Over at ammoland.com, David Cordrea advises readers to counter gun control advocates with a simple question: “What ‘gun law’ would have prevented the Las Vegas massacre?” You may be surprised to know that some gun control advocates asked themselves the same question. And answered it correctly: there isn’t a law that would have stopped spree killer Stephen Paddock. You be less surprised to discover . . .
that fact does nothing to deter the antis from the civilian disarmament agenda. Here’s Rolling Stone scribe Jesse Berney (above) “wrestling” with the truth about the Mandalay Bay slaughter, in an editorial headlined Evil Doesn’t Kill People – Guns Kill People:
The problem here isn’t evil. It’s not the devil. It’s us: human beings. We have motivations and justifications and rationalizations and reasons for everything we do. We don’t know why Stephen Paddock murdered those people. Maybe we never will. And maybe the sensible laws we could pass, like universal background checks and a ban on all assault weapons, wouldn’t have stopped someone so wealthy and motivated to commit horror. But it could stop someone else. It would save lives.
So gun control could stop someone poor and poorly motivated? And that’s good enough reason to deny Americans their natural, civil and Constitutionally protected right to keep and bear arms? I don’t think so. But a lot of people do.
Blaming evil is an excuse to do nothing in the face of tens of thousands of gun deaths a year. Only a fraction of those deaths are the result of mass shootings like in Las Vegas. We can and should work to reduce all gun deaths, from suicides to accidents to crime-related deaths to massacres like Sunday’s. That means passing laws that keeps guns out of the hands of people who shouldn’t have them. The only other option is to do nothing.
So close! And yet so far.
Like all gun control advocates, who are by their very nature statists, Mr. Berney sees gun control as a panacea. If we pass the right laws, we can reduce suicides! Accidents! Crime-related deaths! Massacres!
Yeah, no. Gun control doesn’t work.
But there are things we can do to tackle these firearms-related injuries and deaths, reaching out more effectively to people contemplating suicide. Educating school children and teens on firearms safety. Eliminating the revolving door justice system in big cities.
As for massacres, I’m not so sure there’s a lot we can do, save arming ourselves and making sure we have the best law enforcement tax money can buy.
But I am sure that doing nothing on gun control is the correct course of action in the wake of the Las Vegas killing, or any other firearms-related tragedy. Take it from the son of a Holocaust survivor, the “cure” would be far worse than the problem.