United Liberty

I was disconnected from social media outlets almost all day on Friday, so I didn’t hear about the movie theater shootings until Friday night. Since the topic is all over social media, I’ve been asked a number of times what I think about gun control.

My standard answer to the gun control question (which is one I picked up somewhere, but don’t recall where) is:

Gun control, as far as I’m concerned, means using both hands.

Of course, I don’t mean to make light of a terrible situation, but it’s a real tragedy that anti-freedom groups jump on a situation like this one as an opportunity to stress the need for more restrictive gun laws.

As if criminals obey the gun laws. Gun control laws disarm law abiding citizens while giving criminals notice of where unarmed victims will be.

It’s baffling that people argue with this logic. If a criminal is going to use a gun to commit a crime, would he be more likely to choose a location where people are known to carry guns for protection, or a location where guns are banned?

Gun control laws, very simply, are a form of prohibition. And, as I’ve said a number of times before, prohibition just does not work. We are fools if we let ourselves believe that gun control laws protect anyone but criminals. Gun control isn’t about guns; it’s about control.

In one of my favorite chapters of one of my favorite books, one of my favorite people had this to say about gun control laws; and I couldn’t agree more:

Even if you don’t like guns and don’t want to own them, you benefit from those who do. It is better that criminals imagine they face an armed rather than an unarmed population.

Image courtesy of Wikipedia