Gun control has never been a great idea, but it is a worse idea now than ever before. In the wake of a disputed election, with a self-confessed 'conspiracy' having overturned election laws illegally, that is not the time to violate the rights of the citizenry of the United States as those citizens understand their rights.
But as always, these people either don't understand the problem they're trying to fix or are lying about their intentions. Almost all gun violence in America is committed with handguns; they want to ban so-called 'assault weapons,' mostly rifles, which are used in a tiny fraction of illegal violence. Nearly a third of these handguns are stolen by the person who used them; the others are almost all bought on the black market or obtained from 'friends and family' (e.g. fellow gang members), meaning they were stolen along the line. "Ghost guns" are not even a statistical blip, it's a hobbyist phenomenon. Gun control laws will in no way affect the black market, and absent mass seizures of legal handguns -- which isn't even proposed by the current government -- it won't affect the ability of criminals to steal guns.
So no, none of this. It's bad timing, and badly considered anyway.
7 comments:
But as always, these people either don't understand the problem they're trying to fix or are lying about their intentions.
I don't agree that the self-proclaimed smartest ones in the room don't understand what they're doing or the environment in which they're trying to do it. The only thing they might be misreading is their level of support among average Americans for the doing.
Eric Hines
I once thought a logical argument would win over the anti-gun , well meaning, till I tried. Then all of Orwell's, Bezmanov's and Solzhenitsyn's cautions became real- there is no logical argument, no facts, no reasoning that will sway them from leftist indoctrination. I once had a guy insist it was morally OK to blow an intruder away with a shotgun (tolerated by the left at that time) on his property, yet beyond the pale to use a handgun (at that time the demon-gun of banning) to defend his family on the street.
^ These people, however, are Lenin's useful fools.
It is diamond clear the real reason for gun control is to disarm and criminalize political opponents. Same as it has ever been. It is what they have planned for afterwards that is of concern.
Someone once said governments want people disarmed for the same reasons criminals do- they intend to do something to you that would get them shot if you were armed.
Now we find Dear Leader wants to appoint a man who was instrumental in running a major gun banning organization and whos resume includes defending the murderers of 90 odd people at Waco these many years ago,to run the federal convenience store.
The "ghost gun" issue is typical but not isolated.
Recently a person-who-should-be-nameless shot up a grocery in Denver. Colorado. That state already has stricter-than-typical gun laws. The CO governor was on the news griping that his state's laws were too easily circumvented by his citizen's choice to go "next door" to Montana or Wyoming to get guns -- (with the unspoken suggestion that such purchases were for the purpose of committing crimes)
But in fact the grocery store shooter, who had surprisingly just acquired his fire arms within the month prior, bought that weapon IN COLORADO. He met the strict requirements. The states' restrictions did not, in fact, prevent this crazy person from committing mayhem. So, what is the rationale for imposing nationwide standards on, for instance, Wyoming? It would not have made any difference.
Had the Obama/Biden administration not failed to restrict "ghost guns" when they had their previous chance, how many mass shootings would have been prevented? Zero? How many suicides? Zero? How many gang-related shootings? How many instances of domestic violence? What, in short, has been the percentage of all firearm related injury or death in the past decade correctly attributable to "ghost guns"? And if that number is approximately zero, why is an effort to restrict them at all newsworthy -- let alone wise?
Just mentioning to Grim that I have another comment down the page at my own site under the word-meanings post, where he would be unlikely to see it.
As for the guns, I do not know the activists, but having worked with lots of liberals over my career, let me assure you that they really are this clueless. Most of them really believe that if we just had fewer guns around and made it harder for bad people to get them with obviously smart, common-sense rules, and (in their hearts) everyone stopped thinking they were so cool, gun crime would slowly go away. They know nothing of the statistics, the reasoning, or what laws are actually in place in their jurisdictions. They just want to sorta be on the side of gun-discouragement, without wanting to do much actual thinking about it. They like stories instead. If they harbor a secret, it's that this is mostly a black people problem but nobody better say that, and why are all these stupid hunters and sport-shooter people not HELPING by agreeing to some (wink, wink) useful rules?
The activists may be another matter, who really want to disarm their political opposition. I don't know any of them. But I don't assume that about the others. I know too many.
Rgr re: the updated post. Interesting -- I'll look for his last book when I can.
As for activists, I know quite a few left activists. Most of them I think really don't get it. Ghost guns alarm them because they are (gasp) unregulated. The fact that there's only a tiny group of guys involved, within a hobbyist community that is generally scrupulously law-abiding, doesn't matter so much as the fact that 'the government just doesn't have control of it, man!'
Journalists, of course, are pig-ignorant. Vice published an article on ghost guns that states that it's a growing problem because 30% of guns recovered from crime scenes in California have no serial numbers. Yes, I imagine that's true -- but it's not because they never had serial numbers. Those aren't ghost guns, they're stolen guns with the numbers filed off (which is the work of seconds with a Dremel or similar tool).
Of course I understand that the AR-15s and similar horrify them because of the press coverage of mass shootings. The fact that such shootings are a tiny percentage of the gun violence problem is not of interest; what's interest is their upsetting feelings when stories like that appear in the news. If you want to stop wrongful killings, far more people are killed with knives than rifles of all kinds put together; more even with blunt objects. But it's handguns, by far, where there's money to be made on the gun violence problem.
And then too (as you suggest) it's not even an American problem. It's a problem with a few neighborhoods in a few cities. Most American counties have either a zero murder rate (not zero percent, no murders at all) or has a statistically insignificant murder rate (maybe one or two this year, none another year, five in a third year). America is actually a very safe country, if you stay out of the bad parts of certain cities. In those neighborhoods, it's worse than Afghanistan.
So what's the solution? Intense policing of those few neighborhoods, of course -- the thing they're doing exactly the opposite of as a matter of policy. Thus, murder is up 20+% in one year, because of their bad idea. Rather than rethink the obvious bad idea with huge and clear negative effects, they're going to come after us.
Some of them, though, know. They know what they're doing, and that they've caused this problem, and they're intending to use it to try to disarm their real enemies -- old American families who still value the old American way. They are, I believe, a minority even of activists. They're dangerous, though, because they're the kind of people who cause a problem in order to have a crisis they can use -- the Rahm Emmanuel sort of activists, who never left a crisis go to waste and aren't above making one to suit their needs.
I also have deep suspicions of the attorneys working on the challenges, such as those trying to undermine Heller. We know they have at least been exposed to the pertinent statistics, so the choices are few about their thinking at this point. They may know but not care, because they are just competitive bastards who want to have a win against the bad conservative team, regardless of the effect on the nation. I do not rule that out, as I have watched the almost sexual glee ACLU and DRC lawyers have shown when winning a hearing against The Man, which in my case is the mental health system. Or they may still believe their original premises in spite of the information because they have no ability to abandon their narrative and horror stories, because they are sure their tribe could only be right, no matter the data. Or they may know it won't make the country safer, but it will make them safer in some long-term sense of having more power. I can't think of other choices that are not based on those three.
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