The dangers of 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.