Editorial from Women and Guns July 1, 1997

The market value of any product is determined by how much money an individual consumer is willing to part with to obtain it. That seems like a pretty simple lesson in economics, but as usually the case with such a mind-numbing subject, there is more to the story than that.

There are all sorts of other factors involved in a purchase, especially when multiple versions of the same basic product are available. To most people, for example, there is no reason to pay $100 for a pair of jeans. But because "most" is not all, there exists a market, albeit a smallish one, for $100 dungarees, which is why they are still made.

Jeans are a utilitarian piece of clothing for people, across age, gender and income lines -- most people own at least one pair. If you are lucky enough to work a job in which jeans are de riguer or you're outdoors a lot, perhaps you own lots of pairs. I have heard uncorroborated tales of women who own several pairs of identical jeans, save for the size, which given a person's indulgence in deserts, or state of lovesickness, or optimism regarding next month's big community hootebabby, might vary from day to day.

Let us agree, for the sake of argument, however, that the average woman owns three pairs of jeans. Two pairs carry the brand name familiar to all that she purchased at her favorite department store a year apart, which cost no more than a hefty bag of groceries. The third pair bears the name of a well known designer, purchased at an outlet mall for a considerable discount (but still more than a bag of groceries.)

In addition to the popularly held notion that a person puts a pair of pants on one leg at a time, is the mor-often-true-than-not corollary that most people wear only one pair of pants at a time, unless of course you work for a circus, or are exceedingly prone to chills.

In any event, it is generally believed that what you pay for jeans and the number of pairs you own -- and even in what manner you choose to display your collection of denim -- is your own business, unless such ownership or display qualifies you for an episode of Oprah.

Let's leap now to another marketable commodity, and see if the same logic holds. We will speak here, as you might have guessed (your editor has never pretended to be Aesop), of firearms.

Two styles of legislation that are gaining currency in anti-gun circles are one-gun-a-month plans and those dealing with so-called "junk-guns".

The "one-gun" plan, which is already in place in Virginia, and is being discussed in other states, allows qualified, legal purchasers of firearms to buy only one gun a month. On the face of it, this does not seem like to onerous a restriction, since most people are likely to fall into the one-gun-a-year or every two year category.

In the chipping away style that the gun grabbers have favored in recent years, this type of legislation often doesn't even excite gun owners, because they already know most people don't buy anything like one gun a month.

But those who look closely at such schemes see the false premise upon which it is built. The apparent logic is that no one needs more than one gun at a time, and that no one, except criminals, needs to buy multiple firearms in a specified calendar period. But that is only the outward "selling" logic of such plans.

It has already been demonstrated to just about everyone in the known world, except Rep. Charles Schumer, that people who obey laws, tend to obey them all, even when they are inconvenienced by some of them. The only people inconvenienced by some of them. The only people inconvenienced by such a one-gun-a-month deal would be people in a particular locality (such as the Commonwealth of Virginia) who have been already deemed acceptable candidates to own firearms.

A criminal, by definition, would seem to be the sort of individual who would be willing to circumvent one law in a quest to break another.

That a Virginian might be forced a pass up the deal of a limetime on a pair of matched Purdys, or more likely, need at least three months to accumulate enough firearms to fully participate in cowboy action shooting or tactical 3-gun matches, doesn't bother legislators, primarily because gunowners failed to make the case at the time the legislation was being discussed. Those who did make such an argument, were, as usual, both dismissed as "gun nuts" by the media, and ignored by their fellow shooters.

Suppose instead of putting a crimp in your recreational shooting, the following scenario was in place: you own a pretty decent shotgun which you brought on July 1st because you had recently become enthused about Sporting Clays, On July 5th, you return from a holiday at the beach to find your house had been robbed, and the shotgun stolen along with the VCR and some jewelry. If there is ever a time at which personal protection comes to the forefront of your consciousness, it is after such an unpleasant, even if not violet, confrontation with reality. Now your shotgun begins to look like something other than a recreational product. But now you don't have it, and you'll wait until Aug. 1, a long, long 26 days, before you get another.

"Junk guns" are the new name for a class of firearms that used to be called "Saturday Night Specials." That term was a truncating of a more loathsome phrase, "Niggertown Saturday Night." For those interested in the subject of the origins of gun control in this country, and even for those (like the media) who are not, it is always instuctive to remember that gun control began as people control, first newly enfranchised African Americans in the postbellum South, and later as a means of keeping firearms form "low-browed foreigners" at the turn of the last century. (I highly recommend William Tonso's excellent monograph White Man's Law,, first published in Reason magazine, for more on this subject.)

Although the gun grabbers have obscured the original meaning of "Saturday Night Special," it has been generally agreed for years that the category of guns referred to was low-priced, easily concealable handguns, just the kind of guns owned by vile criminals, especially those who live in neighborhoods other than your own.

This has now mutated into "junk guns", implying not only that they are low-cost and concealable, but also that they are inherently flawed, and, in and of themselves, a danger to the owner. "Junk," is after all, a loaded word that implies shoddy workmanship, imperfect function and the like.

Junk gun bans are moving at the state level in a number of places. It has also become a rallying cry for Sen. Barbara Boxer of California, who proposes, to set up a formula to determine what is "junk" and what is not, for national consumption.

Among the criteria to be considered is cost, metallurgy, barrel size, (a perviously male legislator preoccupation), and caliber. The ostensible reason Boxer and her state-level compatriots are so het up about "junk guns" is that they are allegedly disproportionately crime guns.

However, the only recent study on the use of firearms in the commission of crimes, comes to us from the state of Maryland, where stats show just the opposite -- professional criminals (i.e. those successful enough to show up in the numbers) prefer larger calibers, and more sophisticated designs.

This doesn't seem to bother Sen. Boxer or similar curvilinear thinkers, they just reply that junk is junk and we should rid ourselves of these things because they are the scourge of the inner city, etc. etc.

When you are a legislator you are supposed to represent your constituents, all of them, not just those who are most likely to vote for you anyway, or contribute to your campaign coffers. What Boxer et al have done is play the race card -- or at very least, the class card, in an attempt to assuage their own hoplophobia.

Interestingly, women are caught in this particular crossfire more often than men, since they are more likely to have lower incomes, less likely to live in security-equipped apartments or gated communities. They are often, too, initially purchasers of firearms in non-major calibers. The last time we looked for example, W&G readers expressed a fondness for .380s as a personal defense caliber.

For most legislators it has been a very long time, if ever since they had to balance a personal budget and make ends meet enough so that there is food on the table and reasonably stylish shoes on the children and the mortgage or rent paid. That the real life cost of personal protection might be a $90 handgun or $60 dollar used shotgun and not a $400 new in box stainless beauty, is completely lost on people who have to be prepped to announce the cost of a quart of milk in election year debates.

Just as "one-gun-a-month" is designed to appeal to apathetic gunowners who follow the increasing popular "I got mine" creed, so too, are "junk gun" plans. What self-respecting owner of a nice handgun, for which she probably scrimped here and there for months, wouldn't turn up her nose at the notion of the kind of "junk" other people might be foolish enough to buy? And, by extension, expend little effort in protecting someone else's right to own?

I have no trouble believing that Barbara Boxer wears hundred dollar jeans, and don't have any particular problem with her doing so. If she pays only $20 a pair at Dillard's and makes them last 15 years, I'm similarly uninterested.

I do have a problem with her and others decreeing how much should be spent by you or me on those goods we have a legal right to own.