OMG Hell is freezing over

[DaveE 178]

Outrage over guns is irrational

BY JACOB SULLUM jsullum@reason.com July 24, 2012 8:16PM

Hours after last Friday’s massacre in Aurora, Colo., New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg demanded that the two major parties’ presidential candidates explain how they plan to prevent such senseless outbursts of violence.

“No matter where you stand on the Second Amendment, no matter where you stand on guns, we have a right to hear from both of them concretely,” Bloomberg said. “What are they going to do about guns?”

According to Bloomberg, even people who object to gun control on practical or constitutional grounds are morally obliged to support it. Such arrogant illogic may help explain why public support for new gun restrictions has been falling for two decades.

Consider how the Brady Campaign to Prevent Gun Violence reacted to the massacre. “This tragedy is another grim reminder that guns are the enablers of mass killers and that our nation pays an unacceptable price for our failure to keep guns out of the hands of dangerous people,” said the group’s president, Dan Gross. “We are outraged.”

But outrage is no substitute for rational argument, and the response urged by the Brady Campaign — a petition demanding that Congress keep guns away from “convicted felons,” “convicted domestic abusers,” “terrorists” and “people found to be dangerously mentally ill” — had nothing to do with what happened in Aurora. As far as we know, the suspect, James Holmes, has no criminal record, no links to terrorist groups and no psychiatric history that would have disqualified him from owning guns.

A New York Times story regretted he was “unhindered by federal background checks” when he bought ammunition online. Since he passed background checks to buy his pistols, shotgun and rifle, why would a background check for ammunition have stopped him?

Other gun-control advocates focused on the AR-15 rifle used by Holmes, a civilian, semi-automatic version of the M-16. Depending on the details of its design, it might have been covered by the federal “assault weapon” ban that expired in 2004. But such legislation targets guns based mainly on their military appearance, as opposed to features that make a practical difference in the commission of crimes (a purpose for which they are rarely used). It is hard to see how the presence or absence of a bayonet mount, a threaded barrel or a collapsible stock, for instance, matters much for a man shooting unarmed movie­goers in a darkened theater.

Holmes also had large-capacity magazines: one holding 100 rounds for the rifle and one holding 40 rounds for his .40-caliber Glock pistol. But reinstating the federal ban on magazines holding more than 10 rounds would have no impact on a determined killer, since millions of larger magazines are already in circulation. Even if all of them disappeared tomorrow, switching magazines takes just a few seconds.

Instead of restricting guns, magazine or ammunition for everyone, why not focus on the tiny percentage of buyers who will use them to commit mass murder? Because there is no reliable way to identify those people before the fact. “There’s nothing you can do to predict that type of crime,” former FBI agent Peter Ahearn told the Associated Press. “There’s no way you can prevent it.”

That message is not reassuring, popular or politically useful. It just happens to be true

Chicago Sun Times

[Mr. Big Dog 10,747]

Chicago Sun Times says gun control wouldn't help

The CST actually says no such thing. See, they posted this opinion under "other views". You know, as in "not our view".

http://www.suntimes.com/news/otherviews/13970227-452/outrage-over-guns-is-irrational.html