The ‘Gun Control’ Farce

Guest Post by Thomas Sowell

President Obama’s intrusion into the mourning community of Roseburg, Oregon, in order to promote his political crusade for stronger gun control laws, is part of a pattern of his using various other sites of shooting rampages in the past to promote this long-standing crusade of the political left.

The zealotry of gun control advocates might make some sense if they had any serious evidence that more restrictive gun control laws actually reduce gun crimes. But they seldom even discuss the issue in terms of empirical evidence.

Saving lives is serious business. But claiming to be saving lives and refusing to deal with evidence is a farce. Nor is the Second Amendment or the National Rifle Association the real issue, despite how much the media and the intelligentsia focus on them.

If there is hard evidence that stronger gun control laws actually reduce gun crimes in general or reduce murders in particular, the Second Amendment can be repealed, as other Amendments have been repealed. Constitutional Amendments exist to serve the people. People do not exist to be sacrificed to Constitutional Amendments.

But if hard evidence shows that restrictions on gun ownership lead to more gun crimes, rather than less, then the National Rifle Association’s opposition to those restrictions makes sense, independently of the Second Amendment.

Since this all boils down to a question of hard evidence about plain facts, it is difficult to understand how gun control laws should have become such a heated and long-lasting controversy.

There is a huge amount of statistical evidence, just within the United States, since gun control laws are different in 50 different states and these laws have been changed over time in many of these states. There are mountains of data on what happens under restrictive laws and what happens when restrictions are lifted.

Statistics on murder are among the most widely available statistics, and among the most accurate, since no one ignores a dead body. With so many facts available from so many places and times, why is gun control still a heated issue? The short answer is that most gun control zealots do not even discuss the issue in terms of hard facts.

The zealots act as if they just know — somehow — that bullets will be flying hither and yon if you allow ordinary people to have guns. Among the many facts this ignores is that gun sales were going up by the millions in late 20th century America, and the murder rate was going down at the same time.

Among the other facts that gun control zealots consistently ignore are data on how many lives are saved each year by a defensive use of guns. This seldom requires actually shooting. Just pointing a loaded gun at an assailant is usually enough to get him to back off, often in some haste.

There have been books and articles based on voluminous statistics, including statistics comparing gun laws and gun crime rates in different countries, such as “Guns and Violence” by Professor Joyce Lee Malcolm of George Mason University. Seldom do these factual studies back up what the gun control zealots are saying.

Why would an ultimately factual question about the consequences of gun control laws divide people along ideological lines? Only if at least one set of people were more devoted to their vision than to the facts.

This shows up when gun control zealots are asked whether whatever new law they propose would have prevented the shooting rampage that they are using as a stage from which to propose a new clampdown on gun ownership. Almost always, the new law being proposed would not have made the slightest difference. That too is part of the farce. A deadly farce.

So is the automatic assertion that whoever engaged in a shooting rampage was a madman. Yet these supposedly crazy shooters are usually rational enough to choose some “gun-free zone” for their murderous attacks. They seem more rational than gun control zealots who keep creating more “gun-free zones.”

Gun control zealots are almost always people who are lenient toward criminals, while they are determined to crack down on law-abiding citizens who want to be able to defend themselves and their loved ones.

Part II

The grand illusion of zealots for laws preventing ordinary, law-abiding people from having guns is that “gun control” laws actually control guns. In a country with many millions of guns, not all of them registered, this is a fantasy and a farce.

Guns do not vanish into thin air because there are gun control laws. Guns — whether legal or illegal — can last for centuries. Passing laws against guns may enable zealots to feel good about themselves, but at the cost of other people’s lives.

Why anyone would think that criminals who disobey other laws, including laws against murder, would obey gun control laws is a mystery. A disarmed population makes crime a safer occupation and street violence a safer sport.

The “knockout game” of suddenly throwing a punch to the head of some unsuspecting passer-by would not be nearly so much fun for street hoodlums, if there was a serious risk that the passer-by was carrying a concealed firearm.

Being knocked out in a boxing ring means landing on the canvas. But being knocked out on a street usually means landing on concrete. Victims of the knockout game have ended up in the hospital or in the morgue.

If, instead, just a few of those who play this sick “game” ended up being shot, that would take a lot of the fun out of it for others who are tempted to play the same “game.”

Even in places where law-abiding citizens are allowed to own guns, they are seldom allowed to carry concealed weapons — even though concealed weapons protect not only those who carry them, but also protect those who do not, for the hoodlums and criminals have no way of knowing in advance who is armed and who is not.

Another feature of gun control zealotry is that sweeping assumptions are made, and enacted into law, on the basis of sheer ignorance. People who know nothing about guns, and have never fired a shot in their lives, much less lived in high-crime areas, blithely say such things as, “Nobody needs a 30-shot magazine.”

Really? If three criminals invaded your home, endangering the lives of you and your loved ones, are you such a sharpshooter that you could take them all out with a clip holding ten bullets? Or a clip with just seven bullets, which is the limit you would be allowed under gun laws in some places?

Do you think that someone who is prepared to use a 30-shot magazine for criminal purposes is going to be deterred by a gun control law? All the wonderful-sounding safeguards in such laws restrict the victims of criminals, rather than the criminals themselves.

That is why such laws cost lives, instead of saving lives.

Are there dangers in a widespread availability of guns? Yes! And one innocent death is one too many. But what makes anyone think that there are no innocent lives lost by disarming law-abiding people while criminals remain armed?

If we are going to be serious, as distinguished from being political, we need to look at hard evidence, instead of charging ahead on the basis of rhetoric. Sweeping assumptions need to be checked against facts. But that is seldom what gun control zealots do.

Some gun control zealots may cherry-pick statistics comparing nations with and without strong gun control laws, but cherry-picking is very different from using statistics to actually test a belief.

Among the cherry-picked statistics is that England has stronger gun control laws than the United States and much lower murder rates. But Mexico, Brazil and Russia all have stronger gun control laws than the United States — and much higher murder rates.

A closer look at the history of gun laws in England tells a very different story than what you get from cherry-picked statistics. The murder rate in New York over the past two centuries has been some multiple of the murder rate in London — and, for most of that time, neither city had strong restrictions on the ownership of guns.

Beginning in 1911, New York had stronger restrictions on gun ownership than London had — and New York still had murder rates that were a multiple of murder rates in London. It was not the laws that made the difference in murder rates. It was the people. That is also true within the United States.

But are gun control zealots interested in truth or in political victory? Or perhaps just moral preening?

10
Leave a Reply

avatar
  Subscribe  
Notify of
Anonymous
Anonymous

“Among the cherry-picked statistics is that England has stronger gun control laws than the United States and much lower murder rates. ……………”

But England also has four times the overall rate of violent crime than the United States if you look at all violent crime and not just crime involving firearms. In addition, the majority of people there don’t report most crimes since they feel it is an effort in futility and know they may also get into trouble by reporting it if they offered any resistance.

Mexico has every law the leftists want here and their violent crime rate, especially firearms crimes, is so much higher than ours that it isn’t even a meaningful comparison.

And on and on.

But the thing that irritates me most is the constant comparison of the US to other countries, We are not other countries. If we were the world would probably still look much like it did in the feudal middle ages with a little bit of industrialization tossed in, we led the world out of that.

card802
card802

About the same time Bryce Williams killed the reporter on air, Brittany Pilkington, strangled her three boys because her husband did not pay enough attention to their daughter, so she reasoned eliminate the boys…..

On Monday Thomas Johnson, ex Texas A&M football player took a machete and hacked a random jogger to death, because he was not happy with his life…..

Both stories are back page news and we know both killers are fucking crazy. Paula Dean and her blinking underwear on Dancing with the Stars has 30 times the hits today than Thomas Johnson……

What if mom would have shot her three boys and what if loser football player would have shot the jogger at random?

Yeah, we know what would have happened.

The head fucknut would politicize the shootings, media would froth, and people would be outraged and demand guns be taken away.
Once again proving it’s not the death that bothers people so much as the method death is administered.

bb

The leftists have one agenda . Disarm the the law abiding citizens of the country then they can do whatever they want .Even commit mass murder if they think it will bring in their utopian society.

In the last six years I have bought four rifles and four pistols. Plus about five thousand rounds of ammo.I am getting ready for something . Not sure what but something EVIL is heading our way.

You notice the leftists never want the government to give up its guns. It is always the law abiding citizens who have to give up their weapons.

robert h siddell jr
robert h siddell jr

Card802: Around Flyover Country here, it isn’t the people that hate guns, the Constitution, the Bible, DOMA etc but rather it’s TPTB and their New Age NWO minions in NYC, WDC etc. We believe there should be more Government Control (ie more control of government).

Spinolator
Spinolator

I’m very skeptical about the whole gun control issue. I wonder if it’s just bullshit, mostly propaganda to boost gun sales. After all, we know the two parties are two sides of the same coin. Think of what it would do to gun manufacturers. Just think how utterly difficult it would be to get rid of all the weapons already in existence. If they really want to do that here is two ways, both longer term. One, wait for military technology to be vastly superior and restricting it’s availability, so disarming the population would be easier, by force. Two, convince the population, thorough propaganda, to give them up voluntarily. If anything, they are trying number two.

Archie

In Maine, where I live, everyone I know owns multiple guns. My neighbor, and his son, who lives across the road from him, have about 50 guns between them. The son’s neighbor is an AK enthusiast. My own neighbor, whose ancestors owned thousands of acres in this area long ago, likely has about a dozen guns at least. My garbage guy owns over twenty long guns. I myself, a meek academic nerdy loser own 6: two rifles, two shotguns, and two handguns. Maine has one of the lowest violent crime rates in the country. Most of the crime here is domestic violence, drug trafficking, and petty theft. If you leave your chainsaw in the bed of your truck, you are begging for it to be stolen.

Vermont, also very pro gun despite its communist politicians, is a low crime state. Ditto New Hampshire. What do these states have in common? They are very white. I am sure there is no connection between race and crime. But you will never ever hear a politician say so. They are all cowards. Get rid of kneegrows, the Jew foot soldiers against the white race, and the Latino gangbangers, and you get rid of gun violence. This is beyond dispute.

The Jew communists who have infiltrated our government, media, legal and educational institutions, rub their small greasy hands together each time a white is tortured or murdered by kneegrows. Once all the whites are gone, then it’ll be the kneegrow’s turn to feel the boot of Jewish tyranny. This is how the elite Jew thinks. There is a reason why Jews and their ten thousand organizations, with their ill gotten money, always spearhead anti gun legislation, with their in bred cousins leading the anti gun charge in the media. They want to disarm whites, who will then be helpless lambs against the black and brown lions, with whom they have flooded the country. Cross reference South Africa. It is sickening what has happened to the whites there. Where is the Jew controlled Hollywood movie about their persecution? How about the Jew run 60 minutes segment on the continuing butchery of whites there? You will not see it.

The Jews won’t have to outright torture and murder whites, which is what they did in Russia, or Germany after the war. They won’t have to this time around.

AC
AC

Did someone say ‘statistics?’

ragman
ragman

Archie: take away black and hispanic crime stats and the good ole USofA would have one of the lowest crime rates in the world.

card802
card802

“.. take away black and hispanic crime stats and the good ole USofA would have one of the lowest crime rates in the world.”

Last night hilary said that there are 90 violent gun deaths, per day, in America. If that stat is true, how many of those 90 are caused by urban blacks and hispanics.

She thinks this is the NRA’s fault and we must “do something” about it. How can we do anything when one side refuses to face facts?
Maybe it has something to do with voter base, it’s just a guess, I could be wrong.

James the Wanderer

It would make little difference if gun control laws actually worked. I used to live in Bakersfield, CA; a little town in the middle of nowhere, effectively. Only an hour away from L.A., but the road went over the Grapevine, a chain of mountains. L.A. had glitz and glamour, Bakersfield had Merle Haggard and Buck Owens, so the trash stayed by the ocean. But what I remember was Saturday mornings ….
Saturday mornings were when I would open the paper and read the crime stories (generally in Section B or later, not what they wanted to publicize). And the amazing thing to me was the number of homicides – almost none of which (in the mid-90’s) was by guns. Time after time, the stories were similar – two or more Mexican immigrants would be in a bar, drinking amiably at first. Then, after a while, some offense was committed, and one would kill another – almost exclusively with a KNIFE. Then the police were tasked with figuring out / finding whichever one did it, and frequently did, often quickly. This happened so often that it was a rare Saturday morning without at least one, and usually two or more of these events.
Banning guns would make almost no difference in those crime statistics, since most (at least at that time) were not carrying one. Their victims were equally as dead. Do people think they can shrink-wrap the world and keep everyone in it safe from everyone else? If it worked, would you want to live there?

Discover more from The Burning Platform

Subscribe now to keep reading and get access to the full archive.

Continue reading