It’s no surprise that someone from England supports gun control. We see it a lot, of course, and it’s no surprise that they’ll pontificate on the subject to American audiences. There seems to be little British journalists like more than to act superior to us “colonists.”

However, in the process of setting up why he supports gun control, he accidentally scores something of an own goal.

One evening in 2008, I attended a Republican rally in Kansas, with an address by vice-presidential candidate Sarah Palin. Because I am very tall and somehow visibly un-American, I was quizzed by neighbors in the crowd. One of them asked me defiantly, though not offensively: “What do people like you not like about people like us? Is it that we’re Christians? Is it that we’re White? Is it that we do guns?”

I answered cautiously. But I felt able to say plenty about guns, which have been big in my life — too big, I fear. My father would have qualified as a gun nut, even by National Rifle Association standards. He not only owned sporting weapons, but also muzzle-loading flintlocks together with pistols of every kind, dating from several centuries.

He brought keepsakes back from World War II — Luger, Mauser and Radom semi-automatics, together with a Schmeisser submachine gun. In my childhood in the 1950s, many British as well as American homes boasted such lethal souvenirs which, curiously enough, were seldom employed in crime.

Curious, you say?

Not really.

See, the point here is that these were law-abiding gun owners, people who had these firearms legally and had no inclination to act unlawfully. There’s absolutely nothing curious about how they didn’t use them in crimes.

Besides, the UK generally has a much lower crime rate than the United States and has since well before they passed gun control. If you don’t have a lot of crime, you’re not going to have a lot of gun crime. Hell, every household could have a veritable arsenal and you wouldn’t see a thing.

Yet the author doesn’t seem to make this connection. He thinks it “curious” that all these guns were around and were seldom used in crime. It’s like he has all the pieces to the puzzle, but connects them so instead of a pretty picture, you get something out of Picasso’s nightmares.

The guns are not and never were the problem. The problem is that some people are evil or sick enough to hurt others. That’s it. That’s the issue.

But focusing on the tool allows them to feel good about themselves without having to address any of the underlying problems, and this wanker bought into it hook, line, and sinker.

For him, though, it’s worse than ignorance that is responsible. He’s got at least some of the relevant facts. He just opts not to connect them in any meaningful way.

This isn’t ignorance, it’s idiocy.

Meanwhile, let’s not forget that while England took guns away from its citizens, it didn’t stop anyone from becoming violent. Now they’re regulating knives, for crying out loud, something many of us carry every day as a tool is something they’re disallowing from British pockets.

Maybe it’s just me, but that sounds like an awfully stupid road to go down.