Click Here For The New American - Gun Control Cliches - April 4, 1994

The New American - Gun Control Clich�s - April 4, 1994: "Numerous state and federal court decisions have firmly established that the police have no legal obligation to protect individual citizens and cannot be held liable for failing to do so. Some of those key decisions are summarized in an important report, Dial 911 And Die?, published by the Wisconsin-based Jews for the Preservation of Firearms Ownership (JPFO), which concludes that Americans who believe that their local police have a duty in law to protect them against criminals 'are wrong.' As a result of this complacency-inducing belief, JPFO contends, many persons have become crime victims after being 'duped by ignorant or else dishonest politicians or police chiefs, who promise protection that they cannot give and have no legal duty to give.'
Dr. Gary Kleck agrees that the claim that 'citizens can depend on police for effective protection, is simply untrue,' since it 'implies that police can serve the same function as a gun in disrupting a crime in progress, before the victim is hurt or loses property. Police cannot do this, and indeed do not themselves even claim to be able to do so. Instead, police primarily respond reactively to crimes after they have occurred .... ' The idea that 'modern police are so effective in controlling crime that they have rendered citizen self-protection obsolete is widely at variance with a large body of evidence that police activities have, at best, only very modest effects on crime.' "