I’m sure you’ve heard that phrase – it’s pretty common, and means “if you start with bad data, your end result will be bad as well.” Our local paper, the Indy Star decides to take the garbage in-garbage out approach by using Mayors Against Illegal Gun’s already debunked study to ask for more gun control in Indiana. Thankfully for you, the writer of said op-ed was kind enough to condense their arguments to five key “more gun control requests”, which I’ve copied, translated from PSH-speak, and refuted. My comments in italics.
Background checks at gun shows. – We have this. Federally licensed dealers are required by law to run a background check whenever they transfer a gun. And the last time I went to the Indy 1500, I didn’t see an army of private sellers trading Uzis, so you know, maybe a little research is in order next time.
Purchase permits. – So I guess the fact that I passed a federal background check to buy my gun wasn’t enough? Or that to transport my gun from my house to the shooting range I had to pass a local, a state, and then another federal background check? I guess when you ask for “purchase permits”, what you really mean is “the ability to keep those scary minorities from owning guns.”
Reporting of lost or stolen guns. – Yes, by all means, let’s make it crime to not report the theft of your property to the police. That way, if my house is burgled while I’m on vacation, and I don’t report it in 24 hours, I’m an instant felon, even though I didn’t know about it! THIS PLAN IS FOOLPROOF.
Allowance for local control. – Yeah, because who needs that silly “state preemption law” anyway. It’d be way easier on the law abiding citizens of this state of our cities were a messy patchwork of varying gun control laws. It would neat to be perfectly legal in Hamilton County, then drive to Marion County to see a show and be breaking the law! We could make a game of it – call it “Guess the Gun Law”.
State inspections of gun shops. – Because gun shops being subject to federal inspections which audit down to individual letters of words isn’t enough scrutiny, we need another way to ramrod those pesky merchants of death out of business!
It’s nice to see that the Indy Star editorial board hasn’t bothered to actually think though these issues. It makes my job of pointing out the facts and truth behind their arguments that much easier when all they’re doing is repeating the same old, same old.
There are some 8,000 gun laws on the books in the US. Few of them actually reduce gun crime. Most new laws are indeed, revenue generators as well as attempts to prevent law-abiding citizens to possess guns.
Just once I would like to see an anti-gun editorial where the writer made even a pretense of researching the subject. I’m beginning to think that newspapers run IQ tests, and the person with the lowest rating has to write the editorials.
Well, BobG, I always figured somebody was hiring those who can’t handle “Do you want fries with that?”
MAIG members have an incarceration rate of over 1500/100K.