Here we go again. The Left, which was so fond of reminding Americans how terrible it was to “politicize a tragedy” just a few months ago, has predictably moved quickly to capitalize on an absolutely horrific mass-shooting at a grade school in Connecticut. Within hours of the appalling news, gun control rallies were held outside of the White House, the media was calling for tougher laws and liberals were demonizing the NRA.
Although the shooter, who was found dead from an apparent self-inflicted gunshot wound, has miraculously avoided any fault for his evil acts from much of the punditry, it’s probably only a matter of time before specific Republicans are identified as particularly blameworthy (perhaps Sarah Palin, Jeb Bush or the Tea Party).
Everyone engaged in the current blame game over the actions of a mentally deranged madman needs a dose of sober reality. Even if the gunman obtained his firearms legally, there will never be any way to know whether tougher gun control laws would have prevented the massacre.
A man so unbalanced as to want to shoot-up a school could have gotten a gun just as easily as a drug addict gets their next high. How are all those “drug-control” laws working out for America anyway?
Tellingly, politicians and pundits only seem to call for a “national conversation” on gun control immediately after an emotionally jarring incident virtually guarantees an irrational debate.
That’s because a calmer discussion of gun laws in America would not paint the picture of carnage liberals are so adept at using to their political advantage.
For example, the FBI’s database of crime statistics continues to show reducing rates of violent crime throughout the United States despite a huge surge in gun sales over the past ten years. Florida, which will soon issue its millionth concealed carry permit (about 1 in 19 Floridians have one), is also enjoying a 40-year low in crime rates. Washington, D.C. is on track to have a record low number of homicides in 2012, notwithstanding lifting its handgun ban in 2008.
Chicago on the other hand, in spite of having the toughest gun control laws in the country, is in the middle of a dramatic surge in gun violence. It seems Chicago’s criminals didn’t get the gun-ban memo.
Admittedly, there are likely lots of factors at work contributing to these statistical trends, but the point is it’s easy to poke holes in the liberal fantasy that access to guns invariably leads to bloodshed.
But statistics are meaningless to pundits with a political score to settle anyhow. Otherwise there would have already been calls to address the “epidemic” of backyard pool drowning, which statistically speaking, is 100 times more deadly to children than gun violence.
Regardless of the statistics or politics on guns, 7th Circuit Judge Richard Posner made it clear this week that the Supreme Court “wasn’t going to make the right to bear arms depend on casualty counts.”
Americans didn’t so quickly brush aside the First, Fourth and Fifth Amendments after Sept. 11, even if it would have made fighting terrorism easier. Americans likewise shouldn’t disregard the Second Amendment just because honoring a long-cherished individual freedom is temporarily uncomfortable.
Entirely ignored in the gun control debate is the fact that America’s gun culture was around more than a century before people began engaging in these horrific mass-shootings. That of course would require people to acknowledge an uncomfortable truth: maybe certain aspects of American society are more at fault than America’s guns.
