Wednesday, March 24, 2010

About that straw purchase

Anti-gunners often chant about prohibiting straw purchases in bordering states with not as severe gun laws, but do they ever take into account that firearms are durable goods that last many lifetimes?

The reason I ask is due to this article showing that the gun used by Amy Bishop was straw purchased by her husband over twenty years ago. There is simply no way to determine that that gun would have ended up used in a mass murder.

Changing the laws would not have had the slightest impact on availability, since there are many hundreds of millions of guns in circulation, and there are millions more sold every year.

Playing devils advocate for a minute: what would happen if all of these guns in the US suddenly vanished? There would be gnashing of teeth amongst the millions of gun owners that didn't kill innocent people, but the criminals in this country would continue on with their trade by resorting to other effective means of controlling and destroying. That, and they would still be able to find weapons elsewhere, like from Mexico. Take away all of the guns in the world, and it would look something like this.

Not pretty.

We would be well served to concentrate our efforts on locking up the looney toon people like Bishop when they first show their tendency towards violence, instead of taking away every thing that they could use to hurt people with.

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