Gun control, as a philosophy and as a political mechanism, is a flimsy sham. It has become a smoke screen behind which its proponents hide two simple facts: 1) they are more interested in controlling the public than reducing crime, and 2) they are incompetent when it comes to reducing crime.
Dave Workman
May 29, 2009
Gun control laws target wrong people, don’t stop violence
[It’s preaching to the choir but it helps to reinforce the talking points.–Joe]
Go, Dave, go!
If I wasn’t so lazy, I’d make up a long list of social corrective policies that didn’t work; where the proponents, defeated by embarrassing and public failure, simply blamed guns. As that fell out of favor due to an unfortunate collision with logic, an unspecified quantity of guns became the problem–it is said they’re on the streets, so don’t sprain an ankle–and neutralizing a portion became the (false) metric of progress. The focus on so-called gun trafficking is simply a modification of the last idea.
Examples:
. Opiate/Cannabis prohibition turf wars over the contraband market
. Alcohol Prohibition era turf wars over the contraband market
. Inadequate or ineffective (or simply impossible) treatment of the dangerous mentally ill, (the mentally ill also receiving an enormously broad brushstroke, so that they are all assumed to be dangerous)
. The suicide rate
. Careless and stupid people, (as if someone who leaves a loaded gun within reach of a three-year-old is going to be careful putting away the poison and power tools)
. Miniature urban socialist paradises filled with people who were told they were stupid and useless, have little experience with effort and reward, or rights of ownership
. Inadequate sentencing, focus on non-violent criminals, or use of incarceration for useless prohibition violations
That last one is becoming the bee in my bonnet, because it’s being used by absolutists to sentence people to a lifetime of rights deprivation . “You don’t want /felons/ to be able to /vote/ and have access to weapons, /do you?/” Thanks for the argument, but I’ll pass. It’s not everyone else’s fault in the /entire country/ that Judge Swingindoor sentenced Killy McArsonmurder twenty times in ten years; if he spends more time among the people than in a cell, that’s an argument in favor of an armed society.