Gun Control Failures Don't Mean You Need More Gun Control

(AP Photo/John Locher, File)

If the definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over again expecting a different result, then there’s no doubt about how insane gun control really is.

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Over and over again, proponents of it continue to take everything as an excuse that more gun control is needed. Study says that gun control reduced crime? Then it’s proof we need more gun control. Study shows gun control doesn’t work? Then clearly the problem is that we need more gun control.

It’s not any better when you have a total failure of gun control happen in real life, either.

A month after Gov. J.B. Pritzker took office in 2019, giving Democrats complete control in Springfield, flaws in Illinois’ gun laws were exposed when a convicted felon whose state firearm owner’s identification card had been revoked opened fire in an Aurora warehouse, killing five co-workers and wounding a sixth along with five police officers.

The case became a rallying point for gun safety advocates, who’ve pushed for mandatory fingerprinting for FOID card applications, universal background checks for gun buyers, and a system that ensures people whose FOID cards are revoked hand over their weapons to authorities.

More than two years later, however, Pritzker and the Democratic-controlled legislature haven’t enacted those policies or any other major gun safety measures, even as they successfully pushed progressive measures that range from legalizing marijuana to abolishing cash bail.

“These are complicated issues,” Pritzker said of gun control last week in an interview with the Chicago Tribune.

“We have Democrats from downstate, from areas where people are deeply concerned about protecting their gun rights,” he said. “And then we’ve got people who live in other parts of the state who believe, as I do, that we need to have a greater focus on gun safety, but it’s a complicated challenge in order to get enough votes put together.”

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And all of that ignores the simple fact that while the Aurora shooter was a convicted felon, he went through every hoop the state of Illinois cared to present. He got a FOID. He filled out the ATF’s Form 4473. He didn’t lie about any of his personal information–though he did lie about being a convicted felon, to be clear, but not his name, address, or other such data–and still was able to buy a gun.

Gun control failed at every single level.

That’s kind of like what happens every single day in Chicago. There, despite all the gun control laws on the books in Illinois, criminals are able to obtain firearms easily enough. Meanwhile, citizens trying to obey the law are dealing with a screwed-up system.

At what point do people look at these failures and recognize that doubling down on a failed strategy isn’t going to make anyone’s life any better? The gun control we see day in and day out in Illinois doesn’t work, and yet people are asking why isn’t there more of the very thing that has been amply illustrated to not accomplish a blasted thing.

Honestly, it makes no sense to me. It just doesn’t.

What a strategy fails to work, a reasonable person would try something new. In Illinois and far too many other states, they’re enamored with the idea of gun control that they can’t admit that it just isn’t working.

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These states are like that friend in a toxic relationship who is convinced that they just need to do one more thing to make the relationship work. We all know how those kinds of things work out, don’t we?

Illinois isn’t likely to turn out the least bit better, either.

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