art credit: riversong.wordpress.com
Gun control is not one of the primary planks in
the Tea Party platforms (those planks are limited government, fiscal responsibility,
and free markets). However, Tea Party patriots may be interested in the gun
control bills defeated yesterday in Congress. CNN reports:
Senators couldn't
muster enough bipartisan support to pass a series of gun control measures
Monday [yesterday], the latest in a long string of failed attempts at enacting
tighter curbs on firearms in the United States.
Spurred by the worst
mass shooting in U.S. history, senators from each party introduced the measures
they said would have strengthened background checks and prevented suspected
terrorists from obtaining weapons.
But tough election
year politics, paired with disputes over the effectiveness of each party's
ideas, proved too powerful to break the longstanding partisan gridlock that's
surrounded gun issues for years.
The result was
expected. A fifth option, set to be introduced and voted upon as early as
Tuesday by moderate Republican Sen. Susan Collins, has generated more optimism,
but still faces long odds at passage.
Sen. Chris Murphy, a
Connecticut Democrat who sponsored one of the failed measures expanding
background checks, reacted angrily after his provision was defeated.
"I'm mortified
by today's vote but I'm not surprised by it," Murphy said Monday evening.
"The NRA has a vice-like grip on this place."
More of the report is here.
According to Sen. Murphy, the National Rifle Assoc. is once again the
villain in the piece. Thomas Sowell published an excellent opinion piece at
RealClearPolitics:
Surely murder is a
serious subject, which ought to be examined seriously. Instead, it is almost
always examined politically in the context of gun control controversies, with
stock arguments on both sides that have remained the same for decades. And most
of those arguments are irrelevant to the central question: Do tighter gun
control laws reduce the murder rate?
That is not an esoteric
question, nor one for which no empirical evidence is available. Think about it.
We have 50 states, each with its own gun control laws, and many of those laws
have gotten either tighter or looser over the years. There must be tons of data
that could indicate whether murder rates went up or down when either of these
things happened.
But have you ever
heard any gun control advocate cite any such data? Tragically, gun control has
become one of those fact-free issues that spawn outbursts of emotional rhetoric
and mutual recriminations about the National Rifle Association or the Second
Amendment.
If restrictions on
gun ownership do reduce murders, we can repeal the Second Amendment, as other
Constitutional Amendments have been repealed. Laws exist to protect people.
People do not exist to perpetuate laws.
But if tighter
restrictions on gun ownership do not reduce murders, what is the point of
tighter gun control laws -- and what is the point of demonizing the National
Rifle Association?
There are data not only
from our 50 states but also from other countries around the world. Professor
Joyce Lee Malcolm's empirical study, "Guns and Violence: The English
Experience," should be eye-opening for all those who want their eyes
opened, however small that number of people might be.
Professor Malcolm's
book also illustrates the difference between isolated, cherry-picked facts and
relevant empirical evidence.
The rest of Sowell's article is here.
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