Common sense is the first casualty in the new battle over guns

Since the most recent iteration of the gun control debate stems from the massacre of two dozen schoolchildren at Sandy Hook Elementary in Connecticut, it's an understandably emotional issue. Like all Americans, I was horrified at what happened--maybe more than some as I am the father of two young children. However, it is our responsibility as adults to check our emotions when discussing important issues so that we might hand off a better country to the next generation and resist the cynical attempts by politicians to use the children's deaths to jump start an ideological agenda.

Since the murders were committed with a gun, the knee-jerk reaction of those who take the intellectual path of least resistance is to "do something" like "ban guns" or "increase gun regulations."  Certainly, it's harder for those individuals to connect school shootings to abstract concepts like the breakdown of the family unit.

The Star is to be commended for opening a discussion on causes of violence instead of simply focusing on tools used to commit violence. Unfortunately, even though the original work cites some pretty good arguments from two local gun dealers, three of the best arguments against further gun regulations are missing, which are:

1. It's in the Constitution

The best argument for guns is the least persuasive to progressives and the low-information voter. The 2^nd Amendment guarantees the right to bear arms, and the Supreme Court affirmed it as an individual right. The purpose of the guarantee is not to hunt or for sport, but to give the citizen a last line of defense against a tyrannical government. Our Founding Fathers had just thrown off an oppressor, and they feared the government they created would grow to oppress future generations. By arming the public, they tipped the scales of power into the individual's hands. Every attempt to erode it since has put each of us at the mercy of an all-powerful government. A cursory knowledge of history reveals what happens when citizens are disarmed, knowledge the low-information does not possess. To the progressive ideologue, the Constitution is not something to be consulted, it's something to be sidestepped. And so, the best argument for guns will go unheeded.

2. Gun laws only serve to disarm those who obey the law

Here's where common sense plays a role in the gun debate. As common sense isn't common, Criminals do not obey laws, by definition. By definition, law abiding people do. Therefore, laws regulating guns will disarm those that obey laws and put them at the mercy of those who do not. In other words, power shifts away from good people and ends up in the hands of bad people. Ironically, people that decry strict drug laws as advocate for strict gun laws, despite the failure of both.

Perhaps if the manufacture of all guns is prohibited, not even criminals can find guns. Two seconds of thought reveal that laws passed in the United States only affect the United States, so any other country could fill the criminal demand for guns on the black market--just as they do for drugs, which are available just about everywhere.

Finally, there are already laws against many types of guns used in crimes. It is against the law to murder, against the law to steal guns, against the law for certain people on probation to handle guns, and so forth. Yet violence occurs every day.  If laws against murder are ignored, why would any clear-thinking person think the solution lies with more laws?

3. Guns provide for self-defense

As good as our local police departments are, they are primarily a reactive force. Their job is to show up after a crime has occurred to draw chalk outlines around the victims. No response time is good enough to protect a family whose house is broken into in a home-invasion robbery. Citizens must be afforded a right to use deadly force to protect themselves. That means rifles, handguns, and shotguns. Even limitations on magazine capacities can put people's lives in danger. Criminals seem to have no problem getting banana clips for their AK's , but I can't have more than 10 shots in my gun? What if 3 or 4 people break into my house and I miss a couples times? I'm dead.

Conclusion

Progressives and low-information voters seem to both believe that power is best left in the hands of experts, the elite, and authorities. Low information-voters want to defer the hard choices to someone else, and progressive ideologues want to be that someone.

An underpinning of both their belief systems is that centralized power can be used not just to minimize violence--but to prevent it.  In that futile pursuit to change what cannot be changed--human nature--half the country is willing to cede power to an increasingly scary government. 

AB962, the misguided law that would make handgun ammunition much harder to buy in California (starting in February) has been struck down by a Fresno Superior Court Judge.

I've been following this law closely since it started winding its way through Sacramento, but I'm a little late on posting this as the law was struck down last month.  In fact, it was struck down 5 days after I made what I thought would be my final purchase of ammo online.

The judge found the law unconstitutional because it is "unconstitutionally vague" on its face.

The lawsuit alleged, and the Court agreed, that AB 962 is unconstitutionally vague on its face because it fails to provide sufficient legal notice of what ammunition cartridges are "principally for use in a handgun," and thus is considered "handgun ammunition" that is regulated under AB 962. It is practically impossible, both for those subject to the law and for those who must enforce it, to determine whether any of the thousands of different types of ammunition cartridges that can be used in handguns are actually "principally for use in" or used more often in, a handgun. The proportional usage of any given cartridge is impossible to determine, and in any event changes with market demands. In fact, the legislature itself is well aware of the vagueness problem with AB 962's definition of "handgun ammunition" and tried to redefine it via AB 2358 in 2010. AB 2358 failed in the face of opposition from the NRA and CRPA based on the proposal's many other nonsensical infringements on ammunition sales to law abiding citizens.

t's also unforgivably stupid on its face. The proponents of the bill say the purpose of it is to cut down on gang shootings. Follow the logic--it's already illegal for gang members to have guns--so if laws solved these sorts of problems why would we need another law taking away their ammo, too, if it's already illegal for them to own guns?

Naturally, the effect of the law would be to further disarm regular folks while gang members continue to illegally gain access to firearms and ammo on the black market.

AB962's proponents were so out of touch with reality that the original version of the law made it illegal to transfer more than 50 rounds of ammo between family members. Think about that--if I take my wife to the shooting range and give her a box of my ammo, I would have committed a crime! Or maybe she would have...or we both would have.

It's no surprise AB962, even in its revised form, got tossed out.