By Dave Workman
Editor-in-Chief
Using just 403 words in an Op-Ed appearing in the Wilson, N.C. Times, writer Thomas L. Knapp, director and senior news analyst at the William Lloyd Garrison Center for Libertarian Advocacy, Journalism, offers a measured, yet blistering, explanation why gun control failed to prevent Saturday’s assassination attempt in Washington, D.C., and more importantly, why it always fails.
Knapp nails it down with a single sentence, regarding would-be Donald Trump assassin Cole Thomas Allen, the California teacher-turned-far-left-gunman who is now in federal custody.
“’Gun control,’” Knapp writes, “had chance after chance after chance to prove it could thwart Allen’s plans.
“And. It. Didn’t.”
His next line rubs salt into the media boil he just lanced: “Whoa … violent criminals don’t obey ‘gun control’ laws and private-venue gun rules any more than they obey other kinds of laws and rules? Whodathunkit?”
Knapp isn’t telling Second Amendment activists anything they don’t already know, but his message is aimed at the media and at the gun prohibition lobby, which has repeatedly told itself that restricting the rights of law-abiding gun owners will somehow reduce violent crime.
Way back in June 2010, just after the Supreme Court handed down the landmark ruling in McDonald v. City of Chicago—a Second Amendment Foundation case—David Rittgers, writing in the National Review, observed, “The McDonald decision is a harbinger for the end of gun prohibition as an idea. The simple, undeniable truth is that gun control does not work. McDonald brings the law up to speed with reality, where advocates of gun control have been wrong since the issue became a national discussion.
“Strict gun-control policies,: Rittgers stated, “have failed to deliver on their essential promise: that denying law-abiding citizens access to the means of self-defense will somehow make them safer. This should come as no surprise, since gun control has always been about control, not guns.”
Writing at The Guardian in October 2017, Tom McCarthy put the lie to any argument supporting bans on so-called “assault rifles”—another favorite, albeit badly worn, item on the gun control agenda—when he matter-of-factly noted, “The last major gun control legislation passed by the US Congress was the 1994 assault weapons ban, which had a 10-year sunset clause and was allowed to expire in 2004. The ban is widely seen as having failed to make a dent in gun deaths in the United States, where more than 30,000 people are killed with guns each year, including more than 20,000 suicides. Rifles, including assault weapons, are used in only 3.55% of gun murders annually, according to FBI statistics.”
More people are murdered each year with knives, or are stomped, choked and/or beaten to death with fists, feet and hands. The FBI data shows that as well.
Researcher Gary Mauser, the celebrated Canadian criminologist and emeritus professor in at Simon Fraser University, wrote way back in 2003 about what he called the “Failed Experiment Gun Control and Public Safety in Canada, Australia, England and Wales.”
“Restrictive firearm legislation has failed to reduce violent crime in Australia, Canada, or Great Britain,” he revealed. “The policy of confiscating guns has been an expensive failure. Criminal violence has not decreased. Instead, it continues to increase…. It is an illusion that gun bans protect the public. No law, no matter how restrictive, can protect us from people who decide to commit violent crimes. Maybe we should crack down on criminals rather than hunters and target shooters?”
Skip ahead 20 years, and the Washington Post published an Op-Ed from Ramesh Ponnuru, a contributing WaPo columnist and editor at the National Review, which asked, “If supporters of gun control thought a bit more about their tepid allies, they might ask some additional questions. If stronger gun laws will save tens of thousands of lives, as activists who want those laws insist, why don’t voters act that way? Why won’t Republican voters who back gun control put any pressure on their party?”
Ponnuru possibly answers his own question a bit later: “Research, such as a Rand Corp. review of the literature, has not found conclusive evidence that the federal assault-weapons ban in effect between 1994 and 2004 had any effect on firearm homicide rates. Expanded background checks have little effect on those rates, either, as supporters of more stringent controls occasionally admit. A very high percentage of guns used in crimes are stolen or purchased on the black market.”
Which, perhaps, brings the conversation right back to Knapp’s Op-Ed at the Wilson Times. Putting the argument into a perspective even anti-Trumpers would find impossible to argue, provided they thought about it, Knapp concludes, “‘Gun control’ laws aren’t just evil and impractical, they’re stump-stupid. As a solution to the violence of criminals, they make about as much sense as a gaudy new White House ballroom.”
