See, this is the problem we run into as gun owners. When we don't like a law or position, we summarily dismiss it without providing anything to refute the claims. Rather than refute the claim made by the antigun lobby, we fall too often back on the "dere tryin' tah take arr guns!"position or the "this isn't really about guns, it is about control" position. Both of those positions give off the impression of paranoid delusions to the masses.
For example, DDrake confidently points out that "It's allready been proven that the one-gun-a-month policy has no effect". However, the Brady Bunch counters with:
Virginia's law has greatly disrupted the gun trafficking pattern from Virginia to states in the northeastern United States. For guns purchased after implementation of the new law that were recovered in the Northeast, Virginia's share fell by 54% - to 16% of all guns traced back to the Southeast. Even more dramatically, the percentage of guns traced back to Virginia gun dealers fell by 61% for guns recovered in New York, 67% for guns recovered in Massachusetts, and 38% for guns recovered in New Jersey. Further, according to law enforcement officials in Virginia, straw purchases of handguns that had made that state the "firearms supermarket" dropped sharply after the law was passed.
Reports from public officials in Virginia have been very encouraging. The Virginia State Crime Commission concluded that, "Virginia's [One-Handgun-Per-Month] statute has had its intended effect of reducing Virginia's status as a source state for gun trafficking. The imposition of the law does not appear to create an onerous burden for law-abiding gun purchasers." According to Helen Fahey, U.S. Attorney for the Eastern District of Virginia, "Since passage of the [One-Handgun-Per-Month] legislation, instances of gunrunning have decreased dramatically."
In Maryland, handgun sales dropped more than 25 percent during the first year of that state's "One-Handgun-Per-Month" law. Maryland officials attributed much of the drop to an 80 percent decrease in the number of multiple sales. Furthermore, the number of Maryland multiple-sale guns turning up at crime scenes in Washington, D.C. dropped from 23 to zero, and from 26 to four in Baltimore
The problem is that if we simply say there is no proof and the Brady Campaign provides information like that, we've lost that round. They make a pretty good argument on
this page. What do we have in this thread to refute their position? Not much at all.
We need to do better, guys.
And Arfin, I tried to convince my wife that if the people who didn't want me to have guns at all thought one gun a month was reasonable, she should too. Unfortunately, it didn't work.