of course not, you dozy git

About the only positive thing I could ever say about MikeB302000 is that he has prompted a significant number of folks to pen a significant number of truly outstanding posts… kind like how overbearing, authoritarian, abusive governments prompted the founding of our great nation. At any rate, Joe Huffman has yet another amazing post up wherein he takes MikeB’s points out to the woodshed and beats them like the proverbial red-headed step-child, and I definitely believe you should give it a thorough read-through, especially with lines like this buried in it:

I think of people advocating gun control similar to people still claiming the earth is flat. They are absolutely correct that evidence to support their belief is all around us. It’s easy to see they are correct. It’s obvious if you just look around your neighborhoods and cities. But as soon as you look at the question from a little higher altitude you see the curvature of the earth and then you see the earth is unmistakably round and that gun control is not a net win for society.

However, today, I really want to highlight this comment from Gareth A in response to Joe’s post, and I hope neither of them will mind my republishing it in its entirety:

Thing is, the “idea that the best way is to severely restrict and control guns” is absolute bollocks.

I should know – I supported it in my youth, to my eternal shame.

We across the pond in the UK don’t have a progressive attitude towards firearms as groups like the American NRA or other gun owners do. As long as I’ve been alive, we’ve required permits, the bullshit “proof of need” that only the truly unscrupulous can support, and various storage restrictions and transfer rules.

Did that help stop crime? Correct answer: “No” (“Of course not, you dozy git” is also acceptable).

When I was little, we had a shooting at Dunblane Primary School, a short train trip from where I lived. Seventeen children and a teacher were murdered at Dunblane by a man who was believed to be a paedophile.

We banned handguns on the basis that he was believed to be a “law-abiding gun owner”.

The Cullen Enquiry proved that was shite. He lied on every application, he violated the conditions of his certificate, and would never have owned his guns if the police had actually done their job. Our quite irresponsible laws did nothing to stop him.

So what did we do? Passed even more irresponsible laws, of course, and to hell with what’s right! Mike and Joan would be proud.

We attacked almost seventy thousand innocent gun owners, banned their hobby and forced them to turn their property in. (I could do the whole “monsters” thing I like to say, but this is already getting too long)

The criminals over here weren’t affected. Indeed, gun crime has increased by a huge amount over here, so our evil acts did nothing to prevent criminals getting guns. To our shame, a number of my countrymen are still proud of what they accomplished – as if lying about and stealing from the innocent is something to be proud of.

The idea that the law-abiding should accept unnecessary and irresponsible restrictions for the greater bad has been tried. It has failed, here as well as several of your states and D.C. The idea that they should be punished for the actions of criminals – and that is what we’re talking about here, let’s admit it – is dishonest and evil. There is literally no good in such a suggestion.

You really cannot get a more-damning condemnation of “gun control” than a once-Great British subject and ex-”gun control”-supporter saying the above.

Of course, it helps that he is demonstrably correct as well: there is no causal relationship between firearms and firearm-related fatalities (the more-accurate term to describe the hallowed-by-anti-rights-cultists “gun deaths”), just like there is no causal relationship between firearms and firearm-related crimes in general. Additionally, once-Great Britain currently “enjoys” a violent crime rate that is over four times higher than that of America’s, despite, or perhaps because of (in some small part), the draconian and wholly ineffective “gun control” laws enacted in that country. Likewise, the violent crime rate here in America is decreasing from a peak in the ’90s despite (or, again, in some small part because of) the number of firearms in civilian hands steadily increasing, while the same cannot be said of countries still “experimenting” with “gun control”.

Time and time again, “gun control” has failed at its advertised purpose of increasing “public safety”. Time and time again, “gun control” has failed at its advertised purpose of “keeping firearms out of the hands of criminals”. Time and time again, “gun control” has been accurately and factually denounced by those who used to be amongst its faithful. And yet anti-rights cultists just continue to put forward variations on the them of, “Oh, it just has not been done right, yet!”

Sorry, folks – you have been screwing around with “gun control” for the past century or so, and if you have not gotten it “right” by now, you never are going to. Even worse, we have no shortage of countries currently attempting to get “gun control” “right”, and there is precisely no reason we have to follow them down that particular rabbit hole just to prove how ineffective the end result is.

Joe is absolutely correct – the time for experimenting with “gun control” is well and truly past, and the death toll from the previous attempts go far beyond the pale. Thankfully, our society seems to have a growing interest in respecting the rights of all people to engage in commerce, own private property, lead their lives as they see fit so long as it damages no one else, and defend themselves from aggressors; rather than imposing the non-existent “right” to force other people to be victims against their will… which is just as well, given how many folks share my opinion regarding their rights…