Is Disarming Criminals Sufficient?
Dixon begins by acknowledging that, at least in the first years that his confiscation program is in effect, the program will *324 have little effect on criminals, but will impact mainly non-criminal citizens. [164] Here Dixon takes a more plausible position than some of the more extreme advocates of gun control, who promise that measures far milder than Dixon’s (such as a waiting period) will somehow disarm professional criminals such as drug dealers. Disarming the non-criminal population would, Dixon says, be beneficial in itself, because the non-criminals are the ones who perpetrate most of the handgun murders. He points out that 3/4 of murderers do not have prior felony convictions. Accordingly, a handgun possession ban that applied only to felons would not have a chance of taking handguns away from the 3/4 of murders without previous felony convictions. [165] Dixon notes that many of the murderers without prior felony convictions do have arrest records (two-thirds to four- fifths o
