Thursday, February 17, 2005

What kind of person supports gun control?

Find out here.

Not the crowd I'd want to be associated with.

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

I am in favour of gun 'control'.
Not in the sense of gun 'banning' but in the sense of licencing similar to driving licences.
If you catch a drunk person driving you take him off the road (or at least out of his car) before he causes an accident and only return his licence/car when he is sober again.
What do you do with a drunk person with gun in his pocket? I think you take him out of the public till he's sober (or take away the gun and his licence till he is sober).
-Sjon-

Dave Markowitz said...

I am all in favor of punishing irresponsible firearms use. E.g., shooting bullets into the air to celebrate New Year's Eve or carrying a gun while intoxicated. But neither of these require licensing.

The problem with licensing is that historically it's been used as a way to restrict who can get a gun, with restrictions not being limited to criminals or drunks. Further, licensing and registration faciliate confiscation. This happened in German in the 1930s, in New York City and in Britain in the 1990s, and is currently happening in South Africa.

Virtually nobody wants to ban automobiles. In contrast, there is a large and very vocal group who thinks that anyone not working for the state should be disarmed. So, in practical terms, the comparison doesn't hold water.