Another windmill to joust with

Columnist John Railey wrote an opinion piece asking for ‘compromise’ and ‘common sense’ in regards to gun control.  I responded with the following:

—–Original Message—–
From: Joe Huffman 
Sent: Sunday, November 28, 2004 2:13 PM
To:
‘jrailey@wsjournal.com’
Subject: “Common sense” gun control.

Unfortunately, as near as I can tell, whenever and wherever governments have tried to restrict access to weapons of any type they do not succeed in making the average person any safer.  There are basically two ways to look at the problem. 

1) Compare geographically and politically similar areas during the same time frame which have different laws regarding weapons.  Examples would be Washington D.C. (handguns banned) versus nearby Virginia (both concealed and open carry of handguns is legal).
2) Compare the situation before and after a weapons law is passed.  Did the crime rate change for the better when the laws were more restrictive.  Examples include the “Assault Weapons Ban”, the passage of laws against handguns in D.C. and laws making the concealed carry of weapons easier or more difficult.

Both methods come up empty if you are looking for successful (in terms of making the average person safer) gun control.  However there are numerous examples where gun control has enabled genocide (Germany, Soviet Union, China, Rwanda, etc.)

So the question is, “What is ‘common sense’ in regards to ‘gun control’?”  The only answers I come up with are that gun control means being able to hit your target and the individual maintains complete control of their own guns.

Regards,

Joe Huffman
—-
http://blog.joehuffman.org
http://www.boomershoot.org

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