GUN CONTROL DOESN'T WORK

Let's get one thing straight: it's not about gun control.

There are lies, damn lies, and statistics. You can find a study that says anything about anything. Many people are quoting biased studies from politically motivated groups like The Brady Campaign. That's fine if you want to inflame your passions by reading stuff you already agree with, but if you really want to learn something you have to refer to an authoritative peer reviewed source.

The National Academy of Sciences is one of the oldest, most prestigous scientific/adademic organizations in this country. In 2004 they completed and published the most comprehensive, methodological study of gun control ever done.

In their own words: The committee found that answers to some of the most pressing questions cannot be addressed with existing data and research methods, however well designed. For example, despite a large body of research, the committee found no credible evidence that the passage of right-to-carry laws decreases or increases violent crime, and there is almost no empirical evidence that the more than 80 prevention programs focused on gun-related violence have had any effect on childrens behavior, knowledge, attitudes, or beliefs about firearms. The committee found that the data available on these questions are too weak to support unambiguous conclusions or strong policy statements.

In short, they said the data on gun control and crime is inconclusive. But think a moment about what this implies. Based on hundreds of journal articles and books, government publications and statistics, surveys covered gun-control measures and its own empirical work, the most comprehensive gun control study ever made could not find a single gun control law of any kind that reduced murder, violent crime, accidents or suicide. If there is a relationship between gun control and crime, it is so weak that all the data recorded for more than half a century by reliable government sources, local state and federal, fails to reveal it.

Their report is free to the public; you can download and read it here.

One of the many laws they studied was the Clinton 'Assault Weapons' Ban, which was in effect for 10 years. Like all the other laws they studied, it had no measurable impact on murder, crime, accidents or suicide. Yet the Obama administration wants to do it all over again. I suppose it will make them and their supporters feel good about themselves for "doing something about the problem". The fact that these measures have already proven totally ineffective seems not to matter.

ASSAULT WEAPON?

What is an assault weapon? They're not machine guns. Machine guns are "fully automatic", meaning they fire multiple shots with a single trigger pull. That is, hold the trigger down and they spray bullets. They have been strictly regulated since the 1934 National Firearms Act and private possession has been illegal in most states since the 1930s. Crimes involving machine guns are extremely rare since the prohibition era of the 1920s.

A "semi automatic" firearm fires one shot every time you pull the trigger, like a revolver. Semi automatic handguns and rifles have existed for more than 100 years.

In short, there is no obvious distinguishing characteristic to define an "assault weapon". An 80 year old vintage M-1 Garand, standard issue to the common soldier in WW-II, commonly used for hunting and other lawful purposes by thousands of people across the USA, fires just as fast, has the same accuracy, and is more powerful than the AR-15 used in the Sandy Hill shootings.

If you read the Clinton 'Assault Weapons' Ban, an "assault weapon" is anything black and plastic that looks like a machine gun, or can fire more than 10 shots without being reloaded.

IT'S A CULTURAL PROBLEM

Before the 1968 Gun Control Act, anyone could buy rifles, shotguns and handguns anywhere, even through the mail, with no background checks. This sweeping gun control legislation was spurred in part by assassinations in the 1960s, including JFK and Martin Luther King. Yet despite these assassinations, and with firearms readily accessible to anyone, mass shootings occurred less frequently back then than they do today. The 1968 act was only the beginning. Over the next several decades, gun control laws proliferated.

Comparisons to other countries miss the mark because it's impossible to disentangle cultural differences.

Japan, South Korea and the UK have all outlawed personal possession of handguns and all have a lower murder rate than the USA. But Japan and South Korea have double the suicide rate of the USA, and the UK has a higher rate of violent crime than the USA (despite having a lower murder rate).

Even countries with very strict gun laws still have mass murders of even greater scale than Sandy Hill.

Comparisons between different states in the USA are closer but still are tainted with cultural differences. Generally, states with the highest rates of gun ownership have the lowest rates of violent crime. But we can't say more guns means lower crime, because of other differences such as rural vs. urban population density and ethnics/demographics. States that pass concealed carry laws do not see any increase in violent crime, accidents or suicides. They sometimes see decreases. 25 years ago, only a handful of states allowed citizens to carry concealed weapons. Now, almost all states have these laws; there are only about 10 remaining that don't. Yet during this time, as all these states were allowing citizens to carry concealed handguns, and tens of thousands (if not millions) of people starting carrying firearms every day, violent crime and murder rates were steadily dropping.

People who don't understand the relationship between firearms and violent crime said we'd see bloodbaths and gunfights in the street. The history of the past 25 years has proven them wrong. Violent crime went steadily down, not up. Now these same people are telling us that more gun control laws will prevent incidents like Sandy Hill. The history of the past 100 years has already proven this wrong too.

If we want to reduce violence and save lives, not just get up on a soapboax on gun control, we need to understand what's already been done and apply lessons learned going forward. Too often, the current debate and proposals only repeat the mistakes of the past.