Drive-by shootings are an unfortunate way of life in some parts of the United States. They’re common enough that we’ve probably all seen them portrayed in the media.
And it’s not something we think of as happening elsewhere. Most countries don’t have our gang problems, after all, and while it’s not as bad as it used to be, in some places, it’s still bad enough.
In the aftermath of drive-by shootings, we typically see calls for gun control.
That’s what happened after a recent drive-by at a church. Nothing unusual here, right? Well, except for where the church was.
Laws on gun ownership should be tightened, Sir Keir Starmer has said following a drive-by shooting at a church in his constituency.
The Labour leader said he had been given a police intelligence briefing on the “awful” incident, in which four women and two children were injured.
A seven-year-old girl is in a serious but stable condition after the shotgun attack on mourners at a memorial service at St Aloysius Church in Euston, central London, on Saturday.
Sir Keir, a former director of public prosecutions, said the Euston incident, and shootings such as the killing of five people in Keyham, Plymouth, in 2021, show the need for reforms to gun laws.
Now, let’s remember that the UK has all the gun control laws an American anti-gunner could dream of. So-called assault weapons aren’t really a thing for most people. Folks having piles of guns in their houses isn’t a thing, either. Every lawfully owned gun is registered with the government.
And they’re being told that’s not nearly enough.
This drive-by is upsetting, to be sure. I have no doubt everyone in the area is concerned about how it happened, especially in light of the fact that there are such strict controls on who can lawfully own guns.
Sir Keir actually acknowledges that these guns might be owned unlawfully – which is a near certainty, and we all know it – but he doesn’t want to wait for facts. He still wants more restrictions on who can own what.
That’s disgusting.
But this is the way of the anti-gunner. Find a tragedy, exploit it to restrict guns, even if there’s no chance those new restrictions would have prevented the tragedy, rinse and repeat.
See, they need emotion to advance the idea of gun control. They need people upset. If they’re not, then they’ll see through the claims. They’ll see that this drive-by happened in one of the most gun-controlled nations on Earth and that these are likely illegal firearms, so what good would still more regulations do?
Anti-gunners, both there and here, don’t want people thinking rationally. They don’t want people to evaluate what happened. They want action while people are still emotional. They want people sobbing as they demand restrictions on the right to keep and bear arms.
Yes, that right exists in England, even if the government refuses to recognize it or respect it.
At the end of the day, what happened at that church is awful. It’s interesting that it would be classified as a mass shooting here in the US by Gun Violence Archive, too, but that’s neither here nor there. It’s terrible that such a thing happened.
But it’s not grounds for more restrictions. It’s grounds to understand that the restrictions in place don’t work as advertised. The bad guys still have guns and will still use those guns. All that’s happened is that the good guys have absolutely no means to fight back.
Not that the British are fond of people fighting back against violent attackers anyway, but the right to self-defense is considered a universal right by most nations. The US is just the only nation that has a way to make sure people can actually defend themselves.
