A Liberal War on Guns Is Not the Answer to Mass Killings
It'll eviscerate not just the Second Amendment, but much of the Constitution
Jimmy Kimmel is totally right that had the Las Vegas shooter turned out to be "someone with a beard," conservatives would be making ill-advised calls to "tap
phones" "invoke travel bans" and "build walls." But that doesn't mean that his—and his fellow liberals—calls for more gun control regulations are any wiser. If anything, if liberals want to get truly serious about ridding America off guns, more stringent gun regulations won't cut it. They'll need to launch a full-blown war on guns.
And if you think the conservative war on terrorism is a draconian attack on American liberties, the liberal war on guns will be many time worse in a country where "you can get my gun when you pry it from my cold dead hands" bumper stickers are a thing. No matter how much liberals want a gun-free paradise, they can't simply wish away a deeply entrenched gun culture, I note in my column at The Week. They'll have to be prepared to get every bit as nasty with American gun owners as conservatives want to get with American Muslims.
Indeed, if liberals call off their "truce with the Second Amendment"—as The New Yorker's Adam Gopnik is hectoring them to do—they will inevitably have to give up on the rest of the constitution too.
But the worst part is that none of this will actually stop the Stephen Paddocks of the world from going on a killing spree. To stop that from happening, we ned a paradigm shift and focus less on preemptively thwarting prospective attackers and instead work on boosting the defensive capacities of prospective victims.
Go here to read the piece.