Dallas News: It’s Already Too Late for Gun Control to Work
Gun rights advocate Dr. John R. Lott, the president of the Crime Prevention Research Center, says it’s too late for gun control to work.
With 300 million guns in the country and 12 million entering the market each year, he argues it would be nearly impossible to get rid of them.
Via Dallas News:
It seems obvious: Restrict gun access, and people will be safer. But theory and practice don’t always match. Too often, gun bans or background checks don’t stop criminals and instead disarm law-abiding citizens, particularly poor minorities. This only makes life easier for criminals.
There are already 300 million guns in circulation, and more than 12 million enter the market each year. With 3-D metal printers, more people will be able to make weapons that are indistinguishable from those purchased in stores. It would be almost impossible to remove those weapons from circulation. Getting rid of these weapons would require a door-to-door campaign by law enforcement officials, and even that would be of only limited effectiveness.
It’s also not clear that it would help. When countries like England, Wales, Ireland and Jamaica banned guns and handguns, they saw a subsequent increase in murder rates. Even these island nations, which have relatively easily monitored and defendable borders, have faced fivefold or sixfold increases in murder rates after guns were banned. Some of the biggest spikes in murder rates corresponded with increases in drug gang violence.
Some think that background checks are the answer. Indeed, after each mass public shooting, President Barack Obama calls for background checks on the selling of guns through private transfers. But these new rules wouldn’t have stopped the attackers. Since at least 2000, all of America’s mass shooters obtained guns without going through private transfers. Some of the attacks occurred in states that already have these background check laws.
Read more here.
