By DAVE HAMRICK
Editor-at-large

The only time I ever had any success in math subjects in school was when I had a teacher who used what he called “the arithmetic method” to teach algebra.

Instead of having us memorize the formula, he taught us to reason out the problem. I was just getting the hang of that and doing pretty well at it when the year was over and I moved on to another teacher who used a different method, and that's why I'm a news hack instead of a computer programmer today, I suppose.

I wonder... if more teachers taught critical thinking skills instead of rote memorization, would we have a more well-ordered society than we do?

What's got me thinking in this vein is the current mindless, robotic acceptance by many of the idea that we can get guns out of the hands of criminals by buying them, or by writing more gun control laws.

President Clinton plans to use $15 million to buy back guns as a way to reduce “gun violence.” I'm not sure why gun violence is worse than knife violence or baseball bat violence, but so far the president hasn't offered me anything for my Ted Williams Special.

Anyway, let's try and walk through the concept of either buying or restricting guns as a way of making a dent in “gun violence.”

I'll try to sum up the thinking behind the buy-back programs and restrictions, and you folks who are on the other side of this issue please set me straight if I don't state it correctly.

Given: Many people are killed and wounded by guns on a regular basis, including many highly publicized rampages by insane people who find a crowded place and start blazing away.

Given: Many people are killed or wounded by guns accidentally.

Given: Guns are easily available in our society.

Premise: If guns are easily available and people are being killed and wounded by guns, then making guns less available would reduce the number of people killed and wounded by guns.

Premise: Purchasing and melting down large numbers of guns will reduce the number of guns available to violent people who want to shoot other people and to those who might be hurt accidentally. Restricting the sale of guns will reduce that number even further, and the result will be that fewer people will be killed or wounded by guns.

Conclusion: We must buy guns and melt them down, and we must pass laws restricting the sale of guns.

It sounds logical enough until you start bringing in additional information, variables that affect the equation.

For instance, one must ask oneself: When governments and charitable groups offer people money to turn in their guns to be melted down, how many of those people bring in all of their guns, and how many of them bring their old broken guns that they've been meaning to throw away anyhow? Also, how many people go out and steal guns so they will be able to get the $50 being offered? It's a better price than they would get from a fence, and it's safer.

In announcing his buy-back program using $15 million that he took from you and me, the president declared that the program was going to get guns out of the hands of criminals. Again, one must ask, how many of those who are truly selling their guns because they believe in what the president is trying to do are criminals? How many are law abiding citizens who had been keeping guns for protection, and now are giving up that protection?

Still, it may be logical to conclude that a few people do fit into the last category, and that a few of them would have had accidents with those guns if they had kept them, or would have shot someone in the heat of an argument. Perhaps a few lives are being saved, maybe four or five at a cost of a few million each.

But then you have to ask: Of this group, how many will be assaulted, raped, killed who would have been able to prevent this from happening if they had kept their guns?

How many crimes would have been prevented and now won't be?

The argument for more government restrictions still may sound logical until you look at the facts, which are that everywhere that guns have been restricted, violent crime has gone up. Everywhere that gun laws have been loosened, violent crime has gone down.

How could this be? There's only one possible explanation, and it is the one that takes into account the human equation: criminals would rather prey on innocent, law-abiding citizens in areas where they have reason to believe those citizens will be unarmed.

Check the crime stats in Kennesaw, Ga., since that city passed a law requiring every citizen to own a gun. It's not enforced, of course. I don't know of anyone who has ever been fined or imprisoned for not owning a gun. But it certainly gives criminals something to think about.

And what people think and how they behave are the main variables that the anti-gun contingent forget about when they start trying to reason this thing out.

Here are a few more “givens” to go with the ones above.

Given: People who obey laws are law-abiding people. Those who do not obey laws are criminals.

Given: Criminals do not obey laws.

Premise: If criminals do not obey laws, they will not obey gun control laws.

Premise: If criminals don't obey gun laws, and law-abiding citizens do, then criminals will have guns and law-abiding citizens will not.

Conclusion: The more gun control laws are passed, the more law-abiding citizens will be at the mercy of violent criminals.

Point to ponder: Guns can be used to protect or to harm. Maybe we should concentrate our laws and restrictions on those who are doing the harm, rather than on the law-abiding citizens who use guns for protection.

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