Significant quotes of 2000
“Anti-gun campaigners hoped the handgun ban after Dunblane - where Thomas Hamilton shot dead 16 children and a teacher - would reduce firearm crime. The latest figures, however, show crime involving weapons is on the increase.”
“Kate Broadhurst, a researcher at the Scarman Centre, said “Controls on legally held firearms are clearly unlikely to have much of an impact.”
The Times, UK, 16 January 2000
“Gun buyback programmes were not effective if they saw guns as assets.”
On buying back firearms from civilians in Africa.
Virginia Gamba, Institute for Security Studies
Business Day, Johannesburg, 18 January 2000
“We are supposed to have the toughest gun prohibition in the nation and yet our streets are flooded with guns.”
Anthony Williams, District of Columbia Mayor
Reuters, Washington DC, 20 January 2000
“You know, prohibition never works, but control does.”
On gambling controls.
Steve Bracks, Victorian Labor Premier
Radio 2BL, 24 February 2000
The police commissioner said the new gun laws had worked in restricting access to guns but would not eliminate gun violence. “Some criminals will always get guns, there’s no doubt about that.”
Jim O’Sullivan, Police Commissioner Queensland
The Australian, 2 May 2000
“Low employment has to be considered the major factor.”
On US crime dropping for the eighth year in a row.
Joseph McNamara, Stanford University’s Hoover Institution
The Age, 9 May 2000
“This is important for our church. This allows us to go to Capitol Hill and approach Congress and the President and say handguns are a major concern for Methodists.”
Eric Halsgaard, United Methodist Church, Ohio Conference
The Advertiser, Adelaide, 11 May 2000
When it comes to political battles, children are the “zero option,” the nuclear weapon you deploy to annihilate your opponents. So expect to hear a lot of talk about children at this Sunday’s “Million Mom March” in Washington, a stage-managed spectacle designed to sell the gun-control agenda to the American people.
Nina Shokraii Rees and Jennifer Garrett
‘The Million Mom media event’, 12 May 2000
Donna Dees-Thomases has told everyone far and wide that she came up with the idea of the “Million Mom March” after watching TV news coverage of a day-care center shooting in California. She wrote the words down on an envelope. Then she decided to hold the march on Mother’s Day. Who would dare criticize that?
Brent Bozell
‘A free ride for ‘a million’ moms’, 12 May 2000
In our neighborhood, the Million Mother March is all the rage. Women who normally wrinkle their noses at politics will attend in force; some will bring their daughters. Maybe even a husband or two will tag along, but I doubt it: This is pretty much a chick event. It features two forms of recreation women dearly love - bonding rituals and forums for discussing the inbred idiocy of men.
Tony Snow
‘Mom March is a sham’, 12 May 2000
The Million Mom March is about class, not caliber. And politics, not policy. Start with the statement by founder Donna Dees-Thomases, a New Jersey mother and publicist who just happens to be the sister-in-law of Clinton minion Susan Thomases: “On August 10th, “I” - she uses the word “I” a lot - “had a wake-up call.”
Debra Saunders
‘The anti-choice march’, 15 May 2000
The last time liberal women got the idea to use their wombs as an argument for gun control, Representatives Carolyn McCarthy, D-N.Y., Nita M. Lowey, D-N.Y., and Rosa DeLauro, D-Conn., were uttering such prattle as “women find they have a maternal instinct” for gun control.
Ann Coulter
‘Million moms: for womb the bell tolls’, 16 May 2000
The drums are starting to beat louder and louder for Mothers all across America to leave their families this Mother’s Day on May 14 to journey to Washington, DC to be a face in the crowd for the cause of gun control. I can not think of a worse thing for the American family.
Michael Warder
‘Million Mom March is a Bad Idea’, 16 May 2000
The numbers involved in the “Million Mom March” were overstated, and the cause for which the moms marched was overrated. Also, the event was over reported, in that it had less to do with solving a problem than it had to do with advancing a political agenda.
Linda Bowles
‘Moms overcounted and overrated’, 16 May 2000
Even though pistols were banned under the Dunblane regulations, they are still the weapon of choice for armed criminals and were used in 1854 of the 3029 armed robberies in England and Wales in 1997.
UK Punch Magazine, 16 May 2000
“The continuation of buyback programs is a triumph of wishful thinking over all the available evidence.”
Garen Wintermute, Director of the Violence Prevention Research Program, University of California
Chicago Tribune, 9 June 2000
At a US National Institute of Justice lecture delivered just weeks before Clinton’s grant announcement, University of Pennsylvania professor Lawrence Sherman, who headed a wide-ranging assessment of crime prevention programs, called gun buybacks “the program that is best-known to be ineffective” in reducing firearms violence.
A Harvard University study of buyback programs in Boston in 1993 and 1994 found that nearly three-quarters of the guns recovered were made before 1968. In Seattle, one-quarter of the guns collected were inoperable.
Chicago Tribune, 9 June 2000
Reece Waiters was commissioned to do a study by the Review of Firearms Control, chaired by Sir Thomas Thorp in 1997, which recommended the ban on military-style weapons. “It may be politically expedient or socially palatable to ban [military-style weapons], yet such measures are destined to have little effect when reducing the incidence of firearm-related crime and injury.”
Reece Waiters, Institute of Criminology
Evening Post Wellington, New Zealand, 29 June 2000
“Therefore, if relative lethality is measured by the number of victims killed, a firearm is not the most lethal instrument of homicide.”
Jenny Mouzos, Australian Institute of Criminology researcher
‘Homicidal Encounters - A Study of Homicide in Australia’ AIC report, 17 July 2000
Shootings in the black community account for nearly three-quarters of gun crime in London. Commander Mike Fuller, head of Operation Trident, which is tackling black gun crime, said 70 per cent is linked to drug disputes.
Mike Fuller, Commander, Operation Trident
The Times, 26 July 2000
“I wake up every day and hope I don’t kill someone today,’’ said registered nurse Kathy Cloninger, who has worked there for seven years.
Report on deaths of patients in the USA
Chicago Tribune, 9 September 2000
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