75-16-A5
- Main Page \ Reagan Radio Commentaries \ 1975
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Gun Control[edit]
Transcript[edit]For the next few days I'll have with me a guest with some especially interesting viewpoints. He's the nationally syndicated colonist Patrick Buchanan. He'll be right with you. Here in the nation's capital, the Congress is busy working up alternatives to the President's new anti-crime program. Invariably the Democratic alternatives contain some version or other of a Federal law to license, control, ban or even confiscate handguns, in particular the dread Saturday Night Special. If handguns are outlawed, liberal Democrats argue, handgun crimes automatically will be reduced. "It is as simple as that," they say. These are by and large the same people who told us ten years ago that if we voted enough money for the poor we would eliminate poverty. They were wrong then, they are wrong now. Outlaw guns and only outlaws will have guns is how the slogan runs, and there is truth as well as irony in that statement. For if handguns are declared illegal, the criminals will keep their weapons and so too will hundreds of thousands of citizens who prefer to become law breakers rather than to give up the protection they believe a handgun provides to them and their family. Federal gun control would be nothing but another failed federal enterprise like prohibition. Does anyone seriously believe that some thug who specializes in holding up liquor stores is going to surrender his weapon simply because Congress has declared he is not entitled to own a gun? New York has the toughest anti-gun laws in the country and there are still an estimated 1 million weapons floating around in private hands within the city. Nevertheless, it is argued handgun controls will reduce the number of deaths by accident and the number of those killed in a family quarrel. But that is not the problem. Simply because several hundred people die each year in gun accidents is no reason to deny 210 million Americans the right to own them. As for a lover's quarrel resulting in a shooting, quite frankly, it is not the fear of one's wife or girlfriend taking the family cannon out of the closet and blowing someone away that is the fear that is eating at the vitals of American society. The fear that is making America an armed camp is not the fear of the armed citizen, but fear of the armed criminal: the mugger, the robber, the rapist, the killer. This is the individual to whom state legislatures and the federal Congress should be directing their attention. Mandatory and separate sentences for anyone using a gun in the commission of a crime. Mandatory life imprisonment or the death penalty for anyone who kills during the commission of a felony. These are the kind of laws that are needed and a society which refuses to take these tough measures against criminals is not going to become more safe and secure by robbing its citizens of the right to keep and acquire arms. A doubling of the prison population is a far better answer to the fear that stalks America than cutting in half the number of guns in American society. This is Pat Buchanan substituting for Ronald Reagan. Thanks for listening. |
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