Gun control has a clear record of failure

Via Tino

In the wake of the horrific murders at the Sandy Hook school in Connecticut, America has been deluged with calls for ever-more-restrictive gun-control laws, and that's understandable. It's natural to think that's the solution if you don't know these measures have been tried and have always failed.
We crave a solution so much that we'll ignore the record and keep repeating failed policies.

We are told that we need gun-control laws. Sounds good, right? Should we make it illegal for anyone adjudicated to be mentally ill to buy a gun? Let's make it illegal for felons to possess guns. Let's license gun dealers and require the FBI to do a background check on anyone buying a gun from these stores. How about an age restriction on buying guns? Gun shows should have to follow the same laws as everyone else.

All those already are law, and there are some 20,000 additional gun-control laws in the U.S. Before one can rationally call for passage of gun laws, he or she must know what already is covered.

How about a ban on “assault weapons”? We're told this is only common sense. But, what is this thing called an assault weapon? It's not a machine gun. There were no machine guns covered in the original assault-weapon ban because those firearms already are tightly restricted. No, the autoloading (called semiautomatic) rifles included in the original law simply looked like military guns. They should be banned on the basis of how they look? They fire only one shot with each pull of the trigger, like a revolver or the cowboy-style lever-action rifle used by John Wayne.

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