In Wake of Sandy Hook Elementary Shooting, Some Sober Talk About Gun Control

Earlier today, a 20-year-old named Adam Lanza* entered Sandy Hook Elementary School in Connecticut and killed 27 people—six adults, 20 school children, and himself. He also killed his mother**. 

Americans are rightly horrified by the news, and many people are calling for a fresh debate about America's gun control policies. Reason has been participating in that conversation for decades.

(*Based on news reports, we initially and erroneously identified the shooter as 24-year-old Ryan Lanza. **The AP is reporting that Lanza's mother, who he also killed, was not killed at the school, and may not have actually been a permanent teacher there.)

Below are a collection of stories, editorials, and videos that address the most common arguments for gun control, and the case for preserving Americans' Second Amendment rights: 

– Don't Let the Aurora Shooting Curtail the Right of Self-Defense: Even if gun control could save one life—or a hundred—in one place, that would not justify putting other people at the mercy of criminals somewhere else.

– Futile Remedies for Mass Shootings: The urge to find a cure is powerful. As a rule, though, those that emerge are sugar pills. 

– Outrage Is Not an Argument: Politicians should resist demands to do something about guns in response to the Aurora massacre.

– Controlling Guns, Controlling People: A new history shows how gun control goes hand in hand with fear of black people—and The People.

– The Second Amendment Goes to Court: Civil libertarians respond to D.C. v. Heller (featuring Jacob Sullum, Brian Doherty, Joyce Lee Malcolm, David B. Kopel, Randy Barnett, Glenn Reynolds, Alan Gura & Sanford Levinson).

– Civil Rights and Armed Self-Defense: Understanding Clarence Thomas' concurring opinion in the gun rights case McDonald v. Chicago.

– Gun Control, Ad Infinitum: Gun control is something Americans almost never stop talking about.

– Gun Control's Twisted Outcome: Restricting firearms has helped make England more crime-ridden than the U.S.

Reason TV on the gun control debate: 

"Guns, Laws, and Panics: How Fear, Not Fact, Informs the Gun Rights Debate"