registered guns numbered exactly six. Six crimes solved in nine years in the entire U.S.A. Hardly a good return on the time, money and energy involved in the registration process.

Senator Richardson notes that the only real plus for registration was that it was sometimes useful for recovering stolen guns. There is no reason why gun owners shouldn’t continue to register their guns voluntarily, with, for example, their insurance company.

Gun control laws, then, may appear on the surface to provide a plausible solution to violent crime. But closer examination shows gun control and licencing laws are wanting in almost every respect.

Guns do not commit crimes. People do. To say that guns should be outlawed to prevent crimes is the same as outlawing cars to prevent road accidents, closing down banks to prevent bank holdups, or banning marriage to stop divorce. Professional criminals will always get guns, even if they have to make them themselves.

Crimes of passion can be just as easily committed with cricket bats, carving knives or bare hands. Maniacs who want to kill will always find a way.

Only tyrants fear their subjects owning firearms. Free men do not share the fear.