Jeff Hague of Ellendale is the president and legislative liaison of the Delaware State Sportsmen’s Association.
This is in response to Mr. Jeffrey Haycraft’s letter, “Accountability, gun crime prevention coincide.”
First point: Mr. Haycraft states that, to have safer communities, we need to punish offenders and strengthen gun laws. He’s right on the first part. Offenders need to be held accountable for their actions. But we don’t need more gun laws. Firearms are the most heavily regulated consumer product in the nation. There are over 25,000 laws, statutes, rules and regulations governing them, from production to destruction. All we need to do is enforce the laws on the books. How about this? Use a firearm while committing a crime and go to jail. No probation or suspended sentence. I have yet to see an inmate commit a crime on the street.
Mr. Haycraft believes that more gun laws will make us safer. How? Criminals, by definition, do not obey the law. Background checks and safe storage laws only impact law-abiding citizens. Criminals do not purchase firearms from federally licensed dealers that are required to perform background checks. They steal them and/or obtain them from other underground sources. About 86% of those in possession of a firearm while committing a crime obtained them this way (“Use of Firearms in Crimes: Survey of Prison Inmates in 2016”). Criminals do not “safely” store the tools of their trade; only law-abiding citizens do. When police confront someone they believe owned a firearm used in a crime, the person often says, “I didn’t know that was missing. Thanks for letting me know.”
Mr. Haycraft is wrong when he states that 25% of crime guns were legal purchases. They were definitely not legally purchased by the criminal. According to a 2021 report from the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives, 96% of stolen guns were stolen from private owners that year. Only 0.04% of civilian-owned firearms in the United States are stolen. More safe storage laws are not the answer.
Contrary to what Mr. Haycraft claims, I did not downplay regulations on automatic firearms and short-barreled shotguns. I merely stated that the National Firearms Act was a tax scheme, not a law restricting the Second Amendment. As I wrote, Congress realized that it could not pass a law restricting a constitutional amendment. Therefore, its members relied on the commerce aspect. That resulted in a registration scheme. PolitiFact reports that there have been three known instances where legally owned automatic firearms have been used to commit crimes since 1934, one involving a police officer. To date, 23 states allow ownership of fully automatic firearms and generally defer to the federal regulations. Ten states, including Delaware, ban private ownership. The remaining states have mixed laws and regulations.
Another point: The Supreme Court has stated that only those items that are both “dangerous and unusual” can be regulated, not “uniquely dangerous,” as Mr. Haycraft wrote. That term is not defined in any case. The Second Amendment does not address “dangerous weapons.”
Mr. Haycraft, background checks have been a fact of life since 1993, when the “Brady bill” was passed in Congress. The current system works. What is lacking is relevant date input.
In 2022, I helped write a bill, passed by the Delaware General Assembly, that re-creates the background check system we had prior to 2013. It’s called the Firearms Transaction Approval Program. This system would be operated by the state and is designed to capture much more relevant data than the National Instant Criminal Background Check. However, it was supposed to be in operation by December 2023. To date, it is not. If background checks are such a priority by the General Assembly, isn’t three years a bit long?
“Assault-style” rifles are not used disproportionately in mass shootings. According to reports, including from Newsweek, “assault-style” rifles have been used in 26% of mass shootings. Mr. Haycraft is also wrong about the lethality of AR-15-style firearms. That tidbit has been parroted by Everytown for Gun Safety, Moms Demand Action for Gun Sense in America and many other antigun groups. In several court cases that the Delaware State Sportsmen’s Association has brought, our experts have debunked that myth. Semiautomatic firearms are not capable of “sustained, devastating” fire. They fire one round with each pull of the trigger, just like semiautomatic handguns that are used far more often in shootings.
I notice that Mr. Haycraft did not use the term “assault weapon.” Is that because items such as knives, vehicles, golf clubs and other things are considered assault weapons when used to commit crimes? Or is it because, by definition, “assault weapon” is used for fully automatic-capable firearms, employed by the military? AR-15-style firearms are only capable of semiautomatic function.
The Delaware Superior Court ruled Aug. 29 that it is unconstitutional under the Delaware Constitution to prohibit persons ages 18-21 from owning, possessing or purchasing firearms. I agree that 18- to 20-year-olds commit gun homicides at an increased rate; however, I would submit that a vast majority of those shootings are drug- and gang-related. The Delaware Statistical Analysis Center reported that, in 2019, juveniles ages 14-17 committed 14 shootings out of 101 in the state. Sixty-four percent were Black males. Twenty-nine people between ages 18-21 committed shootings. Eighty-six percent were Black males. Of the shooting suspects for the years 2014-19, 78% had at least one or two prior felony arrests for weapons violations. Seventy-four percent of the victims also had that prior record. That means that bad guys are shooting bad guys.
The use of firearms is not a public health crisis; it is an accountability crisis. Folks like Mr. Haycraft and others, such as most of Delaware’s legislators, find it far easier to demonize the object — in this case, a firearm — than to develop strategies that hold criminals responsible for their acts. How has no cash bail worked out? When the attorney general plea-bargains the firearm offense away in a vast majority of cases, criminals get away with murder.
Last fact-check: Mr. Haycraft, according to gunfacts.info, countries with the strictest gun control laws have the highest homicide rates. As of 2005, Scotland was the most violent country in the developed world. Many of the countries with the strictest gun control have the highest rates of violent crime. Australia and England, which have virtually banned gun ownership, have the highest numbers of robberies, sexual assaults and assaults with force of the top 17 industrialized countries. Britain has the highest percentage of violent crime in Europe, more so than the United States or even South Africa. It also has the second-highest overall crime rate in the European Union. In 2008, Britain had a violent crime rate nearly five times that of the United States (2,034 versus 446 per 100,000 population).
No matter how one attempts to spin it, folks like Mr. Haycraft are not for gun safety; they are for no guns.
Reader reactions, pro or con, are welcomed at civiltalk@iniusa.org.
