By now you've heard about the tragic shooting deaths at the plastics factory in Kentucky. These stories seem to follow such a sad, but predictable template: angry person (usually male) takes gun into work and goes on a murderous rampage, seemingly over something so trivial and senseless that it makes us shake our heads in sorrow.
In this case, the trigger for the incident was allegedly a dispute with the shooter's boss over the wearing of safety goggles. Not enough to be worth losing one's temper over, normally--hardly enough to cost the lives of five people, plus the gunman.
I'm sure that sometime soon, somebody is going to make the case that strict gun-control measures would have kept this from happening. And Kentucky's laws concerning the purchase of handguns would seem not to place many obstacles in the way of someone like Wesley Neal Higdon, who appears to have entered his workplace determined to kill people, and who was armed to do so.
Would it make it harder for someone to commit this type of crime, if the only way they could obtain a gun was illegally? Would stricter gun laws make such impulsive acts of evil harder to pull off?
I'm generally not that much in favor of gun control legislation; certainly the criminal element isn't going to let laws about legal purchasing or possession of these weapons stop them from using them to commit crimes, so many gun control laws seem to me to be exercises in futility. And I disagree with the notion that the Second Amendment was only meant to apply to an organized militia--our forefathers knew all too well what happened when all the power, and all the weapons, were in the hands of a relative handful of tyrants.
But if it were just a little harder for people like Wesley Higdon to get a gun, would six people still be alive?
UPDATE: The Supreme Court has, as most expected, ruled in favor of the right of Americans to own handguns, striking down DC's strict gun control law. After reading all the insightful comments on this thread I think this was the right thing; the answer to the tragedy in Kentucky, and other similar tragedies, lies in better enforcement of the laws already on the books. From the NY Times:
But the court held that the individual right to possess a gun "for traditionally lawful purposes, such as self-defense within the home" is not unlimited. "It is not a right to keep and carry any weapon whatsoever in any manner whatsoever and for whatever purpose," Justice Scalia wrote.The ruling does not mean, for instance, that laws against carrying concealed weapons are to be swept aside. Furthermore, Justice Scalia wrote, "The court's opinion should not be taken to cast doubt on longstanding prohibitions on the possession of firearms by felons and the mentally ill, or laws forbidding the carrying of firearms in sensitive places such as schools and government buildings, or laws imposing conditions and qualifications on the commercial sale of arms."
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No problem, fbc. I was probably being too cute by half, starting off with my general opposition to guns.
Maybe there are legal nuances I'm just not aware of, but it strikes me as astonishing that four justices thought this particular law held up to Constitutional scrutiny.
Maybe there are legal nuances I'm just not aware of, but it strikes me as astonishing that four justices thought this particular law held up to Constitutional scrutiny.
Why? Scalia admits regulation is permissible but couldn't come up with a convincing rationale for how regulations he agrees with are Constitutional under his theory. Breyer is right- if he can't, his theory fails.
Scalia puts off defeat with that dodge and plea for more time near the end. Now, if anyone can come up with impressive sounding rationales for limiting or expanding rights in particular ways, it is Tony Scalia. Instead he pretty much admits that if he's invented a Constitutional right, it's a pretty limited one and he has to think about it a lot more. Not exactly a proof of erudition and intellectual power.
During the anti-gun Clinton Administration, The National Research Council, funded in part by the anti-gun Joyce foundation, was instituted to provide information on firearms. In 2005 it finally issued a report: "Firearms and Violence."
Researchers were unable to identify even one gun control program that reduced violent crime, suicide or accidents. Whether any gun control program or regulation was counter-productive was not addressed (surprise!) Nor was the cost to taxpayers and gun owners addressed (surprise!) But it was recommended that taxpayers provide funding for more studies (surprise!)
But who needs studies? Enlightened England just banned all handguns, like enlightened D.C. had, and crimes with handguns went through the roof (surprise!).
The point of my sarcasm is to point out that liberals lie about the benefits that surly will accrue from ever-new gun control schemes, including outright bans, while women (except Susan :-)) and old folks die in their homes and on the street. But the liberals get reelected for their efforts to do "the right thing", and like good Socialists everywhere, they have no shame. They rationalize that you have to break a few eggs to make an omelet, i.e., get reelected. The latest attempt to do away with the God-given (it's not law-given, just law-codified) right to self-defense is to have Obama and a liberal Congress agree to a U.N. program to ban small arms world-wide.
Today's shamefully split Supreme Beings Court (it should have been an 8 to 1 decision to strike the D.C. ban, with the ACLU's Ginsburg dissenting) will only revitalize the U.N. gambit
Jillian, the distance between "regulation is permissible" and "let's ban all handguns" is enormous. The court was not asked to define where regulation becomes unconstitutional, they were asked if THIS regulation was unconstitutional, and it clearly was. Justice Scalia has no obligation to delineate what an appropriate gun policy should be -- that's the job of a legislature.
the distance between "regulation is permissible" and "let's ban all handguns" is enormous.
In my experience, the pro-gun crowd is hardly monolithic WRT regulation. Outright bans or registration (*) will probably garner consensus opposition. But there are other regulations that many support, e.g., bans on gun ownership by felons, or "shall-issue" concealed-carry licensing. (Of course, there are some who oppose these as well.)
(*) WRT registration...note that much of the opposition here stems from fear of confiscation. I.e., if the government knows who has how many guns, it could one day use that information to "disarm America" (as an '07 op-ed put it). It's interesting to consider how many gun-rights types would actually oppose registration if one could GUARANTEE that the lists would _never_ be used for mass confiscation.
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