Rest in Uneasy Peace Long-Gun Registry

The Canadian Parliament has repealed the Long Gun Registry, as reported in the National Review by John Lott and Gary Mauser in an article published February 20, 2012 entitled Death of a Long-Gun Registry. The passage of the repeal represents a small victory for gun owners, and a small set back for the gun grabbers. But left in place are all the goofy laws that dictate which weapons one may own. An example is provided in the comments to this over at Sebastian's new blog Shall Not Be Questioned. Lott and Mauser make the point that the Long-Gun Registry cost Canadian taxpayers $2.7 Billion over its 14 year life while producing zero results. That is, if the results were to be a reduction in crime. The authors:

Despite spending a whopping $2.7 billion on creating and running a long-gun registry, Canadians never reaped any benefits from the project. The legislation to end the program finally passed the Parliament on Wednesday. Even though the country started registering long guns in 1998, the registry never solved a single murder. Instead it has been an enormous waste of police officers’ time, diverting their efforts from patrolling Canadian streets and doing traditional policing activities.

In the National Post,

Public Safety Minister Vic Toews told reporters Wednesday, hours before the vote, that the government’s actions are long overdue. “It does nothing to help put an end to gun crimes, nor has it saved one Canadian life,” he said.

Once again, gun control has been shown not to control guns, peacefully armed citizens have meanwhile been grievously burdened and stigmatized, and the Left is shocked. But rather than admit the clear evidence that their scheme to control the tools that criminals use has failed, they continue to whine that they are being made less safe. But is that true? In his book More Guns, Less Crime, John Lott performs a tour de force in statistical analysis to show that rates of violent crimes such as murder, rape, and robbery go down in every State where "shall issue" laws obtain.  Are Canadians made of different stuff?  Could not similar results be obtained if Canada adopted similar laws?  But no one at the moment is suggesting repealing the handgun registry.

Gun control laws are universally touted as being crime control laws.  In convincing the public to go along with gun control, the news sources highlight every violent crime that occurs, usually with a statement in a piece that goes something like: "if only he didn't have a gun."  It's as if such crimes never occurred before the gun was invented.  Most people read these things uncritically, and conclude that they would be safer if guns weren't so readily available. Some even deny themselves the clear advantages of having a gun, as Mr. John Harrison does in an editorial in the extremely anti-gun Winston Salem Journal.  But, of course, murders happened even in ancient times, with whatever was around.  Cain killed Able, weapon unknown.  Samson is reputed to have killed  1,000 men with the jaw bone of an ass.

Now, I don't know how it is in Canada, but around here, carrying around the jaw bone of an ass would scare the womenfolk, cause endless fainting and cries of fear.  Frankly, I don't know that I have the strength to fight it out with a fit 20 year old in the prime of his youth using only the jaw bone of an ass.  On the other hand, a handgun is a great equalizer.  Unlike martial arts, the sword, and other forms of self defense, one can learn to shoot a gun and hit the target in an afternoon.  Further training can make even the most delicate of women able to take on a 250 pound rapist.  Being small, light, and concealable, they represent the currently most effective form of self defense is one should find oneself in the gravest danger.

So, if guns are so effective as a self defense tool, such that a society would surely want as many peaceably armed citizens as possible, and if gun control doesn't control the guns that cause crimes, why do the gun grabbers keep insisting?  They can see the same evidence as the rest of us.  Kevin Williamson of the National Review Online thinks he has the answer. In an article appearing on July 17, 2010, entitled Coyotes in a State of Nature, Mr. Williamson writes:

Mr. Ignatius here is remarkably forthcoming: He is not worried about guns in the hands of criminals, but about guns in the hands of law-abiding citizens, people who are willing to apply for a permit and jump through the bureaucratic hoops re­quired of gun buyers. His nightmare is not an America in which criminals run amok with Glocks, or even an America in which gun permits are handed out liberally, but an America in which “every American can apply for a gun license.” Never mind the approval of licenses, the mere application gives Mr. Ignatius the howling fantods. It is wonderfully apt that he references the “state of nature” in his criticism, imagining a Hobbesian version of life in these United States: solitary, poor, nasty, brutish, and short, permeated by the aroma of cordite. Mr. Ignatius, like Thomas Hobbes, is casting his lot with Leviathan and makes no apology for it... This, and not the threat of uncontrollable crime, is really at the heart of the subur­ban progressives’ abomination of firearms...

So, there you have it. It sound reasonable too, for how else to explain why no amount of evidence seems to convince the gun grabbers?