There Should Not Be Stricter Gun Control Laws - Statement Of Neal Knox, Executive Director, Institute For Legislative Action, National Rifle Association, Before The Subcommittee On Criminal Law, United States Senate, March 4, 1982

Gun laws fail because they do not address the issue. The issue is not possession of firearms, but misuse of firearms. We cannot expect criminals to abide by gun laws when they have already shown a disregard for law and order by their criminal activity. The only people ever affected by gun laws are peaceful, law-abiding citizens, who never abuse their firearms right.

Recent research is finding gun laws do not reduce the amount of violent crime in our society….

Gun laws have succeeded only in disarming the lawabiding and making the criminals' work environment safer. I submit that our concern should be to make the environment safer for honest citizens, and this, gun laws have failed to do.

In response to violent crime, people buy guns. Those purchases do not adversely affect the problem of violent crime. Indeed, the persons most likely to own handguns solely for protection are among the persons most likely to be victimized by violent crime and least likely themselves to commit violent crime: poor, black, female heads of households.

People will acquire handguns for protection in response to violent crime. Laws will, if anything, simply encourage faster gun purchases out of fear of more restrictive future legislation…. Law-abiding citizens are purchasing handguns for self-defense; to provide the protection the government and the police cannot provide….

As with any gun law currently on the books, or being proposed, it has the clear effect of making millions of peaceful citizens criminals overnight. Any restrictive gun law inherently provides for increased police and government power over people.

Every restrictive gun law ever passed inherently infringes on the civil liberties that Americans hold dear—the constitutional protections of privacy, freedom from unreasonable search and seizure, due process, and the right to keep and bear arms. Yet, some would have you believe that more gun laws are justified.