A little more on handgun bans
Another column today from a Reason writer on the silliness of handgun laws; I’ll just cut to the chase:
Who places the highest value on owning a firearm? Criminals. Who is least likely to fear being prosecuted for violating the law? Criminals. Who is most likely to have access to illicit dealers? You guessed it.
If we were starting out in a country with zero guns, it might be possible to keep such weapons away from bad guys. But that’s not this country, which has more than 200 million firearms in private hands and a large perpetual supply of legal handguns.
This is pretty incontrovertible, and the reason that handgun bans have never, ever, EVER made the slightest bit of sense. People who commit murders, by and large, aren’t ordinary citizens who become enraged by something in their personal life, go out with intent to kill, and pull the trigger. People who commit murders are already criminals — drug dealers and other assorted lowlifes — who are going to have guns no matter what the law says. This is the world in which we live. Restrictions on handguns simply stop law abiding citizens from owning them.
I really would like to hear someone make a coherent case* against banning your average citizen from owning a handgun. There really isn’t one. It’s madness that restrictions against them have persisted for so long.
*I have a theory about what the real argument in their heart of hearts is, but one that’s only half-baked: People who argue against owning handguns and concealed-carry laws do so because they think you should be passive in the face of crime. “It’s only stuff — nothing is worth losing your life over” is the refrain that you hear when a certain segment of the population tells you how to react to a mugging. In order to ensure that you buy into that mantra, they want to keep you unarmed…but — and this is the half-baked part — they also want to keep the mugger from getting hurt. Not only is “nothing worth losing your life over,” but also “nothing is worth killing to protect yourself over.”
Like I said, kind of half-baked. But isn’t this what blogging is all about? Throwing out half-baked theories and letting the masses argue it out?