Guns 3 - The Good, The Bad and the Progressives

Jim Wallis presented the progressive view of the NRA's Dangerous Theology over at "God's Politics".  He tries to respond to Wayne LaPierre's cute little formula "“the only thing that stops a bad guy with a gun is a good guy with a gun.” by suggesting LaPierre has a simplistic view of human nature where people are either good or bad.  I'm quite sure LaPierre understands that human beings are a bit more complex than white hats and black hats, but that is hardly the point.  At a given moment, if a guy who is very bad at that moment has a weapon, it is a good thing for a cop, a security guard, a soldier or a conscientious citizen to be able to stop him - if necessary with a weapon.

But the real howler of an argument Wallis proposes goes like this:

When we are good, we want to protect our children — not by having more guns than the bad people, but by making sure guns aren’t the first available thing to people when they’re being bad.

The utter absurdity of that argument is very simple.  Gun laws do not accomplish that goal.  Gun laws do not prevent mass murderers from having guns.   (More)

Interesting reading the comments, particularly one by someone I do not know named Dagny Tagert.   She describes herself as a former D.C. Prosecutor who had first hand experience with the effects of gun control laws.  It is worth reading her full comment, but a couple of paragraphs caught my eye.

"As a former prosecutor in Washington, D.C., who enforced firearms and ammunition cases while a severe local gun ban was still in effect, I am skeptical of the benefits that many imagine will result from additional gun-control efforts. I dislike guns, but I believe that a nationwide firearms crackdown would place an undue burden on law enforcement and endanger civil liberties while potentially increasing crime.

"The D.C. gun ban, enacted in 1976, prohibited anyone other than law-enforcement officers from carrying a firearm in the city. Residents were even barred from keeping guns in their homes for self-defense.

"The gun ban had an unintended effect: It emboldened criminals because they knew that law-abiding District residents were unarmed and powerless to defend themselves. Violent crime increased after the law was enacted, with homicides rising to 369 in 1988, from 188 in 1976 when the ban started. By 1993, annual homicides had reached 454.

"In 2007, a panel for the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit ruled that the city's gun ban was unconstitutional. Senior Judge Laurence H. Silberman wrote in the majority opinion that "the black market for handguns in the District is so strong that handguns are readily available (probably at little premium) to criminals. It is asserted, therefore that the D.C. gun control laws irrationally prevent only law abiding citizens from owning handguns."

"Since the gun ban was struck down, murders in the District have steadily gone down, from 186 in 2008 to 88 in 2012, the lowest number since the law was enacted in 1976. The decline resulted from a variety of factors, but losing the gun ban certainly did not produce the rise in murders that many might have expected."

Wallis may not like NRA slogans, but in the end, the common sense embodied in such slogans is hard to argue with.  "If guns are outlawed, only outlaws will have guns".  That is a simple equation Wallis can't seem to compute.

Now that Diane Feinstein has proposed a law to go after not just "assault rifles" but handguns, maybe it needs to be said that the left does not want to understand the simple reality that gun laws don't reduce gun violence.  Maybe that isn't the point.  Maybe they don't care about the violence, maybe they just want a disarmed populace.

And that, without question, is a trampling on the letter and the intent of the 2nd Amendment to the constitution.