|
 he
battle lasted only one day. Michael Moore, part-time movie director
and activist, had camped out in the lobby of Kmart's corporate headquarters.
He believed that if he could convince the company to stop selling
handgun ammunition it would discourage future shooting attacks like
the one at Columbine in 1999. To help generate news coverage, Moore
brought along several current and former Columbine students to try
meeting with Kmart CEO Chuck Conaway. By the next day, even without
the meeting, the company had given in, it was no longer selling
the ammunition.
So isn't this a victory for putting "people before profits"? After
a company spokesman told Moore that there were no plans to stop
selling ammunition, newspapers reports indicate that the following
day "the retailer understood the concerns voiced by Moore and the
Columbine students and already had reconsidered its sale of handgun
ammunition."
Unfortunately, social activists often offer advice that leads to
the opposite of what is intended. This action is part of a trend
that is slowly undermining people's safety. Gun-control advocates
wouldn't cheer on Kmart's decision unless they thought that with
fewer retailers selling bullets the amount bought by criminals will
decline, though they must then also concede that it will reduce
purchases by law-abiding citizens. Even if this change reduces gun
use by criminals and law-abiding citizens by the same percent (and
that is an optimistic assumption), there will be a greater absolute
reduction in defensive gun uses simply because, with some two million
defensive gun uses each year, defensive uses are about 5 times more
frequent than crimes committed with guns.
The police may be extremely important at stopping crime, but they
almost always arrive on the crime scene after the crime has been
committed. Defensive gun use stories may never make the national
evening news, but if we care about saving lives we need to add up
both the bad events that are prevented as well as the bad ones that
are committed. Moore and Kmart never even appeared aware of gun
ownership's benefits.
Possibly this ignorance of defensive gun uses is due to the extremely
little media coverage defensive uses receive. The few stories that
get any attention are buried in short articles in the back of local
newspapers and they almost always involve the extremely unusual
examples where the criminals have been killed or seriously wounded.
Even with these caveats, there are several dozen local stories during
just the last couple of weeks of June. Just take a few cases:
-
New Lexington, Ohio: A rape victim stopped her attacker by shooting
him.
- Flint,
Michigan: A 68-year-old wheelchair-bound resident shot a violent
intruder who had broken into his home.
- Onondaga,
New York: The attacker who was striking someone with a shovel
was shot by the friend of the victim.
The fear over public-school shootings is legitimate, but Kmart's
response, even if it is motivated by those attacks, is not. Since
the shootings started in the fall of 1997, 32 students and 3 teachers
have been killed in any type of shooting at elementary or secondary
schools, an annual rate of 1 death per 4 million students. This
includes deaths from gang fights, robberies, accidents, as well
as attacks such as the one at Columbine. By contrast, during that
same period, 53 students died playing high-school football. Is Kmart's
next response to not sell any sports equipment?
To blame Kmart for selling some of the ammunition used in the Columbine
attack or to think that deaths could have been prevented if only
Kmart hadn't sold ammunition makes no sense. Eric Harris and Dylan
Klebold had planned the Columbine attack for over a year and were
motivated enough to construct several dozen bombs.
Apparently, the real goal is to stop all stores, not just Kmart,
from selling ammunition. But when the police can't be there to protect
people, will gun control advocates be there to protect them?
|
