Many gun grabbers challenge us by asking why we don’t want more gun control laws. After all, why wouldn’t we want to make the nation safer?
Many of them just don’t understand the unintended (or intended) consequences.
Background checks. Fingerprint technology. Onerous licensing requirements. These things all require money – whether it’s funding for a bigger bureaucracy, databases, research, resources for investigators. It is resources the government has to spend on new databases for background checks. It is resources it has to spend on funding new research and technologies. It is resources gun shops (many of which are small businesses) have to expend on paperwork, legal bills, etc.
These are cost increases they invariably pass on to their customers.
Guns are already fairly expensive – several hundred dollars for a basic pistol. It’s a fairly sizeable investment – especially for people who are struggling in this economy. If faced with the choice of armed self defense, or food on the table, I’m betting most would choose food.
Making guns even more expensive through regulation makes them cost prohibitive for many poor folks, who may live in neighborhoods that don’t have the gates and the armed guards that people like Bloomberg and Shannon Watts can afford.
By making self defense tools cost prohibitive to poor people, we are depriving them of their ability to defend themselves with the most effective tools on the market today.
Meanwhile, the background checks, the technology, the bureaucracy, and research do nothing to deter criminals from getting their hands on guns. Most get guns illegally, or from a family member or friend, according to the Bureau of Justice Statistics.
In 2004, among state prison inmates who possessed a gun
at the time of offense, fewer than 2% bought their firearm
at a flea market or gun show, about 10% purchased it from
a retail store or pawnshop, 37% obtained it from family or
friends, and another 40% obtained it from an illegal source
So while gun controllers make tools of defense more inaccessible to people who truly need them, criminals continue to purchase them with impunity, and there’s not a single law that will prevent a criminal from violating it.
As a good buddy of mine, who just happens to be a sheriff and 30-year law enforcement veteran says, “Laws are for the law-abiding.”