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Doing something

The Left seems to default to the “we have to do SOMETHING” argument about guns routinely now.  When they say something, the only thing they are willing to consider is some sort of law which makes it less simple for law abiding citizens to own some types of guns. 

Problem number one with this, of course, is that they never hide the people in their midst–usually standing right behind the ones pretending they are interested in moderation, that they just want to ban “high capacity” magazines, or “assault rifles”–who are calling for a complete gun ban and confiscation.  They aren’t even trying to hide it.  The supposed moderates have zero credibility.

Problem number two is that there is no evidence this will work.  I personally don’t have a problem raising the age to buy a gun to 21, but as a general principle, the guns laws we have are poorly enforced, when they are enforced at all.  New laws will do nothing.  The Left, because it wants a gun ban outright, has shown–as far as I can tell–something close to zero interest in making the background check system more effective.  As things stand currently, the way it has been explained to me, when you go to buy a gun the FBI has 72 hours to stop the transaction if it gets flagged for some reason when the gun seller puts in the gun buyers name.  If they don’t get back with the seller, the gun gets sold, no matter what.

One obvious fix is using Social Security Numbers for background checks.  It would make it quicker and easier.  I might even support using finger prints as additional backup.  These are policy question with philosophical, legal, and logistical considerations.  But the Left can be relied upon to simply focus on “we need to do something”, without saying concretely what that something is, or how it is expected to help.

And this is the core point I wanted to make: doing SOMETHING is the battle cry of imbeciles.  Anyone who has ever done anything in the real world–the one where your mistakes become YOUR problem, versus the one where all mistakes and their solutions are abstract and free of consequence for the person making them–knows that it is as easy to make things WORSE than to make them better. 

In both Great Britain and Australia violent crime went UP after the gun bans and confiscations.  If the goal is less violence, this is a massive fail.  And if someone breaks into your home in the middle of the night–home invasions were one of the crimes that went up significantly, in my understanding–brandishing a knife or machete instead of a gun, does that make the crime somehow less odious, less terrifying, less awful?  Of course not.  And given that that crime becomes more likely, this is a massive policy fail.

When you see this refrain “we have to do SOMETHING” what can reliably be inferred is that the person DOES NOT CARE about actual consequences, and is simply virtue signalling their submission to the dominant paradigm.