What is the Purpose of Gun Control?
Russ Chastain 10.15.15
An interesting article was posted last June and was recently reposted elsewhere, where it came to my attention. It looks at numbers and data and draws conclusions about whether gun control helps reduce crime or makes a citizenry more susceptible to criminals by taking away their means of self-defense
Gun control is designed to stop people from killing each other, at least that’s what we are always told. Let’s take a look at the data…
The author looks at the UK, Ireland, and Australia and concludes that their wide-sweeping gun bans have neither reduced nor increased violent crime.
Plain and simple. Gun control has no significant impact on murder rates. Removing firearms does not typically create massive lawlessness. It is a moot point. These figures aren’t a secret.
I can’t say I agree that taking our guns will have a benign effect. After all, statistics can be made to say just about anything. But his next point is where it gets interesting:
Why would the governments of these nations want a disarmed populace? For the answer, it is best to look at a nation that has had long-time gun bans that is currently relaxing their laws.
Russia recently relaxed its firearms laws. For the first time in recent memory, a Russian citizen can carry a firearm. The prohibited items speak volumes about what a government’s motive behind disarming the population is. Russia has allowed ‘smoothbore long barrelled guns, pistols, revolvers, and other firearms, as well as Tasers, and devices equipped with teargas.’
That’s almost everything, what is still banned? Rifles. So the Russian government has made it clear that the real objective is to remove rifles from civilian hands. The reasoning is pretty clear: you need rifles to overthrow a government.
He also pontificates that “The Real Reason Gun Control Will Never Work” is that a do-it-yourself society can make its own guns if it wants to. And while this is true, I see it as a non-issue. Criminals will get guns, and if they are outlawed, peaceable[sic] citizens will get guns, too. They just won’t buy them in gun shops.
His final point is one with which I can certainly agree:
Firearms are the Pandora’s Box of the United States. The box is open, it can’t be closed through legislation. If you want to change society, you have to actually change the whole of society. You can’t blame an inanimate object that’s availability has absolutely no correlation to murder and expect to end violence.
In the end, any increase in violence is due to changing attitudes of people towards one another and towards the intrinsic value of life.
And an unarmed populace is subject to the cruelest treatment by its government. That is most certainly the reason our Founders included the Second Amendment in the Bill of Rights.
Thoughts?
