Word: guns
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...regular pattern: Tragedy strikes, a giddy clamor for new legislation goes up and anyone who doesn't uncritically accept the hype is anachronistic, cold-hearted or--worst of all--a "member of the NRA." After all, if Britain, France and Canada can achieve a near-zero incidence of gun fatalities with "common sense" (i.e., prohibitive) laws...
Most America-should-be-like-the-Continent arguments fall flat on their face, and this one is no different. More guns simply do not mean more murder, at least if you look beyond a few states in Western Europe. Israel has more guns per capita than the U.S., but its murder rate is almost half that of oft-exalted Canada. Sweden and Finland are two comparably armed societies, but you're much more likely to get knocked off in one than in the other. And Switzerland, with widespread gun ownership, is far safer than many other countries with more restrictive...
Makes sense, if you think about it. The fashionable claims of many sociologists notwithstanding, criminal behavior is not entirely conditioned. Neither are criminals stupid or irrational. If Joey is about to jump you, he'll think twice if he knows you might be carrying a gun. Sophisticated claims to the contrary are condescending and out of touch with reality...
What about all those alarmist claims often plastered around the Yard? Don't firearms in the household logically lead to more accidental deaths? Admittedly, guns kill a few children every year (although more drown in pools). But such statistics, in and of themselves, do not account for the amount of crime deterred and thus the number of lives saved by the presence of a gun. Lott concluded that counties without "conceal and carry" laws could have prevented a total of 1,414 murders, 4,177 rapes and 60,363 aggravated assaults by enacting them...
...serious about preventing future Columbines, perhaps we should ask the Clinton administration to start enforcing gun laws already on the books. Buying a gun for a juvenile is a federal crime. Yet of the several thousand criminals who committed it, the Justice Department prosecuted five in 1997 and six in 1998. Bringing a gun to school is also a federal crime. Here again, though, of several thousand offenders the Justice Department prosecuted only five in 1997 and eight in 1998. All in all, a grand total of 17 federal and state laws were broken in the Columbine tragedy...