Gun Control Is Not Where Crime Is Fought

California Microstamping Can Have Frightening Nationwide Repercussions.

By John Longenecker

Crime is not fought by chasing it – crime may be caught by chasing it, but such after-the-fact agony for victims of crime cannot work as well as promised when it so profoundly vexes the rights of the very people the law was sworn to serve.

This week, California Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger signed into law the Microstamping bill on the reason that it will help police trace criminal shooters. This is not possible, of course. It is too easy to substitute, plant or to (ahem) police up one's brass at a scene such that the trail is worse than cold, it can become tragically misleading. It could too easily become a trap for any number of innocent gun owners should the technology even operate correctly, and there are many doubts about that at this hour. How are non-compliant guns safe today, but unsafe in 2010? This is a gun ban.

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There are more than 300 million guns legally in the hands of 80 million adults in this country, and adult constituents are going to remember this bill at the polls as being most resentful, ineffectual in fighting crime, and belligerent to the American way of life. This may have national repercussions as citizens nationwide notice how Californians fear officials more than they fear criminals. Like New York, Washington D.C. and other high crime areas.

In 2010, criminals can easily switch to revolvers; or brute force, or multiple assailants, or sawed off shotguns, or drive-by shootings as they usually do anyway, thereby furnishing police with no more leads than before. This is more likely, then, to be more of a dead-end as the net result is of wiping out sales of new semi-automatic handguns. When honest citizens do not trust official drones and simply do not buy this kind of gun in 2010, how does this trace crime when no one buys the things? With no guns bought, there are none to be stolen from owners, as anti-gun activists often allege is a source of illegal guns. This is gun control without crime control.

Interdiction won't work, either, if there is no criminal demand in gun trafficking for those guns with probable little manufacture volume.

Does this law apply to officer-issued semi-automatics? There are plenty of officer-involved shooting cases where such a tracing tool would have been most useful, and more to come this year and next to make good use of the new tool. Why not? It would be unreasonable not to impose this on officer weapons. No doubt the technology for officers would be welcomed for being as exculpatory as it can be indicting in the interest of justice. Or safety.

Organizations might consider action to compel law enforcement statewide to comply, for all their claims that they have to obey the same laws as the rest of us. Here's their chance to prove it to the People.

This week the Governor vetoed a health bill he said shouldn't be decided by lawmakers, but by the People. California could very easily put all gun laws to the vote. We might be most delighted to discover beyond question what the People want instead of what lawmakers want. Why not find out together?

GUN CONTROL is not where crime is fought: crime is fought instance-by-instance by the people most qualified to meet it as-it-happens: the target, the people with authority over police policy and over officials, and certainly with authority to stop a crime. Yes, the victim, the person in individual legal authority to act in self-defense, and who is without first responders. Since individuals have no constitutional right to police protection [Castle Rock v. Gonzales, Supreme Court, 2005 and before], we are entirely on our own, especially during the moments of the crime itself.

This is where gun control does nothing for crime and is a challenge to citizen authority which has oversight of officials.

It is likely Microstamping will be challenged as unconstitutional. More and more officials are being handed adverse decisions for their gun bans. And more defy those court orders, as in Ohio, in Washington, D.C. and New Orleans court orders that gun bans and confiscations are held to be illegal, and court ordered that weapons are to be returned. This is why constituents will resent this. This local or state enunciation of law then utter defiance of law's court order is frightening.

Now – or in 2010 – is not a good time to disarm Americans. It's never a good time to challenge citizen authority, to deny a constituent vote on the question. It's never a good time to force citizens to sue for something already secured in law, especially where the history has next been to further vex the People by defiance of the court order they win. This is becoming a pattern.

And it is this that is becoming frightening.

John Longenecker is President and CEO of Good For The Country Foundation, a patriotic non-profit organization.