NATIONAL REVIEW5 Hours Ago

Charles C. W. Cooke - Gun Control's Dead End

by Charles C. W. Cooke

Now that the terrifying confusion has abated and the wildly varying reports have been collated into some sort of consensus, we are able to review what happened yesterday at Washington, D.C.'s Navy Yard with a dispassionate and critical eye. Doing so reveals that it is once again time for the friends of liberty to be blunt and to be forceful in the face of what will inevitably come. So resolved, let us lay down this marker: Those claiming that yesterday's abomination demonstrates the need for stricter gun control are either lying or they are ignorant, and, either way, they should be ashamed of themselves. It does no such thing.

We now know that the perpetrator owned only a Remington 870 shotgun, and that he murdered and maimed his way into possession of the two other weapons that he used in his attack. Those weapons were two standard 9mm handguns — not, as the media tripped over itself prematurely to report, a much-maligned AR-15 "assault rifle." On his show last night, unrelenting bore Piers Morgan spent a great deal of time spreading misinformation about the role of the AR-15 in the shooting, a theme that the New YorkDaily News has rather embarrassingly continued on its front cover this morning. Although retractions will presumably be forthcoming in the usual tiny print, it is probably too late to remove completely the impression that the headlines will have left in the imaginations of many Americans.

It is not, however, too late to set the record straight in the public square and with lawmakers, who will be predictably pressured to "do something." Here, the truth is vital, for it demonstrates neatly the reality that, in a country with 350-million-plus privately owned firearms, the state is utterly powerless to stop evil with the law. President Obama, Dianne Feinstein, Chuck Schumer et al. could have pushed through Congress every single gun-control provision that they coveted earlier this year — an "assault weapons" ban, a limit on the size of magazines, and a requirement that background checks be conducted for all private sales — and yesterday would nonetheless have happened exactly as it did. Indeed, in preparing for his spree, Aaron Alexis quite literally followed Joe Biden's advice: He went out and bought an uncontroversial shotgun from a reputable, licensed dealer and subjected himself successfully to a federal background check. So routine was this purchase, it should be noted, that it could have been made legally in England or in France.

None of the usual political language applies here. Alexis, who killed twelve people, did not buy a weapon "from a friend" or "over the Internet" or in the "parking lot of a gun show"; he did not have a "high capacity" magazine from which to "spray" bullets around; he did not buy a "military style" "assault weapon" — nor even use one; he did not deploy "armor-piercing bullets." Instead, he bought a shotgun that almost nobody is openly suggesting should be banned or controlled. Politicians and public figures who call for new laws in the wake of this shooting will thus need nailing to the wall with a simple and reliable question: "What exactly do you propose doing, and how specifically would it have changed what happened at the Navy Yard?" When I have asked this question of non-journalists on Twitter, I have received a common — refreshingly honest — answer: "A gun ban."

If the mainstream gun-control movement were as forthright as the rank-and-file Left, it would accept that there is little choice now but for it to go back to its pre-1994 position and renew calls for the piecemeal prohibition of all privately owned handguns. To focus on other weapons, especially the AR-15, is downright absurd. If someone is killed with a gun in America, it is almost certain that a handgun was used. Rifles of all types — not just so-called "assault rifles" — are used in around 3 percent of killings, while shotguns are used in around 3.5 percent. So rare are deaths from either rifles or shotguns that the FBI finds hands and fists causing more deaths than both combined. Handguns, on the other hand, account for almost all deaths-by-firearm. Because handguns are clearly protected by the Second Amendment — as explicitly confirmed in the Supreme Court'sHeller decision — the Left will have little choice but to call for a repeal of the Second Amendment.

Charles C. W. Cooke - Gun Control's Dead End
http://www.nationalreview.com/article/358714/gun-controls-dead-end-charles-c-w-cooke

John Hames