I don’t write much about guns and gun control. I’m pro-Second Amendment because I believe in the wisdom of the Constitution. I don’t own any myself, nor care to. My cousins once took me along to their local shooting range, and while I appreciated having that experience, it was all I really needed with guns. Just not my cup of tea.
But, as a conservative (i.e., classical liberal) and not a liberal (i.e. statist/authoritarian), I would never support the government’s suppression of my fellow citizens’ gun rights.
As far as gun control laws go, when I was politically-dormant young skull full of mush, I was for them. Less guns, less crime, right? Until relatively recently, I was of the same mindset as those who had marched in the “Million Mom March” for harsher gun control laws, and those who applauded Britain for its gun ban—which even applied to their law enforcement officers!
Then, shortly after 9/11, I woke up. The first thing I ever read arguing why gun control actually creates more violent crime was a chapter in Larry Elder’s amazing book, The Ten Things You Can’t Say in America. Why is this so? Because criminals aren’t going to stop using guns if the government bans them. If they’re perfectly willing to break the law by robbing, murdering, etc., why the heck would they obey any other law? Only law-abiding citizens are going to dutifully give up their guns. The result: Only bad guys have guns, and crime goes up because they know their victims are unarmed; the compaaassionate and caaaring government is the one who unarmed them! If a criminal thinks his potential victim might be armed, and that they know perfectly well how to use it, s/he will probably think twice about committing that crime. Such simple common sense that only a liberal/Democrat couldn’t get it.
Now I simply shake my head at these hypocrites who call themselves liberals but proudly support the government’s overt violation of the Second Amendment.
There are a number of complete books supporting gun rights, including The Seven Myths of Gun Control by Richard Poe and two by John Lott, Jr.: More Guns, Less Crime and The Bias Against Guns.
Read any of these books and one reaches the conclusion that—to quote a certain inconvenient demagogue—the science is settled and the debate is over: More gun rights do mean less crime. Yet to this day, liberals—who call themselves members of the “reality-based community” cling to their non-realistic ideology-influenced point of faith.
Take Washington D.C. It’s had among the strictest handgun bans in the country since the 1970’s yet had one of the nation’s highest violent crime rates. Then the Supreme Court declared the gun ban law unconstitutional in 2008, to the expected objections of the usual liberal/Democrat suspects:
I am personally deeply disappointed and quite frankly outraged by today's decision. Today's decision flies in the face of laws that have helped decrease gun violence in the District of Columbia. — Washington Mayor Adrian Fenty
On the same day a new report demonstrated a sharp rise in violent crime, a federal court handed down a decision that could pour even more guns onto the streets of our nation's capital. This decision is a major setback in the effort to make communities safer. — One of my two humiliating Senators, Frank Lautenberg (D-NJ)
Apparently, Lautenberg never wonders why this rise in violent crime despite strict handgun bans in several major U.S. cities across the country. The belief is that gun bans are supposed to reduce crime, yet they haven’t!
I believe the people of this great country will be less safe because of [the SCOTUS decision]. — Sen. Dianne Feinstein, (D-CA)
[The SCOTUS decision is] a very frightening decision. — Chicago Mayor Richard Daley
Ironically, on this very day Daley joined a coalition of mayors, including Newsom of San Francisco and Nutter of Philadelphia, in Washington to urge the Supreme Court to uphold the gun bans currently enforced in their (extremely crime-ridden) cities.
But, like D.C., Chicago has not experienced a drop in gun crime since its 1980’s gun ban; on the contrary, it’s only increased, as an editorial in today’s Washington Times reports:
Immediately after Chicago banned handguns in 1982, the murder rate, which had been falling almost continually for a decade, started to rise. Chicago’s murder rate rose relative to other large cities as well. The phenomenon of higher murder rates after gun bans are passed is not just limited to the United States. Every single time a country has passed a gun ban, its murder rate soared.
So, like Frank Lautenberg, Chicago’s Mayor Daley’s view of gun laws and their effectiveness is 180 degrees out of phase from reality.
January 21, 2010
EDITORIAL: Guns decrease murder rates
In Washington, the best defense is self-defenseMore guns in law-abiding hands mean less crime. The District of Columbia proves the point.
Reading most press accounts, one would be forgiven for thinking Armageddon had arrived after the Supreme Court struck down the District’s handgun ban in 2008. Predictions sprung forth from all directions that allowing more citizens to own guns and not forcing them to keep them locked up was going to threaten public safety. According to D.C. Mayor Adrian Fenty, more guns in homes would cause more violent crime.
Few who lived in Washington during the 1970s can forget the upswing in crime that started right after the ban was originally passed. In the five years before the 1977 ban, the murder rate fell from 37 to 27 murders per 100,000. In the five years after the gun ban went into effect, the murder rate rose back up to 35. One fact is particularly hard to ignore: D.C.’s murder rate fluctuated after 1976 but only once fell below what it was in 1976 before the ban. That aberration happened years later, in 1985.
… Between 2008 and 2009, the FBI’s preliminary numbers indicate that murders fell nationally by 10 percent and by about 8 percent in cities that have between 500,000 and 999,999 people. Washington’s population is about 590,000. During that same period of time, murders in the District fell by an astounding 25 percent, dropping from 186 to 140. The city only started allowing its citizens to own handguns for defense again in late 2008.
How could this be!? How could so many intelligent and compaaaaaassionate liberal/Democrats who are always for the “little guy” be so wrong? John Hawkins at Right Wing News explains it straightforwardly:
The results you just read aren’t the least bit shocking to anyone with an iota of common sense. All gun control laws do is take firearms out of the hands of people who obey the law. Criminals, who by definition don’t care about gun control laws, are aware of this and act accordingly. However, when law abiding Americans are allowed to exercise their constitutional right to own a firearm, it reduces crime because most criminals want helpless victims, not people who can put a hole between their eyes. This is evidence so clear that even a liberal should be able to see it.
I highly doubt that even if Daley, Newsom, Nutter, or Feinstein did get this data, it would do nothing to change their mind on the issue. To be a liberal/Democrat is to be a creature of ideology, a practitioner of blind faith. We’ve seen them act this way in their approach to economic issues like taxation, minimum wage laws, etc.; fighting radical Islamic terror; and man-made global warming climate change.
When it comes to applying real solutions to any of these issues, hard facts, unadulterated data, and just plain ol’ common sense are the last things they seem to utilize.
P.S. Wanna see how hypocritical liberals can be? Just look at Hollywood. Outspoken gun control advocate Rosie O'Donnell admitted in 2000 that her child received special permission to be accompanied at school by an armed bodyguard. And in 2003 the agitating and annoying Sean Penn was caught with a loaded 9mm Glock handgun and unloaded .38-caliber Smith & Wesson. Ahh, so nice being a liberal (especially a Hollywood liberal). One set of rules for you, one for eeeeeveryone else. Apparently they do think people should have guns, as long as they get to decide which people.
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