This is probably the single best thing I’ve read about guns, gun control and useful policies going forward (via Instapundit). I’ll admit that my own conclusions went in this general direction including his opinion on concealed carry, so it could be a matter of confirmation bias on my part. Still, he takes on all forms of argument about gun control and throws in a number of surprises that I was unaware of in response to the usual arguments for gun control.
For instance, gun control proponents like to hold up Australia as a shining example of a success story. Why? Because in direct response to a mass shooting they banned guns and instituted a buy-back program. Since there have been no mass shootings. Sounds great, but, it turns out, the devil is in the details. Turns out there is little evidence that the new gun controls have had much effect on crime and violent crime in general.
There are other interesting tidbits throughout the article. Go give it a read.
One reply on “On Gun Control”
As your linked friend said, it’s been too much over the past few weeks to actually think of this topic. I will respond to your earlier comments GM, but this fellow is rather interesting. He uses almost zero statistical evidence, maybe even zero, to validate his assertions. Because indeed they are assertions. Nothing more. There is much evidence to contradict almost all of his policy points, the few that he has. He does give us the high school level grand tour of his credentials though. He is a bad ass with guns. Wow. Does that some how make him a great social theorist?
We can get into the evidence on this later, but I want to make sure I give you credit where it is due. And you have a good point because you use facts that we can all agree on. There are indeed 300 million guns in the US or close enough that it doesn’t matter. If we banned guns and confiscated or repurchased it would take 50 years or more to get rid of them. But i believe the evidence says we could get close enough to make these horrible events vanish. If the evidence says it, is it not a worthy goal? can you answer that honestly? Because then it becomes a discussion about the evidence. Back to your point. There remains the issue of what to do in the mean time. That issue is real. How do we solve that?
But what is the end game? Again, all evidence in every developed market economy tells us we can get to a state where there is a tiny fraction of the gun death, and thus homicide, that we have inthe US. Fact. Is there another way to achieve the same result without removing guns? Maybe. But how much experimentation can you justify as the children’s bodies pile up?
And yes, let’s get the data. Get back to old school republican points based on facts, science, and hard evidence and logic. Not slogans and pseudo science and faith.