Dangerous Cities and Strict Gun Control

We’ve heard the advocates of gun control say they haven’t done enough and we need even more gun-prohibition laws than we already have. They say that disarming honest citizens stops criminals from committing violent crimes. Those are bold claims, but that doesn’t make them true. Politicians lie to us all the time. I’ve looked at the record. I am not convinced that gun prohibition works as advertised, and we have some tragic stories to consider as well. The closer I look the more I think that gun-control laws cost lives.

Much of our so-called “firearms policy” is driven by emotion. We all feel compassion for the people of Chicago, Saint Louis, and Baltimore who cringe at the sound of gunfire every night. The war raging between rival drug gangs fighting for turf leaves innocent civilians caught in the nightly crossfire. Over four thousand people were shot in Chicago so far this year.

Notice the long causal chain that ties this together. Bad public policy leads to business failure- to unemployment- to addiction and depression- to broken families- and finally to more gangs and violent crime. I wish you could break that vicious chain of events bypassing more gun-prohibition laws. You can’t, but politicians need to deflect blame for their mistakes. They need a scapegoat. They passed 23-thousand gun control regulations so far, and still, there is no peace.

Violence is concentrated rather than ubiquitous. Ask yourself why Chicago, Detroit, and Baltimore are dangerous, but San Jose, Henderson, Austin, and San Diego are not. More than half of the counties in the US will not have a single murder this year. A mere 2 percent of our counties produced more than half of our murders.