Tag Archives: Gun Control

News

Do guns reduce crime? Watch this debate and hear both sides

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This debate is in 13 parts, featuring the two of the best proponents of legal firearm ownership – John Lott and Gary Kleck. The real sparks fly during the Q&A, so don’t miss that. (If you can’t watch the debate, then you can read this post and this post instead).

Here’s part 1, which contains the introduction.

Here are the remaining speeches:

Pro-firearm: Guns Reduce Crime Debate: John R. Lott (2 of 13)

Anti-firearm: Guns Reduce Crime Debate: R Gil Kerlikowske (3 of 13)

Pro-firearm: Guns Reduce Crime Debate: Stephen Halbrooke (4 of 13)

Anti-firearm: Guns Reduce Crime Debate: John J Donohue III (5 of 13)

Pro-firearm: Guns Reduce Crime Debate: Gary Kleck (6 of 13)

Anti-firearm: Guns Reduce Crime Debate: Paul Helmke (7 of 13)

Q&A Part 1: Guns Reduce Crime Debate: Q&A Part 1 (8 of 13)

Q&A Part 2: Guns Reduce Crime Debate: Q&A Part 2 (9 of 13)

Q&A Part 3: Guns Reduce Crime Debate: Q&A Part 3 (10 of 13)

Q&A Part 4: Guns Reduce Crime Debate: Q&A Part 4 (11 of 13)

Conclusions Part 1: Guns Reduce Crime Debate Closing Arguments Part 1 (12 of 13)

Conclusions Part 2: Guns Reduce Crime Debate Closing Arguments Part 2 (12 of 13)

This is everything you need to know about whether legal ownership of firearms reduce crime.

Debate is how conservatives decide what to believe about the world. We listen to both sides. We are extremely suspicious of one side trying to demonize the other side with name-calling and intimidation. If you start to ascribe nasty motives to your opponent on any issue, prior to showing that they are wrong, on the merits, then you’ve lost the debate. Before you can show WHY someone is wrong, you first have to show THAT someone is wrong.

You will never see a formal debate like this in the mainstream media, in Hollywood movies, in the public schools, or anywhere else where the left is in control. But hearing both sides is the only way to really know if something is true. You have to be able to sit through listening to the other side.

UPDATE: Ooops, even MSNBC admits that firearm ownership reduces crime rates. I stand corrected.

Commentary

Tom Sowell on gun control and judicial activism

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Thomas Sowell

His latest column is here.

Excerpt:

Now that the Supreme Court of the United States has decided that the Second Amendment to the Constitution means that individual Americans have a right to bear arms, what can we expect?

Those who have no confidence in ordinary Americans may expect a bloodbath, as the benighted masses start shooting each other, now that they can no longer be denied guns by their betters. People who think we shouldn’t be allowed to make our own medical decisions, or decisions about which schools our children attend, certainly are not likely to be happy with the idea that we can make our own decisions about how to defend ourselves.

When you stop and think about it, there is no obvious reason why issues like gun control should be ideological issues in the first place. It is ultimately an empirical question whether allowing ordinary citizens to have firearms will increase or decrease the amount of violence.

[…]If the end of gun control leads to a bloodbath of runaway shootings, then the Second Amendment can be repealed, just as other Constitutional Amendments have been repealed. Laws exist for people, not people for laws.

There is no point arguing, as many people do, that it is difficult to amend the Constitution. The fact that it doesn’t happen very often doesn’t mean that it is difficult. The people may not want it to happen, even if the intelligentsia are itching to change it.

When the people wanted it to happen, the Constitution was amended 4 times in 8 years, from 1913 through 1920.

The whole point of strict gun control or lax gun control is to reduce violent crime rates. All we have to do is look and see whether stricter gun control, like the UK handgun ban of 1997, raises or lowers violent crime rates. It’s not for judges to make that assessment – it’s for the people, and their legislators, to decide. I used to be a judicial activist supporter when I was younger. But not after I read Tom Sowell’s “Conflict of Visions” book.

This point about judges interpreting the law also applies to businesses and capitalism. If judges can change the rules that businesses operate under arbitrarily, then fewer people will start businesses. It’s bad enough that they have to put up with so many taxes and regulations. If one loopy judge can take away everything you own by legislating from the bench, then what is the point of even trying to start a business?

If you want jobs, you need small business. If you want small business, you need strict constructionist judges. If you want strict constructionist judges, you vote Republican. (And you get pro-life and pro-marriage for FREE!)

Thomas Sowell is my #1 favorite economist.

UPDATE: Hot Air wonders how the liberal SCOTUS guys can oppose the clear meaning of the Constitution so openly.

News

Grandmother jailed for five years for owning family heirloom handgun

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Story from BBC News. (H/T ECM)

Excerpt:

A grandmother has been jailed for five years for possessing a “family heirloom” World War II pistol.

Gail Cochrane, 53, had kept the gun for 29 years following the death of her father, who had been in the Royal Navy.

Police found the weapon, a Browning self-loading pistol, during a search of her home in Dundee while looking for her son.

She admitted illegal possession of the firearm, an offence with a minimum five-year jail term under Scots law.

Cochrane told the High Court in Edinburgh that she had never contemplated she might be committing a crime by keeping the gun or that she might need to get a licence for the weapon.

She said: “I thought it was just a war trophy.”

The judge is a woman, and women often don’t like guns in the home:

However, Judge Lady Smith said: “I am not satisfied that a reasonable explanation has been put forward for not handing this gun into the authorities throughout the 29-year period she says she has had it in her possession.”

The judge said she was unable to find herself satisfied that this was one of the rare cases in which exceptional circumstances existed.

She said: “The result is I have no alternative but to sentence Mrs Cochrane to a period of five years.”

[…]When interviewed, Cochrane told police that the gun had previously belonged to her father and that she had kept it when he died.

She said she believed it was a real gun, but had no ammunition for it.

Scotland is the part of the UK that is most solidly owned by the Liberal Democrat party, which is further to the left than the Labor party.

She’s an innocent law-abiding citizen, but she has to be made an example, I guess.