Dan McLaughlin of National Review Online dissects problems with standard gun-control arguments.
Targeting guns is foolish as a diagnosis and worse as a cure. Those who leap at gun control as an answer to political violence and mass-casualty attacks on schools are not going to accomplish anything, and along the way, they’re draining the time, attention, and public energy that could be put into solutions more tailored to the problem. That’s not harmless. …
… First, the diagnosis is too narrow. To harp on “gun violence” and convene working groups and legislative sessions on the topic is to suggest that other kinds of violence are just not the same kind of problem. But that’s not realistic. Plenty of spectacular and brutal crimes are committed without guns, from the horrific stabbing of Iryna Zarutska on a Charlotte train earlier this month to the stabbing, burning, and “molesting” of an elderly couple in Queens the same week. Many nations with few guns still have serious problems of violence and murder on the street. …
… Guns are very useful in committing violence, and they are particularly useful in killing political figures from a distance or hunting down people inside a school or workplace. There’s a reason why they are the most common weapon of choice for these kinds of assaults. But when you focus exclusively on the guns as the problem rather than the violence, you’re already missing part of the picture — a part that would be bound to grow bigger if you actually succeeded in doing away with guns. …
… Second, the diagnosis is too broad. There are hundreds of millions of guns in this country — maybe as many as half a billion, depending upon what estimates you believe. We probably have more guns in America than people. Far fewer than 1 percent will ever be used in a violent crime, and a comparably low percentage of gun owners will ever use their weapon in a violent crime. A governor or member of Congress is statistically far more likely to be involved in a crime than is a gun or an owner of a legally purchased and owned gun.
