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Prima Publishing o 2001 o 290 pages o $23.95

Reviewed by Tom Welch

Guns increase the incidence of violent crime. Using a gun to deter crime is more dangerous to the intended victim than the perpetrator. Guns pose a special threat to children. Such statements, reinforced in the media, are accepted at face value by many Americans. But are they true?

According to Richard Poe, editor of FrontPageMagazine.com, the answer is a resounding no. In The Seven Myths of Gun Control he identifies common fallacies used to promote gun control and sets forth arguments to refute them.

Five of the myths are of a practical nature, while two deal with the legal and social context of the Second Amendment. To his credit, Poe prefaces his discussion with the declaration that the issue is primarily a moral one: the right to keep and bear arms. His aim is to show that gun ownership is in fact more beneficial than portrayed by proponents of gun control. Were it not, however, there would still be no justification for authorities to forbid citizens a priori from owning firearms and using them in self-defense.

Armed with this solid grasp of the concept of rights, Poe wisely avoids the "let’s enforce the gun laws we already have instead of creating new ones" approach. Such a position accepts the premises of gun-control advocates and reduces the debate to a quibble over degree.

In each myth, Poe discusses the underlying assumptions and presents facts, arguments, and anecdotes to counter them. A recurring implication is the necessity of presenting statistics that are not only valid but also meaningful. So often the myths he cites rest on statistics that either omit vital data or consolidate disparate groups into a single category. For example, the level of gun violence among U.S. teens is not significantly different from that in other industrialized nations-when you exclude certain identifiable violence-prone subcultures. Gun ownership deters crime-when you consider that in 98 percent of cases in which U.S. citizens use guns to defend themselves from criminals, no shot is fired. Guns cause far fewer deaths to children than automobile accidents or drowning-especially when you exclude older teens engaged in violent criminal activity from the category "children." Crime has increased in Great Britain and Australia since those nations confiscated virtually all private firearms-when you consider burglaries, robberies, and assaults committed without a gun.

Poe contends that not only is private gun ownership not the evil it is so often portrayed to be, but it is also beneficial-indeed, essential-for the preservation of a free and prosperous society. Throughout history the most violent criminals have been the ones in power. An unarmed populace is an invitation to dictatorship, and the disarming of populations, from sixteenth-century Japanese peasants to twentieth-century German Jews, has been a prelude to oppression. Poe warns us not to think America is immune from such a scenario-and indeed points out that the forcible disarmament of American Indians and southern blacks by official or semiofficial means left these groups defenseless against the depredations visited on them.

While relying on documented facts and statistics, Poe’s narrative is not void of passion. Indeed, some of the examples he gives are downright chilling. Especially ominous are the scenarios he depicts of widespread chaos and/or deprivation of civil liberties following a large-scale natural disaster or "catastrophic terrorism."

The Seven Myths of Gun Control is a helpful resource for gun-control opponents. It may prove less effective in swaying its logical target readership: those who accept the myths but who are open to opposing views. The latter may be turned off by such elements as a snide reference to Al Gore not germane to the topic of gun control or a favorable reference to the movie Death Wish, which could be construed (mistakenly I believe) as condoning vigilantism.

The most troublesome argument, however, is Poe’s contention that gun-control advocacy is part of a feminist scheme to emasculate men. While such sentiments may indeed play a role, Poe relies on an analysis of the psychological motives of gun-control advocates that must be regarded as highly speculative. Moreover, his proposed antidote-instilling a "warrior culture" among young males-is debatable. Cannot the violence-prone youth in certain American subcultures be said already to have a "warrior culture"? One might argue instead that a reassertion of man’s rational nature is the solution.

Still, Poe is to be commended for his attempt to bring facts and logic to a debate that, as he notes, is too often clouded by purely emotional arguments.

Tom Welch is a writer in Atlanta, Georgia.