Demonizing weapons, not criminals.

ITEM: The Los Angeles Times for January 8 reported from Nuevo Laredo, Mexico: "The most popular instruments of robbery, torture, homicide and assassination in this violence-racked border city are imported from the United States. 'Warning,' reads the sign greeting motorists on the U.S. side as the), approach the Rio Grande that separates the two countries here. 'Illegal to carry firearms/ammunition into Mexico. Penalty, prison.' The signs have done little to stop what U.S. and Mexican officials say is a steady and growing commerce of illicit firearms in Mexico--9-millimeter pistols, shotguns, AK-47s, grenade launchers. Art estimated 95% of weapons confiscated from suspected criminals in Mexico were first sold legally in the United States, officials in both countries say.

"Guns are the essential tools of a war among underworld crime syndicates that claimed between 1,400 and 2,500 lives in 2005, according to tallies by various newspapers and magazines. The biggest criminals in Mexico are engaged in an arms race.... Buying a weapon legally is extremely difficult in Mexico. The country's defense secretary issues all gun licenses--the wait is a year or more, and the cost about $1,900. Licenses must be renewed every two years. There are fewer than 2,500 registered gun owners in the entire country. Yet Mexican police confiscate an average of 256 weapons every day from suspects." ITEM: "Canadian officials, Prime Minister Paul Martin and Toronto Mayor David Miller," reported the All Headline News website for December 28, "blame the faultiness of U.S. gun legislation for the growing violence in Toronto." ITEM: "With the city [of New York] still stinging from the recent shooting deaths of two police officers," reported the Associated Press in the Bergen (N.J.) Record for January 2, Mayor Michael Bloomberg, "promised to draw national attention to gun control, which is emerging as a centerpiece for his second term. 'We will not rest until we secure all the tools we need to protect New Yorkers from the scourge of illegal guns,' he said."

CORRECTION: These accounts have at least a couple things in common: they try to pin the fault for crimes on a supposedly insufficient lack of gun laws and grant human attributes to cold steel--blaming insentient weapons rather than murderers who willfully pull the triggers.

Canada, Mexico, and New York City have long had stringent gun-control laws. Accordingly, shouldn't gun violence have all but disappeared there? Since that, of course, has not happened, gun-banners seek to point the finger elsewhere suggesting that crimes result from lenient gun laws in neighboring jurisdictions. (This pattern also takes place in Washington, D.C., for instance, where violence in the city is deemed to be the fault of weapons from Virginia and Maryland, as well as in Boston, where officials have been chastising northern New England states for not clamping down on their gun owners.)

New York Mayor Bloomberg's reference to the "'scourge of illegal guns" (in a city where law-abiding citizens have been effectively disarmed for years) suggests how he might fight obesity. The registration, licensing, and eventual banning of forks would certainly fight fat just as well as instituting more restrictions on guns will fight crime. (Keep in mind that some folks are more equal than others when it comes to self-protection: published accounts indicate that New Yorkers with concealed-carry permits include vulgar radio "shock jock" Howard Stem, left-wing actor Steven Seagal, and well-heeled big shots such as Winthrop Rockefeller and Donald Trump.)

Beyond the fact that it runs afoul of the constitutionally protected right for citizens to keep and bear arms, the handcuffing of law-abiding citizens doesn't stop criminal behavior. The virtual banning of all private firearm ownership in the U.K. in 1997 has been followed by a huge increase in crime; gun crimes in England and Wales nearly doubled over the next seven years. John R. Lott, Jr. of the American Enterprise Institute reports, "Since 1996, the rate of serious violent crime has soared by 88%, armed robberies by 101%, rapes by 105% and homicide by 24%." Australia had somewhat similar results after 1996 regulations banned many guns.

On the other hand, says Lott, "There are a large number of peer-reviewed academic studies showing that letting private citizens own guns reduces violent crime, and some work finds that gun crime falls even faster than overall violent crime. Others have directly linked this reduction in crime to [police] officer safety."

Very few Mexican civilians are legally allowed to own weapons. And, to and behold, it is not Heaven on Earth south of the border. The Los Angeles Times seems to place the blame on too few laws in the United States. As the Claremont Institute's Timothy Wheeler has commented, this fails to take into account the fact that the established culture of corruption in Mexico "allows large chunks of Mexico to be governed by ultra-violent drug syndicates. The demand for weapons created by that business and the government that facilitates it will always find a supply, regardless of any laws passed by the U.S. Congress."

Liberal Party politicians in Canada have indicated that their goal is to ban all handguns, though such weapons are already highly restricted. Meanwhile, controls are becoming somewhat less onerous in many jurisdictions in the United States. So what has ensued? The rate of violent crime has been rapidly rising in Canada, while it has been falling in the United States. John Lott, among others, has noted that, in the United States, murder rates have fallen faster in right-to-carry states than the national average; those states with the highest rates of gun ownership during the 1990s had the largest drop in violent crime rates.

If one were levelheaded, one might attribute this trend to allowing law-abiding citizens to protect themselves. On the other hand, if you have no common sense, you might think Prime Minister Paul Martin's idea to ban all handguns is just dandy. It has already had some repercussions, to be sure. "Gun shop owners say handgun sales in Edmonton are skyrocketing," reported the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation, "since Prime Minister Paul Martin's promise to ban them."

There have been handgun registration and controls in Canada since the 1930s. Yet, writes Terry McGarvey in the Powell River Peak (British Columbia), Martin "and his cohorts have squandered nearly $2 billion [in Canadian currency] on a useless gun registry that was supposed to cost $1.5 million and has not done one thing to reduce gun crime in this country."

John Thompson of Canada's Mackenzie Institute opines that Canada has a gang problem, not a gun problem. And while Toronto's mayor may point his finger at U.S. guns, Toronto Police Chief William Blair says the city is too lenient on criminals, quickly releasing even those thugs who have been arrested with weapons.

Toronto has been looking at the way Chicago has handled its crime problems, noting that homicides there have dropped in recent years. "Chicago has had a handgun ban in effect for more than two decades, but even those who fight to control the spread of guns are dubious about its value." reported the Toronto Star in December. The executive director of the Illinois Council Against Handgun Violence, Thorn Mannard, somewhat surprisingly admitted that the drop was caused by a better distribution of police assets. "If Toronto police allocated more resources in [certain violent neighborhoods], you would have an experience similar to Chicago," he told the Star.

The issue nevertheless boils down to the fundamental civil rights of a free people. As James Madison put it, Americans have "the right and advantage of being armed--unlike citizens of other countries whose governments are afraid to trust the people with arms."