{"id":22169,"date":"2013-11-28T07:44:38","date_gmt":"2013-11-28T12:44:38","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/?p=22169"},"modified":"2013-11-28T07:44:39","modified_gmt":"2013-11-28T12:44:39","slug":"qotd-the-gun-control-debate","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/2013\/11\/28\/qotd-the-gun-control-debate\/","title":{"rendered":"QotD: The gun-control debate"},"content":{"rendered":"

I begin rather skeptical of most gun-control proposals. The ones that are pitched in the aftermath of mass shootings are particularly cynical, as they often attempt to regulate circumstances unrelated to the shooting. I still grind my teeth at Mayors Against Illegal Guns running ads in my state citing the Virginia Tech shooting, and talking about the need to shut the \u201cgun show loophole\u201d \u2014 even though the shooter didn\u2019t obtain his weapons at a gun show. These sorts of arguments strike me as one part craven opportunism, one part feel-good placebo. (I wanted to say \u201cpanacea,\u201d but panacea actually means a genuine cure-all.)<\/p>\n

If someone wants to propose a new restriction on gun ownership after a tragedy, and cites that tragedy as a reason to pass it, it\u2019s necessary to show how that new restriction would have prevented, mitigated, or impacted that tragedy. For example, almost none of the gun laws proposed after Newtown would have changed much of anything in that awful shooting, as that disturbed young man stole his mother\u2019s legally purchased guns.<\/p>\n

I suppose there are two potential changes to the law that would have significantly altered events in Newtown. First, a total ban on private ownership of firearms, which our friends in the gun-control movement keep insisting isn\u2019t their goal.<\/p>\n

Second, a restriction on gun ownership by people who live under the same roof as a person who\u2019s deemed mentally incompetent or a threat to himself or others. Of course, then you get into the questions of what constitutes, \u201cmentally incompetent or a threat to himself or others,\u201d what constitutes \u201cunder the same roof\u201d, etc.<\/p>\n

Then there are the proposals to limit how many rounds each gun can fire before reloading. Almost every spree shooter \u2014 we need a better term for this \u2014 has had more than one firearm when they\u2019ve launched their attacks. Instituting 10-round limits would mean that future shooters would get off 20 shots before pausing to reload, presuming they only brought two guns. It\u2019s reasonable to conclude future mass killers will just bring three or four guns when they begin their rampage. This strikes me as a quite modest mitigation in the danger of these shooters, too modest to seriously consider.<\/p>\n

Jim Geraghty, “Why Post-Shooting Gun-Control Debates Are So Insufferable”, National Review Online<\/em><\/a>, 2013-09-18<\/p><\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I begin rather skeptical of most gun-control proposals. The ones that are pitched in the aftermath of mass shootings are particularly cynical, as they often attempt to regulate circumstances unrelated to the shooting. I still grind my teeth at Mayors Against Illegal Guns running ads in my state citing the Virginia Tech shooting, and talking […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[9,10,41,13],"tags":[343,49,906,661,217],"class_list":["post-22169","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-law","category-liberty","category-quotations","category-usa","tag-crimeandpunishment","tag-guns","tag-mentalhealth","tag-regulation","tag-rights"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p2hpV6-5Lz","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/22169","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=22169"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/22169\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":23118,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/22169\/revisions\/23118"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=22169"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=22169"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=22169"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}