Why Op-Eds Calling For Chicago Gun Control Are Wrong

It seems like not a week goes by that someone in Chicago is penning an op-ed all about how the problems with violence in Chicago stem from precisely one issue, and that issue is gun control.

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Illinois boasts one of the strictest set of gun control laws in the nation, doing everything they can to heavily restrict law-abiding gun owners from purchasing firearms.

Yet when violence erupts, you get op-eds like this.

We had heard the story that unfolded Monday night so many times before. A 1-year-old boy was shot in the head on a Chicago street, injured by a stray bullet that was meant for his father.

By Tuesday, police had determined that the father lied about what happened. The baby was shot, police said, as his mother and father struggled over a gun during a domestic dispute in their Uptown apartment.

Perhaps some of us were inclined to breathe a sigh of relief that another child had not been caught up in the vicious cycle of gang violence. But we should not.

At this point, I agree. I’m not breathing a sigh of relief that a child was killed in a different manner than initially feared.

Instead, I’ll mourn the loss of a child who still had so much life left to live.

Yet the writer here wants to use the child’s body for a soapbox, rather than just mourn like any sensible person would do.

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We don’t know whether either of the parents had the legal right to own a gun, either. It really doesn’t matter. Guns are easy to get in Chicago — way too easy. Anybody who wants one can have access to one, whether they go through the proper procedures or not.

It is well-documented that guns initially acquired legally often end up in the hands of people who should not have them. It also is no secret that everyone who obtains a gun legally shouldn’t necessarily be allowed to have one.

In this case, one thing is clear. Our guns laws aren’t strong enough to have kept someone in that apartment from getting hold of a gun they obviously weren’t responsible enough to have — legally or otherwise.

There we go. More gun control. That’s what it always boils down to.

The writer admits she doesn’t know how the father got the gun, only that he did. She acknowledges that guns are easy to get on the black market, a market that ignores any and all gun laws by its very definition.

Just how would more gun control help?

First, if the father got the gun legally, the question needs to be asked of our writer just how would she have prevented him from buying a gun without infringing on the rights of every other Illinois resident? Next, if he got it off the black market, then just how does she suggest we prevent those sales from taking place when they already ignore the plethora of regulations already existing in the state?

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I suspect she has no answer.

Oddly, I have a better answer entirely, one that doesn’t infringe on anyone’s rights. After all, the vast majority of the violence in any city stems from just a few neighborhoods and only from a handful of people within those neighborhoods. Address those individuals, and watch the difference that can make.

But that requires work and time, something people like this writer just don’t want to expend.

They’d much rather demonize guns and, by extension, lawful gun owners.

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