Menino's Underpants
Sorry for the disturbing mental imagery conjured up by the post's title there, but it's late and I hate trying to come up with creative, interesting titles for every post.
As much as I'm not a big fan of "my statistics can beat up your statistics" arguments concerning the detrimental effects of gun control legislation, I thought I'd resurrect this "oldie but goodie".
From the GOAL website, comes this before-and-after look at the effects of Chapter 180 of the Acts of 1998 on the Commonwealth (table copied below).
I challenge anyone to interpret this as an indicator of the positive effect of gun control. The only "logical" answer coming from the anti-gun crowd these days is that people are either (a) buying guns in New Hampshire and other gun rights-friendly states, and using them to commit crimes in Massachusetts or (b) these same people are selling the guns to criminals on the streets of Boston.
Argument (a) implies that these people are buying guns from a licensed firearms dealer (we'll ignore for a moment the fact that no Massachusetts resident can buy a firearm directly from an out-of-state dealer), and thereby undergoing the federally required background checks. So these crimes are ALL being committed by first-time offenders? If they're ineligible to purchase handguns legally, why would they drive to New Hampshire to buy a gun illegally on the street when they could do it much easier right here at home?
Speaking of buying guns from out-of-state on the street, let's look at Argument (b). To buy into this far-fetched scheme, you'd have to be a graduate of the Underpants Gnomes School of Economics.
Step 1 - Buy a $700 handgun from a New Hampshire gun shop
Step 2 - Drive to Massachusetts and sell it out of the back of the van for $100
Step 3 - Profit.
Now, some hold-outs might argue that there are, in fact, New Hampshire residents who buy cheap used guns legally and do manage to sell them in Massachusetts for a profit.
Then they'll say the problem is guns being stolen from the homes of licensed gun owners. Correct me if I'm wrong, but is that not already against the law? The ONLY way to prevent that particular crime from occurring is to confiscate all legally-owned firearms. Not only will that not happen, but the net effect on violent crime, would likely be an increase due to the sudden creation of millions of unarmed victims just waiting to be preyed upon.
Now it seems to me that if this illegal gun trafficking IS taking place on as widespread scale as officials in Boston would have you believe (after all, gun control works, remember?), then it's much greater an indicator of the inability of law enforcement to arrest and prosecute these individuals than it is of the need for more gun control laws that do nothing but...
(INSERT DEAD HORSE BEATING ALERT HERE)
...disarm the innocent, law-abiding citizenry, while doing nothing to combat violent street crime. Why is that, you ask? Because, believe it or not, criminals don't obey the law. Who knew?
As much as I'm not a big fan of "my statistics can beat up your statistics" arguments concerning the detrimental effects of gun control legislation, I thought I'd resurrect this "oldie but goodie".
From the GOAL website, comes this before-and-after look at the effects of Chapter 180 of the Acts of 1998 on the Commonwealth (table copied below).
I challenge anyone to interpret this as an indicator of the positive effect of gun control. The only "logical" answer coming from the anti-gun crowd these days is that people are either (a) buying guns in New Hampshire and other gun rights-friendly states, and using them to commit crimes in Massachusetts or (b) these same people are selling the guns to criminals on the streets of Boston.
Argument (a) implies that these people are buying guns from a licensed firearms dealer (we'll ignore for a moment the fact that no Massachusetts resident can buy a firearm directly from an out-of-state dealer), and thereby undergoing the federally required background checks. So these crimes are ALL being committed by first-time offenders? If they're ineligible to purchase handguns legally, why would they drive to New Hampshire to buy a gun illegally on the street when they could do it much easier right here at home?
Speaking of buying guns from out-of-state on the street, let's look at Argument (b). To buy into this far-fetched scheme, you'd have to be a graduate of the Underpants Gnomes School of Economics.
Step 1 - Buy a $700 handgun from a New Hampshire gun shop
Step 2 - Drive to Massachusetts and sell it out of the back of the van for $100
Step 3 - Profit.
Now, some hold-outs might argue that there are, in fact, New Hampshire residents who buy cheap used guns legally and do manage to sell them in Massachusetts for a profit.
Then they'll say the problem is guns being stolen from the homes of licensed gun owners. Correct me if I'm wrong, but is that not already against the law? The ONLY way to prevent that particular crime from occurring is to confiscate all legally-owned firearms. Not only will that not happen, but the net effect on violent crime, would likely be an increase due to the sudden creation of millions of unarmed victims just waiting to be preyed upon.
Now it seems to me that if this illegal gun trafficking IS taking place on as widespread scale as officials in Boston would have you believe (after all, gun control works, remember?), then it's much greater an indicator of the inability of law enforcement to arrest and prosecute these individuals than it is of the need for more gun control laws that do nothing but...
(INSERT DEAD HORSE BEATING ALERT HERE)
...disarm the innocent, law-abiding citizenry, while doing nothing to combat violent street crime. Why is that, you ask? Because, believe it or not, criminals don't obey the law. Who knew?
