One of the missing elements of the Aurora, Colorado, shooting spree was the apartment of James Holmes. There is an abundant amount of news coverage describing how it was wired with explosives. The first person who entered the room would have been killed. The police need to be commended for some good reconnaissance work.
If the shooter planned for months to kill people and trip-wire his apartment, making the purchase of guns illegal would not have stopped him. He would have used explosives. They’re illegal, too. More people would have been killed because of the percussion effect – an explosive device going off in a small space.
If people want to kill other people, the law’s not going to stop them. Box cutters and airplanes brought down the Twin Towers. If word got out that ten to twenty percent of the population was carrying a firearm, I suspect that nut jobs and world-be terrorists would have second thoughts about going on shooting rampages. We might, however, see an up-tick in other types of killings.
Great Britain has strict gun control laws. Advocates of gun control believe that these laws cut down on violence and crime. Such laws only empower lawbreakers. Gun homicides were low in the United Kingdom even before gun control laws went into effect. This does not mean that there hasn’t been any gun violence since these laws went into effect in 1977.
I can't think of a worse place to hold up as an example, except maybe as what not to do.“Over the course of a few days in the summer of 2001, gun-toting men burst into an English court and freed two defendants; a shooting outside a London nightclub left five women and three men wounded; and two men were machine-gunned to death in a residential neighborhood of north London. And on New Year’s Day this year [2002] a 19-year-old girl walking on a main street in east London was shot in the head by a thief who wanted her mobile phone. London police are now looking to New York City police for advice.”
Gun control has had an impact elsewhere: a dramatic increase in other violent crimes. “For example, comparing London and New York, cities of very similar population and demographics, the rate of assaults and robberies is over six times as high, and 7 or 10 times nationwide (depending on statistic used).” Compared with the United States, “the United Kingdom has a slightly higher total crime rate per capita of approximately 85 per 1000 people, while in the USA it is approximately 80.”
[...]John Lott is right; more guns = less crime. And the inverse is also correct; more gun restrictions = higher violent crime rates. Imagine that...
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