Jackson, Mississippi is the kind of town where, at least to outsiders, the rough part of town is every part of town. It's a high crime city with a ton of problems. It's one of the more violent cities in America, for one thing.

And they've been stupid in how they address it, trying to illegally ban open carry in the city, among other braindead stunts.

In 2022, Councilman Kenneth Stokes made a proposal that made a lot of sense. He thought gun cases--cases where federal law had been violated--should be referred to the US Attorney's office. It looked like Stokes was showing a lick of sense.

Apparently, that lick was short lived.

Members of the Reset Jackson and Councilman Kenneth Stokes held an event Sunday to demand that Mississippi stop allowing guns to be sold in Jackson.

Members of Reset Jackson walked up the stairs of the Capitol to tape a suggested bill to the doors. It's called The Capital City Gun Safety Act.

This comes in the wake of an announcement by Gov. Tate Reeves involving something called Operation Unified, a joint law enforcement effort by multiple agencies to remove violent criminals from the streets.

Reset Jackson claims the project can't work so long as people can lawfully buy guns in Jackson, which is literally the dumbest thing I've seen in a while, and considering some of the stuff I've written about lately, that's saying something.

Let's say, hypothetically, that Reset Jackson gets its way and no one can lawfully buy a gun in Jackson.

Who is going to be impacted?

Well, the criminals aren't buying and selling guns lawfully anyway, so the illicit arms trade will continue just as it did.

Those with the means to travel outside of Jackson will simply go outside the city to buy guns, so most people are still going to buy them lawfully--remember, this is a proposed ban on the sale of guns in the city, not ownership, so people can still buy them--so most law-abiding people will still get them.

That means there are just two groups who will be impacted: Gun store owners and those without cars, generally meaning the very poor.

Gun stores in Jackson will be forced to either relocate outside the city limits or shut down entirely, putting people out of work through no fault of their own. 

Those without cars, generally the poorer members of society, will be left to fend for themselves and hope someone can give them a ride. It's already hard on them to exercise their Second Amendment rights due to the cost of firearms, but this just creates an additional hurdle for many of them.

And yet, crime will continue.

See, what Reset Jackson doesn't seem to comprehend is that the criminals aren't strolling into their local gun store and walking out with firearms. Some may originally come from a gun store via straw buys, most are stolen firearms, taken from those in Jackson who purchased them lawfully and will continue to purchase them lawfully.

That's not going to change, so why would Operation Unified be a failure without this one particular restriction that won't actually change anything at all?

The answer is that it won't. This is just a pathetic attempt to try and leverage the desire for a program to work to get a bit of gun control they never could get otherwise.

I suppose we should be thankful that Stokes and Reset Jackson at least seem to understand that under preemption, only the state can create gun control rules, so asking them is the place to start.

Thankfully, I'll believe Mississippi will pass something like this about the same time that I believe that the missing sock from the drier is the result of Joe Biden maliciously and directly scheming to make my life inconvenient.