Dangerous thoughts

I got some email from the “Gun Guy” today. I guess this bigot has never heard of the concept of prior restraint. But of course that isn’t surprising since he apparently hasn’t gotten the word the Second Amendment as well as most state constitutions guarantee the people the right to keep and bear arms.

Here is the scary stuff:

Many of our current gun laws have loopholes and vary from state to state. So, even if we locked up all the criminals, all we’d end up with is… more criminals. Most criminals don’t commit crimes based on some inner, unavoidable evil inside of them. They commit crimes when given the opportunity to do so. Get rid of that opportunity, and you get rid of the crime completely.

So enforcement alone won’t do it. But prevention will. Prevention in the form of comprehensive and effective gun laws — laws that keep guns from ever reaching the hands of criminals in the first place — will make a difference. Laws that keep weapons that do not belong in civilian hands, such as high powered rifles, will make a difference. And, laws that keep firearms out of the places they shouldn’t be, and that stop crime even before it starts, will also make a difference.

That’s how you stop crime. What the NRA misses when it asks for enforcement only is that enforcing the law doesn’t actually prevent it. You can’t arrest someone until after they’ve committed a crime, so if all you do is arrest criminals, you’re still seeing the crimes happen.

We need to remove opportunities for crime? Yeah, right. Does that mean to prevent rape we should castrate all the men? How about sewing all vagina shut so women can’t engage in prostitution? Or removing eyes so people can’t engage in voyeurism? And to prove I’m not stuck on sex crimes, we can prevent fights by shackling the hands and feet of everyone. We can prevent drunk driving and public drunkenness by banning alcohol. Slander can be prevented by removing people’s vocal cords. Libel can be prevented by banning publication of, well, everything. And while we are at it we can prevent theft by abolishing private property.

This isn’t the first time this anti-freedom bigot has pushed this particular hot-button of mine.

The bottom line is you cannot prevent crime without going down a very dangerous path.

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