“We have to do something,” they say.
Anytime there’s some horrible tragedy, the human compulsion to “do something” kicks in and folks start trying to come up with anything they can do that will allow them to believe they’ve responded. It doesn’t have to be a good idea, just an idea.
That’s where gun control comes in. It’s invariably what someone will suggest for almost any kind of shooting tragedy.
However, despite decades of pushing for gun control followed by decades of getting it in many places such as Illinois, we’re not really seeing the results we were told were inevitable. Why is that?
Well, for one thing, gun control doesn’t work the way people claim. Being denied at a gun store doesn’t force the bad guy to throw up their hands and give up their wicked ways.
Kiana Martin, 30, has been sentenced to 18 months in federal prison for purchasing guns for known felons.
According to the U.S. Department of Justice, Martin was convicted of misrepresenting herself to firearms dealers by posing as the actual weapon buyer but was acting as a “straw purchaser,” transferring those weapons to felons who are prohibited from buying them.
Martin pled guilty back in May but was just sentenced.
And she is far from a unique and special snowflake in regard to her own criminal activities. We’ve seen numerous other straw buyers convicted over the years and written about them here. However, that’s still just a drop in the bucket.
You see, the problem with gun control is that the most it can do, the absolute most, is provide a speed bump for a criminal. It can’t stop them from getting a gun because someone will figure out a way to make money providing those guns. Yes, even in a state with an FOID requirement.
Straw buys are just one tool in the bad guy arsenal, and so long as people without criminal records are willing to cross that line, they’ll keep getting them.
Yet let’s also be clear here. If everyone without a felony conviction decided right at this moment to not provide guns to criminals, there would still be ways they’d get firearms. Stolen guns are a thing, after all, and that’s where most get their guns from.
Gun control doesn’t work because, frankly, it makes idiotic assumptions about criminal behavior.
“But isn’t it worth it? Doesn’t making it difficult still help reduce crime?”
No, it doesn’t. Not in any appreciable way.
Look at the crime statistics following the passage of the National Firearms Act of 1934 or the Gun Control Act of 1968. There’s no evidence that these massive gun control bills accomplished anything. Hell, crime went up after the GCA was passed. Horrendously.
The problem with violent crime isn’t the gun. A violent crime can be committed with anything including bare hands.
No, the problem with violent crime is and has always been with violent criminals.
Gun control ignores the criminals by focusing on the weapon but then manages to also make it harder for law-abiding citizens to be able to meet the potential threats they face, threats the laws inhibiting them are supposed to end.
Martin is just one person. She didn’t provide guns to all that many people in the grand scheme of things. Yet she is indicative of part of the problem with gun control, namely that when you make it profitable for someone to break the law, some will invariably break it.
No amount of deterrence will work, either, because I promise you, she never thought she’d get caught. Neither did any of the other straw buyers we’ve talked about over the years.
In a sane world, we’d recognize that gun control isn’t the answer and look elsewhere. Unfortunately, we don’t live in a sane world.
