Cowboy Confessional

One radio talk show host recently asked me to name the top five myths about gun control.

My response was “Why discuss only 0.0001% of the lies?”

Statistical snideness aside, the question provoked unnecessary thinking inside my convoluted cranium. It would be easy to rattle off several fabrications about firearms, numerous misinformation points involving numbers, or even disclose that Chuck Schumer admires Jared Loughner’s comparatively advanced sanity. All those things would bore the average audience into comas and not enlighten discussions about a political perversion called the gun control “movement” (given the utter lack of dues paying members to any gun control organization, and given their backward “progress” in the last two decades, it is safe to say that they retain only one movement, which seems to have evacuated their collective brains).

After consideration, the myths about gun control were reduced to these basic five points.

Myth #1 – gun control works: There are more data points detailing the failure of gun control than stars in the sky, grains of sand on the world’s beaches, or Nancy Pelosi Botox injections. The main myth is that the stuff works. Indeed, we have Bill “The Zipper” Clinton to thank not only for endless new cigar jokes, but for kick-starting a five year study by the National Academy of Sciences that found zero evidence existed showing a correlation between gun control and violent crime. After ingesting 253 peer-reviewed journal articles, 99 different books, 43 government publications, a survey of 80 different gun-control laws and some of their own independent research, they scat a 328-page report that showed reducing firearm ownership rates does nothing to reduce criminal firearm misuse rates.

Myth #2 – “common sense” gun control laws: Dictionaries confound political discussions. My dictionary defines “common sense” as “sound practical judgment that is independent of specialized knowledge.” For any law to be “common sense” oriented, there must be a clear end result, an expectation that it will be enforced, and some validation that the scheme has the desired effect. No proposal from the Brady Campaign, Violence Policy Center, or Criminals for Societal Manipulation (a.k.a. Michael Bloomberg’s Mayors Against Illegal Guns) meets the definition of “common sense.” The desired results all depend on the assumptions that criminals will not disobey the new laws (such as filing off microstamping markers) or that the laws will be executed and enforced (such as catching criminals with now altered guns, which they stole to begin with). Common sense requires incarcerating miscreants, not unviable and exotic technology.

Myth #3 – gun control reduces violent crime overseas: This Lie of Exotic Divergence was once popular in gun control cabals, until the Dutch Ministry of Justice performed a uniform, multi-national survey of crime victimization, discovering that violent crime rates were higher in Australia, England, Scotland, Canada, Finland, Poland, Ireland, Denmark, France, Sweden and Holland (America ranked #13 of 17 nations for violent tendencies, with Japan, Portugal, Spain and barely Belgium beating us). Our firearm homicide rate is higher in the USofA, but our own Bureau of Justice Statistics says that 94% of gang homicides use guns. Eliminating Crips and Bloods – what a wonderful idea – might bring American violence levels down to Japan’s (about 1/4^th of what we endure, which is less than half of what Australia does).

Myth #4 – concealed carry laws endanger the public: When Barack Obama told the Chicago Sun Times “There has not been any evidence that allowing people to carry a concealed weapon is going to make anyone safer,” intelligent and educated people were forced into impromptu BVD changes due to laughter-induced involuntary tinkling. In 1988 only 10 states allowed citizens to carry concealed firearms, and two of them had simply never bothered to outlaw the practice. Today 42 states provide for private pistol packing, and the violent crime rate is 32% lower than 23 years ago. In email, professor John Lott told me that not one peer-reviewed criminology paper showed violent crime rising in states that passed concealed carry laws. Yet Barry Obama dislikes the idea, proving that the people who voted for him are as intelligent as he.

Myth #5 –– “we have to do something”: We have to do smart things, which means isolating and understanding the source of violence, and if you are myopic enough the source of gun violence. Doing “something” for the sake of doing it means wasting grand gobs of tax money and police time chasing otherwise innocent citizens and not garden variety thugs. Given the number of firearm homicides, the fact that 94% of those gang homicides use guns, and that gang suspects in homicides are the lead subject in an average of two more unsolved homicides, then most of the mess could be canceled by incarcerating as few as 3,000 well known repeat violent offenders. That would be doing something smart.

But perhaps the simplest approach would be to re-legalize narcotics (click to engorge).  As seen all too clearly, whenever America dons its paternalistic mask and denies adults recreational intoxicants, criminals crawl from the fundament, providing ample competition to Congress, and otherwise enacting outrageous violence upon people to protect profits. To change bad behavior you have to address the motivations for those behaving badly. Since everyone in the illegal drug business, from your corner dealer to the head of the Zeta Cartel, is motivated by money, re-legalizing dope denies them the ability to make a buck and thus the drive for drive-bys. Government should reverse the process it created, and give poor Sarah Brady a reason to changer her behavior too.

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This entry was posted by Guy Smith on Saturday, July 30th, 2011 at 8:06 am and is filed under Buncombe, Gun control. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.