The anti-gunners are dead set on making gun ownership more difficult. But one person in this camp seems to have conceded that many of the left’s anti-gunner policies aren’t effective and puts forth a sort of thought experiment on how to reduce gun deaths.
Columnist Megan McCardle penned an op-ed for The Washington Post in which she suggests a new idea: Pushing gun buyers toward long guns instead of handguns.
To be fair, she acknowledges that this plan is likely unworkable, but that she is introducing it as a new way of curbing gun-related violence.
For starters, McArdle points out that handguns tend to be more dangerous than long guns like rifles and shotguns. She notes that “handguns are associated with more harm” and cites statistics showing that they are involved in 90 percent of gun violence and a high number of suicides.
They start from a few simple and correct premises. First, handguns are associated with more harm than long guns — they are involved in 90 percent of firearm violence and a huge number of suicides. People own significantly more handguns because they are just easier to carry around and easier to conceal.
Second, most people who buy guns say they want them for personal or household safety. That’s a use for long guns as well. Displacing handgun purchases with purchases of less convenient long guns could reduce the likelihood of tragedy when the owner becomes angry or despondent.
So, what if the government gave first-time gun buyers a subsidy to choose a long gun instead?
McArdle refers to a study on how harm reduction is used to help drug users survive their addictions and eventually break free of them and suggests a similar approach might work for guns.
But we have mostly tried to address them by making gun ownership more difficult, and that has practical as well as political problems.
The practical problem is that it’s difficult (and often unconstitutional) to enact restrictions that motivated criminals can’t get around. The political dilemma is that gun owners who bear the costs of those policies are often single-issue voters on gun control, while the other side isn’t. For people who support gun control, it’s one of many left-wing policy commitments, rarely topping the list. That’s why limiting gun access has been such a political bust, even though a clear majority of Americans support tighter restrictions.
The three economists’ paper sidesteps that debate by examining the problem purely in terms of harm reduction. It’s like safe injection sites for drug users. Sure, we could try to hassle people until they stop using, but we tried that and people are still doing drugs, so what if we instead tried to make their dangerous hobby as safe as possible?
Of course, as McArdle concedes, there is little chance of such an idea working. Even if more people chose long guns over handguns, the core problem still remains: Evil people will still use firearms to victimize people.
You're right. If gun-control efforts were actually intended to reduce harm, they would be targeted at handguns first. Going after rifles instead is an index of their salami-slicing political strategy.
— Eric S. Raymond (@esrtweet) September 12, 2024
The graboids think banning and confiscating long guns is an easier political… https://t.co/TzIrx8OwGw
Yes, some might end up preferring a shotgun or AR-15 for home defense. Many already do this. But it doesn’t change the fact that one cannot feasibly carry a long gun when they go about their days.
Do people on the left really want to see us shopping at Walmart with a rifle or shotgun slung over our shoulders? Can anyone imagine hefting around a long gun while taking our children to the park?
Of course not. As McArdle notes, handguns are popular because they are easier to carry and conceal. It puts us in a better position to defend ourselves from would-be robbers or murderers. Women would fare much better against a potential rapist with a handgun than a rifle.
If folks like McArdle want to see fewer violent crimes, then the truth is what proponents of the Second Amendment have been arguing for decades: More firearms in the hands of responsible citizens will do far more to keep people safe from bad actors than imposing useless gun control laws that make people more helpless.
Editor’s Note: The radical Left will stop at nothing to enact their radical gun control agenda and strip us of our Second Amendment rights.
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