However, if we look at the television news and read the newspapers, we would be led to believe that President Clinton is having a lot of success in cracking down on the terrible handgun problem in the United States. The Brady Bill has been introduced, the so-called assault rifle laws are in place. The anti-gun stories that go to air always imply that gun availability is responsible for crime and at last this is coming under control. These simplistic media grabs are misleading. What is actually happening is that the assault rifle laws in America have public support, but the right to self defence is soon seen by the public as being a quite separate issue.
Nobody wants to be beaten to a pulp in their old age by a drug-crazed thug.
Hence, state after state is in effect improving, not just tightening, their gun laws, regardless of what the media would lead us to believe. The work of Professor Gary Kleck and people like John Lott will assume increasing importance as it is shown that the government in our country has made a shameful genuflection in the direction of political pragmatism, at the expense of the lives and welfare of many good Australians. It is the independent news authorities that bring the change, and we have no doubt it will be the same here - which is why it is so important for members to keep supplying local newspapers and radio stations with information as we publish it in our legislative pages. In January, an American publication called Investors Business Daily ran a guest editorial written by Morgan O Reynolds and H Sterling Burnett. The former is Director of the National Center for Policy Analysis, the latter an economics professor, both at the Criminal Justice Center in Dallas, Texas.