Gun control is a topic where it’s difficult to really boil down the totality of the debate in a bite-sized chunk. For people to follow it, they have to follow it completely for years to really get the whole view.
That’s true on both sides, to be fair. It’s easy to just assume a new gun control law will suddenly stop the bad guys, but we all know how futile that particular hope actually is. Criminals, by their very nature, break all kinds of laws. Gun control laws are just one more they’ll choose to ignore.
However, those on the gun control side who have been at this a while might argue that while gun control laws only hurt the law-abiding initially, the effects “trickle-down” to impact criminals. In other words, a total gun ban wouldn’t hurt the bad guys initially but deprived of their source of guns–the law-abiding people they’re generally stolen from in the first place–they’d eventually end up disarmed.
It sounds plausible. After all, didn’t the UK’s knife crime rates skyrocket after they passed gun control?
Yet what about when guns are stolen from the one group everyone agrees would remain armed?
There are fears that almost a dozen guns, explosives and more than a thousand rounds of ammunition lost or stolen from MOD bases in the last year could be used for criminal purposes.
The discovery came to light after a Freedom of Information request was made by Sky News for the data which covers September 26, 2018 to September 30, 2019.
More than 1,000 rounds of ammunition and eight rifles were stolen by thieves from an army cadet facility in Merseyside, while two rifles were taken from a Reserve Centre. It’s understood that another rifle was lost during a training exercise in Wales.
It’s not known whether the items have been recovered.
So, let’s get this straight. A dozen military weapons in the UK were stolen–meaning they were likely select-fire weapon rather than the semi-auto version available to American civilians–and they haven’t been recovered, yet people still think gun control will keep guns out of the hand of evil people?
Look, if there’s a demand for something, someone is going to come up with a way to meet that demand. If you figure that enough money can sway most people, it was only a matter of time before someone figured out how to sell military hardware.
You’re also deluded if you think it can’t happen here.
For the most part, it doesn’t, but that’s more about the fact that there are easier ways to obtain guns in the United States than to try and steal them from the military. It has nothing to do with the innate goodness of American troops or the superiority of our security. It’s just that there are cheaper ways to get them.
Criminals, however, can and will do whatever it takes to get their hands on guns. The harder it is to obtain them, the more driven they’ll become to get their grubby little paws on them.
Gun control doesn’t stop the flow of guns. It just makes the flow so much more profitable.
