User's avatar
⭠ Return to thread
Thomas M Gregg's avatar

I note that Bari & Co. skirted around the demographic component of gun violence. If you can’t talk about that, what’s the point of all this chin pulling about the Second Amendment?

Inner city gangbangers aren’t purchasing their weapons at gun shows. Almost all are obtained illegally. There are laws on the books that would enable the authorities to crack down on that illegal market, but for various reasons—bureaucratic inertia and progressive ideology—they’re not rigorously enforced. Congress can pass call the laws it likes but unless they’re enforced, they’re perfectly useless.

I have a hard time accepting that progressives are sincere in their desire to reduce gun violence. Let’s just say that their anti-police rhetoric and policies are not helpful. Demanding new laws and regulations while reviling law enforcement betrays a certain disorganization of thought.

When one considers that almost all gun violence in this country is perpetrated by criminals or head cases, it seem a bit wooly-headed to spend so much time obsessing over America’s “gun culture.” Relative to the number of firearms in private hands, the gun homicide rate is not excessive. So perhaps it would be better to concentrate on the actual, real-world problem instead of engaging in social science theorizing of dubious utility.

It would be no complex task to secure our schools against mass shootings. Simply treat it as a military problem and identify the passive and active defense measures needed to prevent or repel an attack. It’s not that the solution is complicated, it’s that many people refuse to accept a grim reality: If a shooter gets inside a school, the result will be a massacre if there’s no on-site armed defense.

While I don’t oppose them, enhanced red flag laws, enhanced background checks & etc. are not to be relied upon. They’re too dependent on an elephantine bureaucracy that lets too much fall through the cracks. Ditto spending more on mental health: It’s hard to imagine a less efficient, less cost-effective method of preventing mass shootings.

Finally, let’s quit comparing America to other countries like Britain, Germany, etc. that actually are very different from our own. By and large, we can’t solve our gun violence problem by importing foreign laws and regulations. What Australia did would never be tolerable or even workable here. And as the pandemic revealed, Australia is not exactly the model of a liberal democracy.

Expand full comment