The dangers of gun control
Bookworm on Jun 11 2010 at 8:57 am | Filed under: Gun control
So many of my past political beliefs embarrass me. One of the ones that I find most humiliating is the way in which I so totally bought into the whole notion of gun control. My thinking was so simplistic: Guns kill people, therefore guns are bad and should be outlawed. I never could wrap my mind around the fact that, with the gun genii long out of the box — and not going back in again, ever — the NRA had it exactly right: If guns are outlawed, only outlaws will have guns.
In a way, my prior gun control beliefs are a perfect example of the entire loony thinking that characterizes the Left. In what sane place does one build an entire policy an a manifest impossibility — namely, making all the guns in the world vanish? The only place in which that happens is in the brilliant Kurt Vonnegut short story “Report on the Barnhouse Effect,” written when Vonnegut was still smart (it was his very first published story).
In the real world, all guns do not vanish. To govern wisely, and to protect your citizenry, you have to craft a policy based upon that real world fact. Taking guns away from law abiding citizens and leaving them as protected as fish in a barrel is not a good policy. And yet I, and millions of other loopy-lo liberals, totally and completely embraced this complete retreat from reality.
I’m fixating on this subject today because, in the wake of the dreadful Cumbria shooting in northern England, John Lott examines the fallacies of gun control. He points out that the worst mass shootings always happen where only outlaws have guns. In that regard, it’s worth remembering that even the Fort Hood massacre happened in a gun free zone at that camp. It’s high time that we educate Americans to think about the real world and real facts, and not about the magical world, in which all guns can be made to vanish through mind control.
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5 Responses to “The dangers of gun control”
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Guns are just tools. In the hands of a responsible person, they are rarely dangerous. I know several table saw victims, but only one (accidental) gunshot victim. His injury was the only one that didn’t require medical care. Shouldn’t we be controlling power tools?
Witness the proliferation of IEDs around the world. How are we doing controlling those?
Another tool is the plain old knife. In China alone “More than 27 people have died and at least 80 injured since March in a wave of school stabbings…”
http://news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20100611/wl_nm/us_china_stabbings
Bad people will always find a way.
BTW, if anyone hasn’t noticed, the firearm and ammunition industries are the only ones the Obama administration has managed to stimulate.
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I paid $125 for a firearms safety class, $110 for a license and $80 per year for a range membership. That’s what it takes to buy a gun in Massachusetts, home to the strictest gun laws outside of Chicago and DC.
Meanwhile, a few days ago a 10-year old was shot in retaliation for an 18-year-old’s being shot.
Do you think there’s any chance in HELL that the dangerous, evil guns used in these heinous crimes were purchased legally? Or that the owners are licensed? Yeah, me neither.
(BTW you also need a license to buy ammo. Or pepper spray. Or to have any ammo components. Which means that if you accidentally walk out of the range with a shell casing stuck in your boot, you better be licensed — or you’re a felon.)
Two quotes from the distant past, explain for me, the driving force behind disarming Americans that so animates the totalitarians of the Left:
Sir Walter Raleigh wrote of the goals of a tyrant, saying that the tyrant desired:
“To unarm his people of weapons, money, and all means whereby they may resist his power.”
Aristotle wrote:
“Those, who have the command of the arms in a country are masters of the state.”
All tyrannies seek to ensure that commoners have neither the training nor the weapons to resist their masters. That disarming the law abiding members of a society also places them at the mercy of the criminals (who will always arm themselves regardless of laws) is of little concern to the would be “masters of the universe” that govern us. Guns are also the equalizers that enable women, the old, the feeble to defend themselves against young, strong criminals.
Interestingly, while Obama feels that bitter Americans “cling to their guns,” he wants a “civilian army as well armed and trained as the military.” What is the purpose of this private “army” and why will they enhance national security when law-abiding citizens possessing guns poses a threat?
Crime and violence is a huge issue in the US (and indeed all societies–witness the rash of mass murders (with knives) of school children in China recently). However, taking away the average citizen’s best means of defending themselves in their own home will not eliminate crime or violence as these people commit very few of these crimes. However, it might ensure that a unarmed populace would be easily cowed by Obama’s private army. This is an important consideration if you wish to be the “master of the state.”
Paranoid? I hope so.
Actually, concerning the idea that guns could disappear, your views were even worse. (I know; I once held many of them myself.) Not only were your views organized around an impossibility, but even if you had gotten your wish, the outcome would have been terrible.
Once upon a time there were no guns, and the advantage was always held by the strong, not by the weak. It used to be extremely common for strong men or gangs of thieves to lie in wait to ambush travelers. Not any more: an old woman with a handgun is an equal match for a burly thug (or even a small group of thugs), but that’s not true if they both have sticks — or bare hands! Love ‘em or hate ‘em, guns are indeed the “great equalizer.” Never before in history have the weak, powerless, elderly, or infirm had as much chance against criminals.
The world was generally a *more* violent place before firearms, increasingly so the further back you go. The Western world would be reverting to that if you got your way.
On the other hand, there would be one plus: the modern totalitarian state would again be impossible.