May They Will See the Light

Coming from the Brits, who always make fun of our gun culture, this is rich.

Despite the recent spate of shootings on our streets, we pride ourselves on our strict gun laws. Every time an American gunman goes on a killing spree, we shake our heads in righteous disbelief at our poor benighted colonial cousins. Why is it, even after the Virginia Tech massacre, that Americans still resist calls for more gun controls?

The short answer is that “gun controls” do not work: they are indeed generally perverse in their effects. Virginia Tech, where 32 students were shot in April, had a strict gun ban policy and only last year successfully resisted a legal challenge that would have allowed the carrying of licensed defensive weapons on campus. It is with a measure of bitter irony that we recall Thomas Jefferson, founder of the University of Virginia, recording the words of Cesare Beccaria: “Laws that forbid the carrying of arms . . . disarm only those who are neither inclined nor determined to commit crimes . . . Such laws make things worse for the assaulted and better for the assailants; they serve rather to encourage than to prevent homicides, for an unarmed man may be attacked with greater confidence than an armed man.”

Maybe they will finally get a clue. Prohibition of any kind doesn’t work. It only feeds a black market and underground culture. In countries like Saudi Arabia where alcohol and porn are forbidden under strict penalty they have a problem with alcoholism and porn is extremely popular.  When Britain made their gun laws stricter, gun crime increased. It’s actually worse there than here now, in some cities.

I say its time nations rethink these laws. And certainly, no society should prevent people from protecting themselves. No society that does can call itself free.

[Via Instapundit]

<< Back to main