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SAIS Review 23.1 (2003) 315-317



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Natalie J. Goldring's Response


One of Gary Perlstein's core arguments in his response to my article in the Winter-Spring 2002 edition of the SAIS Review 1 is that violence has "been a central aspect of some of the most significant and productive events in U.S. history." However, my article was not about appropriate and inappropriate uses of violence. Rather, it focused on the prospects for reducing the illegal trade in small arms and light weapons by increasing the quantity and quality of information available to analysts and decision makers. Arms traffickers, terrorists, and even shady retailers prefer to conduct their transactions away from public view. Transparency may not be the entire answer, but is certainly part of the solution.

Perlstein's objections are both procedural and substantive. Early in his response, he argues that it is inappropriate to include all small arms in the transparency regime. If it were possible to predict which guns in circulation would remain in legal hands and which would be diverted, such distinctions could conceivably be useful. Unfortunately, such predictions are extraordinarily unreliable.

In order to track weapons effectively and constrain illicit weapons transfers, certain information must be collected for all civilian and military small arms and light weapons. This requirement approaches what seems to be the core of Perlstein's argument: his fear that if this information is available, it will strengthen the hand of those who seek more substantial limitations on transfers of small arms and light weapons. This may well be the case, but contrary to [End Page 315] the belief of many gun advocates, transparency and gun confiscation are not the same thing.

Gun advocates have undermined attempts to prevent the movement of weapons from legal to illicit hands by attempting to block even the most basic transparency and control measures. For example, the U.S. Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, and Firearms is allowed to conduct no more than one unannounced inspection of each gun shop per year. Given the extent to which a small number of gun shops account for a large number of weapons that are subsequently used in crimes, this makes no sense. Evidence suggests, for instance, that the weapon used in the fall 2002 sniper killings in Washington, DC came from a gun shop that has lost track of hundreds of weapons in the last few years. 2

Perlstein also objects to my description of a "gray market." Yet this term has been in general usage for decades in describing weapons that were not directly covered by laws or treaties; I even included the Small Arms Survey's carefully constructed definition in the original text. 3 He correctly cites people purchasing guns at gun shows without undergoing background checks as an example of inconsistency in current laws. His perspective seems to be that anything that is not specifically declared as illegal is by definition legal. But in the real world, there are in fact significant gray areas. Ironically, even the article Perlstein cites in support of his case refers to the "gray market" in weapons. 4

At base, Perlstein relies on the gun advocates' argument that people need guns for self-defense. He claims that rapid response forces and political action cannot prevent genocide or massacres. But, in fact, such measures have not been fully implemented; he is passing judgment before the policies have even been tried. In addition, the argument about self-defense does not stand up to close scrutiny. According to the Violence Policy Center, for example,

In 1998, for every time that a civilian used a handgun to kill in self-defense, 51 people lost their lives in handgun homicides alone. Add in suicides and the ratio stretches to 134 to one . . . Public health researchers have consistently proven that the detrimental effects of civilian handgun ownership drastically outweigh the theoretical benefits they are purported to deliver. Considering what the FBI has been reporting year in and year out—that most gun deaths do not take place in the course of felony crime, but result from arguments between people who know each...

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