Freedom Line Blog

Don’t we ever learn?

Within seconds of initial reports leaking out about Tuesday’s attack that left the apparent killer and 12 others dead in the Washington Navy Yard in southeast D.C., liberals and anti-gun activists took to Twitter to demand tougher gun controls laws.

Apparently in their haste to exploit a tragedy for political capital, these gun opponents didn’t take the time to recognize that the shooting took place in a gun-free zone — in the city with the most restrictive gun laws in America.

In fact, the mass shooting sprees at Sandy Hook Elementary School, Virginia Tech, the Cinemark Theater in Aurora, Colo., and Tuesday’s appalling episode at the Navy Yard all occurred in gun-free zones.

The reality is that mass gun violence almost only occurs in gun-free zones. Economist John Lott, recently discovered that “With just one single exception, the attack on congresswoman Gabrielle Giffords in Tucson in 2011, every public shooting since at least 1950 in the U.S. in which more than three people have been killed has taken place where citizens are not allowed to carry guns.”

Why are gun-free zones so ineffective? The answer is obvious:  A gunman knows the innocent people inside gun-free zones will be sitting ducks, unable to defend themselves or mount a resistance against someone carrying a gun.

No matter how much gun opponents want to claim otherwise, implementing more silly gun control measures or increasing the number of gun-free zones will only lead to more mass shootings. The easiest way to prevent tragedies like the Navy Yard shooting is to allow more responsible adults to take guns more places.

In an interview with CFIF, John R. Lott, Jr., economist and bestselling author of “More Guns, Less Crime” and “The Bias Against Guns,” discusses the statistical relationship between Stand Your Ground and Castle Doctrine laws and the reduction in violent crimes, whether Florida’s Stand Your Ground law applies in the George Zimmerman and Trayvon Martin case, and his latest book, “Debacle: Obama’s War on Jobs and Growth and What We Can Do to Regain Our Future.”

Listen to the interview here.

When the United States Supreme Court affirmed the Second Amendment’s individual right to keep and bear arms and overturned Washington, D.C.’s prohibition, Mayor Adrian Fenty predicted, “More handguns in the District of Columbia will only lead to more handgun violence.”  But that’s not what happened, which comes as no surprise to anyone paying attention to decades of real-world data.  In the famous words of Dr. John Lott, “More Guns, Less Crime.”

Today, The Wall Street Journal noted that the D.C. saw its fewest number of murders since 1963.  What’s more, the decline occurred even as its police force has declined:  “Washington, D.C., last year recorded 108 murders, its fewest since 1963, despite 230 fewer uniformed officers than in 2009.”  More stubborn facts to debunk strangely persistent anti-gun hysteria.

Are new “assault weapons” bans or pistol magazine limits appropriate responses to the Tucson murders?  Airheads from Senator Chuck Schumer (D – New York) to “conservative” commentator Peggy Noonan seem to think so.

If those were effective answers, then one could presumably find evidence that such laws reduce crime.  But that’s not the case, says Dr. John Lott, Jr.:

No research by criminologists or economists has found that the either the assault weapons ban or the magazine-size restrictions reduce crime.  This is not surprising, as magazines are simply small metal boxes with a spring and are thus very easy to make.  Besides, someone planning to harm a large number of people can easily bring two or more loaded guns.”

Indeed, the objective evidence shows that tougher gun restrictions increase crime and violence.  Fewer gun restrictions, on the other hand, reduce crime and violence.  Just look at Chicago, where everyone from Mayor Richard Daley to former Supreme Court Justice John Paul Stevens predicted “more gun death” and “anarchy” following last year’s McDonald Supreme Court decision overturning that city’s draconian gun laws.  Instead, Chicago homicides fell to their lowest level since 1965.

Polls show that the American public understands this.  When will people like Peggy Noonan?