All Gun Owners Are Not Criminals

The latest numbers out of Scotland show increases in gun ownership do not automatically mean increases in gun-related crimes, as explained in this article. The first sentence of the article sums it up:

Gun crime has plummeted in Scotland in the last decade, while private ownership of guns has steadily increased.

I wish they’d include raw figures, but they do lay out the percentages and show that gun crime has fallen in the last nine years but private gun ownership has reached a five-year high.

This really doesn’t surprise me. Where I live now, there are a lot of gun owners. How do I know this? Hunting is very popular around here. I was at the junior high and saw a long line of students at the secretary’s window waiting for admit slips for class because they all took the day off when hunting season opened. I’m told it happens every year, and in the past the district has discussed closing school for the day to make it easier on everyone.

Yet gun crime is non-existent, and I’ve yet to hear of a firearm accident around here.

Most of the cries for gun bans come from people in the cities. This too is hardly surprising as that’s where you find all the gun crime. If I went to bed every night to the sound of gunfire, I’d probably be a bit nervous myself.

But what should we be more afraid of: the guns or the guys holding them? Should I be curled up into a ball beneath my bed because any number of my neighbors probably own guns?

The numbers in the Scotland article are encouraging, but you know what? I don’t need them. Handguns are banned in Chicago, but people are shot all the time. Handgun registration is mandatory in Peoria, but it hasn’t put an end to gun crimes. Washington, D.C., has the most stringent gun laws in the nation, but it is also consistently listed as one of the most dangerous cities in the nation.

It’s another example of how legislators and lobbyists just can’t wrap their heads around the fact that the problem is, always has been, and always will be, people.