I was kind of busy in the evening - got home and found I'd lost my cellphone, so ended up having to get a new one and a new SIMM card. It's like losing half your brain, almost - there were a lot of numbers in it that I hadn't bothered to write down, since they were safely ensconced in the SIMM chip...
I was going to write something light on taxes, since yesterday was the deadline for turning them in, and urge you to go to Fairtax.org and fax your Representatives if you support it - but their fax drive is over with only a 34% excess of their target. I'll admit I'd definitely like to see the Fair Tax become law - every year I boggle at the complexity of our tax system and am getting quite tired of seeing tax rates be used as a political football.
But I've been watching a bit of the coverage of the VATech massacre, and I'm pretty saddened both by the event and by the reactions to it. As far as I'm concerned, it's amazing how gun control proponents seem to overlook one very basic fact that's been amply proven in England and Australia. The simple fact? Criminals don't obey the laws. You create a gun-free zone, and you advertize to the criminal that he'll find a large number of helpless victims there.
The VATech campus was a gun-free zone.
In 1981 the city of Morton Grove, IL, declared itself a gun-free zone. Kennesaw, GA in response mandated all households were supposed to have a firearm. By some logic, you'd expect crime to plummet in Morton Grove and leap by several orders of magnatude in Kennesaw. However - Morton Grove's crime rate was pretty much unchanged, while Kennesaw's crime rate (which wasn't high) plummeted. And 18 years later, (in 1999) the number of crimes was about 2/3rds that in 1981, while the population had increased 4 times.
It's counterintuitive to some thinking - after all more guns should equal more crime. Yet - more guns in the hands of responsible gun owners may well be something a criminal would dread. You want your victims unarmed, helpless, unable to fight back.
Yet banning guns supposedly makes you safer. That just doesn't seem to prove out...
Anyway, there's a lot of stuff out there if you're looking for it re VATech, and the political machinations going on by the various gun-grabber groups. I don't find their arguments particularly compelling, primarily because they simply can't bring themselves to comprehend that criminals who won't obey other laws are pretty unlikely to comply with laws requiring them to turn their firearms in.
And I'd sure like to write about something positive tonight - but it's just not coming.
J.
Comments (3)
Government cannot do anything more... Laws are *not* the answer as all the ones on the books cannot be enforced as-is.
When government fails, it is up to Citizens to change things. I am for Responsible Open Carry of Arms. Civil society is based on knowing that force can be used to keep the peace. And when everything else fails Free People, they *must* look to themselves and join with others to do like-wise.
Posted by ajacksonian | April 21, 2007 9:32 AM
Posted on April 21, 2007 09:32
The thinking sure seems to be that there's some magical number of laws that will automatically turn everyone law-abiding.
Yeah. Sure there is. Sooner or later it's going to become apparent that all the laws in the world are worthless without the will and the ability to enforce them.
J.
Posted by JLawson | April 24, 2007 10:18 PM
Posted on April 24, 2007 22:18
What was that about the difference between the US and USSR? 'The Rule of Law and the Law of Rules', I believe it was. Seems we have a few too many people saying that 'there ought to be a law'... and forgetting that Free People should not need a law for everything. Win the Cold War, but lose it at home.
Put a 10 year sunset on laws... start with the last number of the year and when that number comes up, either re-up or drop. Keep the legislators *busy* reminding us why we need the laws we have. And any new one increases *their* workload.
Responsible Armed Citizens willing to use their Arms to protect themselves, their families and society from those things that Armies and Police just can't be around for. That was the ancient way to show that civilization was kept civil. We have forgotten that and now are too peaceful to be Free.
Posted by ajacksonian | April 27, 2007 6:34 PM
Posted on April 27, 2007 18:34