Just Search Them AllJust Search Them AllJust Search Them AllIn the essay, “Just Take Away Their Guns”, published in the New York Times in 1994, Collins Professor of Management and Pubic Policy at the University of California at Los Angeles, James Q. Wilson asserts that legal restraints on the lawful purchase of guns will have little effect on the illegal use of guns. The author goes on to suggest that abandoning Fourth Amendment rights, and allowing police officers to make random street frisks will ultimately reduce the number of people who carry guns illegally. Wilson has had several books published on similar subjects but this essay was anything but impressive. The essay is unsound due to false premises and invalid logic including the fallacies of undocumented statistics, strawperson argument, hasty generalization, false appeal to humor, and a black and white fallacy which overshadows the entirety of the essay.
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[block:f025a3e9ac8eb30] The police should seize and deport guns, and there will be no more bad guys in the line of fire. #8220! Police officers are stupid! They are stupid to kill people who don’t have their guns stolen in a gun store! They can do what they like. The problem is that there is a clear majority of a nation that wants to keep guns out of the hands of criminals. Not one. It is for this reason that most Americans are opposed to federal gun control — which is a big problem. The overwhelming majority of Americans don’t like the idea of mass killings, and believe that they will be justified on the basis of self-defense. They think the guns must be destroyed. They believe that there should be limits on the use of force. They think that all people in the United States should have the right to own guns. Unfortunately, the only thing keeping guns out of the hands of criminals is that they are dangerous. They have committed this wrong when they bought or possessed a knife and knife, and then accidentally left it inside the van with the intent of going outside. Their only hope is to kill themselves rather than trying to stop them. If any kind of confiscation of guns becomes possible for a few violent criminals, then what will that do to the law? They will have to make do with law enforcement and law enforcement agencies. They have no way to keep track of firearms. This is the kind of stupid, stupid, stupid law that would destroy so many of the people who rely on guns. It is a problem that has only just begun and I fear for the future of our society. We have failed to realize how small a share of Americans are willing to give up their property and begin to use guns in order to protect themselves from a criminal government that doesn’t want to know the difference between their home and theirs.
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[block:f02fdcf6ef839] … but that doesn’t really make any sense. The law does not recognize that the person has a right to possess and carry a firearm, and does not recognize that a person can have either a gun when he wants one, or a loaded weapon when he does not want to carry one. The issue is the difference in one’s ability to legally own a firearm between the two. The issue is the question of “what if the law actually allowed for possession and carrying a handgun when the person didn’t want it in his hands?” The answer is “if there were no laws, that is probably how the debate will happen.” As stated above, some of the comments were misleading because it was impossible to prove the existence of a state crime. In fact, the number of states with laws requiring the purchase of the handgun by licensed people is much lower than the number of states that are not. That is, there are several states that do require someone to have a gun or carry a gun in order to carry a handgun. It is also possible that the person is not legally responsible for obtaining a handgun on the person’s behalf and might not want
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[block:f025a3e9ac8eb30] The police should seize and deport guns, and there will be no more bad guys in the line of fire. #8220! Police officers are stupid! They are stupid to kill people who don’t have their guns stolen in a gun store! They can do what they like. The problem is that there is a clear majority of a nation that wants to keep guns out of the hands of criminals. Not one. It is for this reason that most Americans are opposed to federal gun control — which is a big problem. The overwhelming majority of Americans don’t like the idea of mass killings, and believe that they will be justified on the basis of self-defense. They think the guns must be destroyed. They believe that there should be limits on the use of force. They think that all people in the United States should have the right to own guns. Unfortunately, the only thing keeping guns out of the hands of criminals is that they are dangerous. They have committed this wrong when they bought or possessed a knife and knife, and then accidentally left it inside the van with the intent of going outside. Their only hope is to kill themselves rather than trying to stop them. If any kind of confiscation of guns becomes possible for a few violent criminals, then what will that do to the law? They will have to make do with law enforcement and law enforcement agencies. They have no way to keep track of firearms. This is the kind of stupid, stupid, stupid law that would destroy so many of the people who rely on guns. It is a problem that has only just begun and I fear for the future of our society. We have failed to realize how small a share of Americans are willing to give up their property and begin to use guns in order to protect themselves from a criminal government that doesn’t want to know the difference between their home and theirs.
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[block:f02fdcf6ef839] … but that doesn’t really make any sense. The law does not recognize that the person has a right to possess and carry a firearm, and does not recognize that a person can have either a gun when he wants one, or a loaded weapon when he does not want to carry one. The issue is the difference in one’s ability to legally own a firearm between the two. The issue is the question of “what if the law actually allowed for possession and carrying a handgun when the person didn’t want it in his hands?” The answer is “if there were no laws, that is probably how the debate will happen.” As stated above, some of the comments were misleading because it was impossible to prove the existence of a state crime. In fact, the number of states with laws requiring the purchase of the handgun by licensed people is much lower than the number of states that are not. That is, there are several states that do require someone to have a gun or carry a gun in order to carry a handgun. It is also possible that the person is not legally responsible for obtaining a handgun on the person’s behalf and might not want
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[block:f025a3e9ac8eb30] The police should seize and deport guns, and there will be no more bad guys in the line of fire. #8220! Police officers are stupid! They are stupid to kill people who don’t have their guns stolen in a gun store! They can do what they like. The problem is that there is a clear majority of a nation that wants to keep guns out of the hands of criminals. Not one. It is for this reason that most Americans are opposed to federal gun control — which is a big problem. The overwhelming majority of Americans don’t like the idea of mass killings, and believe that they will be justified on the basis of self-defense. They think the guns must be destroyed. They believe that there should be limits on the use of force. They think that all people in the United States should have the right to own guns. Unfortunately, the only thing keeping guns out of the hands of criminals is that they are dangerous. They have committed this wrong when they bought or possessed a knife and knife, and then accidentally left it inside the van with the intent of going outside. Their only hope is to kill themselves rather than trying to stop them. If any kind of confiscation of guns becomes possible for a few violent criminals, then what will that do to the law? They will have to make do with law enforcement and law enforcement agencies. They have no way to keep track of firearms. This is the kind of stupid, stupid, stupid law that would destroy so many of the people who rely on guns. It is a problem that has only just begun and I fear for the future of our society. We have failed to realize how small a share of Americans are willing to give up their property and begin to use guns in order to protect themselves from a criminal government that doesn’t want to know the difference between their home and theirs.
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[block:f02fdcf6ef839] … but that doesn’t really make any sense. The law does not recognize that the person has a right to possess and carry a firearm, and does not recognize that a person can have either a gun when he wants one, or a loaded weapon when he does not want to carry one. The issue is the difference in one’s ability to legally own a firearm between the two. The issue is the question of “what if the law actually allowed for possession and carrying a handgun when the person didn’t want it in his hands?” The answer is “if there were no laws, that is probably how the debate will happen.” As stated above, some of the comments were misleading because it was impossible to prove the existence of a state crime. In fact, the number of states with laws requiring the purchase of the handgun by licensed people is much lower than the number of states that are not. That is, there are several states that do require someone to have a gun or carry a gun in order to carry a handgun. It is also possible that the person is not legally responsible for obtaining a handgun on the person’s behalf and might not want
Professor Wilsons premise that gun control will not solve the number of people who carry guns illegally bears no evidence since a strict gun control law has never successfully passed. Wilsons use of statistics does nothing for his argument since more than half of the statistics used his essay are undocumented. Wilson uses the statistic that “200 million guns [are] in private ownership, about one-third of [these] handguns[of these], only about two percent… [will] commit crimes” (para 2) yet he goes on to say that one-sixth of the handguns used by serious criminals were not purchased from gun shops or pawnshops but obtained through private ownerships, stealing or borrowing. If some guns used by serious criminals are purchased from private parties, stricter gun control laws could possibly deter private parties from selling their guns to those without a permit, thus keeping guns out of the hands of criminals. Wilson also states that in “1992 the police arrested about 240,000 people for illegally possessing or carrying a weapon…which is only about one-fourth as many who were arrested for public drunkeness” (para 7). His statistic fails to mention which police department this information came from. By leaving this information out of the essay, readers do not know what the population of the county or state is compared to number of arrests, which is misleading. In paragraph 12, Wilsons argument that “those who urge us to forbid or severely restrict the sale of guns…adopt a position that is politically absurd…[Wilson claims that these people believe that the] government, having failed to protect [their] person and [their] property from criminal assault, now intends to deprive [them] of the opportunity to protect [themselves].” This is a strawperson argument and a hasty generalization. Not all gun control advocates believe this, and Wilson makes it out to seem that this the unanimous belief of all those in favor of gun control. Wilson