- Note: This article was first published on Dec. 24, 2012.
Unknown to many, gun control is not a new phenomenon. Weapon restriction is actually one of the oldest political policies imposed by totalitarian regimes, kingdoms, and societies in the past.
One of the earliest forms of ‘gun’ control was implemented about 2,000 years ago by the Romans. Of course, guns and ammunition were not yet invented during the Pax Romana period, so the Roman rulers, who wanted to keep their power, passed a law that banned military arms from crossing the Rubicon. This prohibitive law, however, was circumvented by Julius Caesar who kept and used a standing army to grab the emperorship of Rome.
During the past century, despotic regimes in Germany (the Nazis), Soviet Russia (the communists), Italy (the fascists), China (the social-Maoists), and other parts of the world passed laws that banned and criminalized possession and carrying of firearms. I believe that if the Jews owned guns, they could have prevented the Holocaust. The people in Ukraine could also have prevented the Soviet’s holodomor (hunger-extermination) that killed around 7 million disarmed men and women, including children, from 1932 to 1933.
History has it that dictators and evil regimes in the past had to control guns and weapons first before finally implementing their insidious, immoral social agenda. Those bans were always made in the name of national security or public safety. Without a doubt, gun ban led to the death of hundreds of millions of disarmed/unarmed individuals throughout the world in the past century.
Yet many Filipinos support gun ban to guarantee what they call collective protection and security. In fact, a 2000 pre-election survey showed that at least 83% of adult Filipino voters called for a more restrictive gun policy. They believed that only law enforcers and licensed security personnel should be allowed to own and carry firearms in public places. Only 16% of the respondents supported the right to bear and carry a licensed firearm.
In the aftermath of the tragic Connecticut school shooting that took place in a gun-free zone, the Philippine media joined America’s gun-grabbing liberals and democrats in calling for stricter gun control laws or even gun confiscation.
For example, this Inquirer editorial concludes that more guns mean more crimes. The Inquirer editorial writer is fully aware of incidents of mass shootings in the country and of the fact that “most of the deadly weapons are mostly in the hands of politicians and their private armies, or criminal syndicates in cahoots with corrupt personnel in the police and military forces.” However, the Inquirer’s most obvious solution to this problem is gun ban–or perhaps even gun confiscation despite the fact that guns and ammunition are already part of human reality.
The Inquirer says: “Neither reality is desirable—but if Filipinos must learn a lesson from America’s continuing tragedy, it is that the proliferation of firearms, whether in the hands of ordinary citizens (notice that most mass shooters have no prior record before their shooting spree?) or the sprawling private armies of politicians, cannot be tolerated in a society dedicated to peaceful democratic discourse. Reaching for a gun, and killing with one, becomes so much easier if the firearm is indeed nearby.”
The basic truth is– criminals don’t obey the law. Disarming innocent individuals who did not commit crimes does not protect them against criminals who refuse to surrender their guns or who obtained their guns from the black market or ‘illegal’ sources.
A lot of misinformation has also been made about the country’s gun laws and so-called gun culture. Consider this blog, written a few days after the infamous August 23, 2010, Manila hostage crisis, that made the following utterly erroneous, non-factual claim: “In the Philippines, you have the right to bear arms.”
It is very obvious that the blogger is totally ignorant of the existing gun laws in the country.
Also in 2010, the Inquirer published this editorial that called for stricter gun control policies. This media organization supported the proposed measure that only “those directly and primarily engaged in police, military, or security services” could carry firearms and other deadly weapons.
According to the Philippine National Police statistics, there were about 1.2 million loose firearms in 2009 (it was not mentioned if those firearms were licensed or not) and that 97.7 percent of gun-related crimes from 2004 to 2008 were linked to loose firearms. This made the Philippines the 10th in gun homicide rates worldwide.
The Inquirer then states that “we should learn from the experience of our neighbors like Japan, Singapore, Hong Kong, Indonesia, Malaysia, and South Korea, which strictly enforce laws on the carrying of firearms in public.”
Neal Cruz, an Inquirer opinion writer, made the same statement in 2011, saying the country was number one in the world in the number of gun-related violence, while Japan has the lowest gun-related crime rate.
The reason is obvious, he said, adding “Japan has strict gun control laws while the US, and the Philippines have very liberal ones.”
Really? Liberal in what way? Is it liberal because the government does not implement total confiscation of privately-owned guns?
What Mr. Cruz said is actually not supported by facts. How is U.S. gun violence actually compared with the rest of the world?
It may be true that the United States has notoriously liberal gun control laws and the highest rate of gun ownership (an average of 88 per 100 people), but it certainly doesn’t have the highest gun-related violence rate in the world.
As this Washington Post news article shows, countries with the highest gun ownership are not actually the most violent.
The Washington Post states: “The dubious distinction of having the most gun violence goes to Honduras, at 68.43 homicides by firearm per 100,000 people, even though it only has 6.2 firearms per 100 people. Other parts of South America and South Africa also rank highly, while the United States is somewhere near the mid-range.”
Mass shootings and massacres were also rampant in Europe. For example, all of the following mass murders (which is just a partial list) took place in gun-free zones in Europe since 2001:
- Zug, Switzerland, September 27, 2001: a man murdered 15 members of a cantonal parliament.
- Tours, France, October 29, 2001: four people were killed and 10 wounded when a French railway worker started killing people at a busy intersection in the city.
- Nanterre, France, March 27, 2002: a man kills eight city councilors after a city council meeting.
- Erfurt, Germany on April 26, 2002: a former student kills 18 at a secondary school.
- Freising, Germany on February 19, 2002: Three people killed and one wounded.
- Turin, Italy on October 15, 2002: Seven people were killed on a hillside overlooking the city.
- Madrid, Spain, October 1, 2006: a man kills two employees and wounds another at a company that he was fired from.
- Emsdetten, Germany, November 20, 2006: a former student murders 11 people at a high school.
- Southern Finland, November 7, 2007: Seven students and the principal were killed at a high school.
- Naples, Italy, September 18, 2008: Seven dead and two seriously wounded in a public meeting hall (not included in totals below because it may possibly have involved the mafia).
- Kauhajoki, Finland, Sept. 23, 2008: 10 people were shot to death at a college.
- Winnenden, Germany, March 11, 2009: a 17-year-old former student killed 15 people, including nine students and three teachers.
- Lyon, France, March 19, 2009: ten people injured after a man opened fire on a nursery school.
- Athens, Greece, April 10, 2009: three people killed and two people injured by a student at a vocational college.
- Rotterdam, Netherlands, April 11, 2009: three people killed and 1 injured at a crowded cafe.
- Vienna, Austria, May 24, 2009: one dead and 16 wounded in an attack on a Sikh Temple.
- Espoo, Finland, Dec. 31, 2009: 4 killed while shopping at a mall on New Year’s Eve.
- Cumbria, England, June 2, 2010: 12 people killed by a British taxi driver.
I think the only reason why a lot of people blame liberal or less strict gun laws and America’s alleged violent gun culture is the media. Undoubtedly the media (both American media and Philippine media) are full of gun-grabbing intellectuals. Like the global warming alarmists who spin every catastrophic natural calamity to justify more environmental regulations and carbon tax and restrictions, the gun-grabbers also shamelessly exploit every shooting incident that takes place in a gun-free zone to push for their gun control and confiscation laws.
But since most Filipino gun-grabbers don’t know the facts, I think it is necessary to discuss our gun laws and directives.
Let’s look at the basic facts first:
- Number of Privately Owned Firearms: 3,900,000
- Rate of Civilian Firearm Possession per 100 Population: 4.7%
- Number of Privately Owned Firearms – World Ranking: 20
- Number of Licensed Firearm Owners: 358,934
- Number of Registered Firearms: 775,000
- Number of homicides by firearm: 7,349
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