Piers Morgan has been in the news a lot lately with his interviews on gun control. He’s made it his cause of late. He interviewed my friend Larry Pratt a couple of weeks ago and really attacked Larry. The other night he interviewed that conspiracy crank Alex Jones and many conservatives and gun owners have lamented a perception that Alex Jones will become the face of gun owners.
The conversations have actually been fascinating. Piers Morgan isn’t the only one to engage in these, but he’s been one of the most prominent.
Unfortunately, the incident that set off all these discussions — the Newtown, CT tragedy — is causing policy makers and news figures to fixate on all the wrong things, or at least the things with the least amount of meaning.
The fact is the tragedy in Connecticut was terrible. But it is also not a common act. It is called a “random act of violence” because it is random.
After the shooting over the summer in Aurora, CO, the President and his team could have picked up the gun issue, but they chose not too because it is a political hot potato and hurts the Democrats. They are compensating in light of this new tragedy, but the discussed policy proposals thus far probably would do no good. Increasing gun free school zones and punishment for violating those zones will not stop a mass shooter.
Nonetheless, the policy makers want to focus on mass shooters and not every day shooters. They want to focus on rifles and not handguns. Rifles, interestingly enough, contribute to far fewer murders than knives, hands, feet, clubs, or hammers.
But the discussion will not move to handguns because handguns are pretty popular in this country. Many people own them — far more own them than own semi-automatic rifles. More so, handguns are used in vastly more crimes.
It is not, however, just handguns that must be discussed when discussing gun violence. This gets to why we cannot have a meaningful conversation in this country and never will. To do so will get you branded a racist. CONTINUE READING
1 comment:
Hi. I'm from Canada, so maybe that disqualifies me from the conversation, but this blog was a nice peek inside the issue of gun control and gun ownership.
While the recent school shootings was tragic, and, as you pointed out an isolated incident, I do want to ask a question.
While I respect the US citizen`s right to bear arms - I believe that was initially written should Britain and or British North America (Canada) try and attack the fledgling USA - does the average citizen need to be able to own such things as machine guns or other automatic weapons... I understand the right to collect weapons, but isn`t overkill...
If the average US citizen wishes to bear arms, wouldn`t a handgun do just as well in case one of us sneaky Canadians tries to burn the White House down (as we supposedly did once before)... I can`t make a question mark for some bloody reason.
Just asking.
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