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One of the biggest claims that Handgun Control Incorporated uses in their attempts to gain support is that guns cause crime. One of the greatest downfalls of this particular theory is that the gun is an inanimate object. That meas that human interaction is required in order for the object to perform any action. Another flaw with this theory is the availability of firearms to the American people and the crime rate. In 1978, one of the most violent points in American cifil history, there were an estimated 150 million firearms - both handguns and longguns - in the United States. That figure by itself literally smells of the "point" HCI has been making. The true flaw, however, can be seen by reading the Josh Sugarmann book entitled NRA: Money, Firepower, Fear. He write that there was an estimated 200 million firearms in the United States in 1992. The interesting fact included in his book is that while he was writing it, the crime rate was the lowest it had been since the 1950s. If guns do not cause crime, then what is the real problem? J.R. Labbe may well have hit the proverbial nail on the head when he wrote, "Criminals don't care about laws. That's what makes them criminals. If they ignore the thousands of state and federal laws on the books, what makes anyone think they'll obey a handful more?". David Newton also stated the real problem well when he wrote "America does not have a gun problem. We have a criminal problem." The true problem, then, is criminals, but what is the solution? Kennesaw, georgia may well have found the solution in 1982 when they bassed a law requiring every home owner to own a firearm. There was one homocide in that town in the first ten years following the enactment of that law. Even though the population doubled, the murder rate dropped from 11 per 1,000 residents to 3 per 1,000 residents. In fact, history shows that an armed citizenry can be more effective in suppression of crime than a large police force. Indeed, Chicago police records between 1937 and 1977 have shown that justifiable homicides by citizens outnumbered those by police in every year. Adults are not the only armed people that criminals fear. A fifteen year old Florida resident by the name of Cecil Collier assisted police in the aprehension of three Ohio criminals. The criminals had evaded a roadblock and ran into a thicket near the location where the boy and his father had been working. When a state trooper asked them for their assistance, the boy armed himself with a 20 gauge shotgun and headed into the trees. When Collier found the three hoodlums, he ordered them to the ground and held them for the posse. Firearms are obviously not the cause of crime and may very well be the solution. Indeed, HCIs claims are completely false in regards to this topic. There is an old joke concerning "gun crime": Q: "What is the solution to gun
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