by ET » Thu May 29, 2014 8:25 pm
I would like hear our friends' advice on how we may put a stop to "knife violence". Would this even be a post if the guy had only killed three people with a knife? Or if he had killed all 6 people with a knife? Maybe....but you wouldn't have politicians lining up to ban knives or talk about "ending knife violence".
California has about every so-called "common-sense" regulation that some wish to impose on a national scale. Reduced magazine capacity. Waiting periods. Ban on so-called "assault" weapons. Even has an "approved handgun list" whereby manufacturers must get their handgun approved for sale in the state.
The guy had forty-one 10-round magazines from one bit I read. Magazine capacity didn't come into play from anything I read, but if it had, would it have really mattered if he had 400+ rounds in 10-round magazines instead of in twenty-five or so 15-round magazines? No, but like many leftists arguments, silly screaming about "high capacity magazines" sounds reasonable, and since people want someone to "do something", such idiocy gets put into law even if it is completely detached from reality and utterly useless.
There are no solutions, only trade-offs. For every person you "save" by banning handguns (and please don't try to tell me that isn't the ultimate goal), you kill another because a man or woman didn't have a gun, or subject a host of others to assault or theft because they didn't have a means to neutralize what is often a larger, more physically intimidating threat.
One could also say gun control is an example of visible vs invisible costs, a concept usually applied to economics. The visible costs are stories such as this wacko who killed 6 people and garnered national news and message board discussions and commentaries probably even in other countries. The invisible costs are the linked stories above that go largely unnoticed where a much larger number of folks are not subjected to violence - whether by gun or any other instrument - each day because they did remove the threat with a gun either by its appearance or putting it to use. But rarely does NOT being the victim of a crime get anything more than local news attention and maybe a story on a web site here and there.
I'm Ed Thompson, and I approve this message.