Guns - Or The Lack Of Them

My apprehension at Obama changing his tune about various things on which he claimed a moderate or even conservative may have been justified.
It appears on the whitehouse.gov website that Obama does in fact plan to ban assault weapons, and increase restrictions on gun shows. Great.

The gun ownership debate is a classic debate between empirical evidence and liberal agendas. On the one hand you have massive amounts of data showing that the less restrictions on gun ownership there are, the less violent crime there is. On the other hand, you have liberals claiming that by taking away assault weapons, it will "protect children" even though 90-something percent of all child-gun accidental fatalities involve handguns and shotguns, not assault weapons. Throw in the fact that the vast majority of violent crimes occur without the perpetrator having, or using a gun, and you suddenly have a mix of reality vs. ideology.

I have expressed on this blog that I am not in favor of private citizens carrying ridiculously dangerous, fully-automatic type weapons. Successful, fun hunting and home self-defense can be better achieved with other, more practical gun types. I have also expressed that conceal-and-carry permits can be directly correlated with decreases in violent crime in the area the CNC permits are issued.

So I guess I walk the fence on this issue. However, most issues that involve a large, equal division between interested parties do not come down to a solution involving more regulation. In the case of guns, the trick to making them less dangerous is not to regulate their sales or their existence, rather the solution is education.

Instead of classifying guns into multiple type and use categories, and providing complicated, involved legislation for each class of weapon, would it not be simpler to just pass a law that, like driver's licenses, you MUST complete a short training course before you can buy a gun anywhere? Then, once you have completed that course, you are free to use whatever gun you own within the safety restrictions and season requirements of the area in which you reside?

Anyway, I digress. The point is that in this country and others, time and time again, decreased gun restrictions has decreased violent crime. Remember the phrase "if you take away the guns, on the criminals will have them" comes from this very fact.

Nevertheless, I'll be buying my suppressed MP-5 at the first gun show I can find. I apologize to everyone I told that Obama would not become a liberal weiner on this issue.


_