Gun Control

Where Guns Are Outlawed, School Attackers Use Cars and Knives

by Michael Tennant January 8, 2013

In the days since the school shooting in Newtown, Connecticut, many in the media and government have asserted that the only way to prevent such attacks in the future is to prohibit persons from being able to purchase guns. So what are we to make of the fact that on Christmas Eve a man attacked a group ...

Guns and Libertarianism

by David S. D'Amato January 8, 2013

The tragedy in Newtown, Connecticut, has expectedly renewed interest in the “gun debate,” animating the worst inclinations of both the left and right halves of the statist conversation. Some conservative quarters are calling for something like armed-to-the-teeth military police to be stationed in the country’s schools. Progressives have naturally fallen back on all of the stock bilge in adjuring ...

Gun-Control, Mental-Health Laws Won’t Make Us Safer

by Sheldon Richman December 27, 2012

We would do the young victims of the Newtown shootings no honor by frantically enacting futile restrictions on freedom. It may be satisfying to “do something.” But two things ought to be kept in mind. First, liberty is never more in peril than when politicians sense that the people want them to do something — anything. Second, a false sense ...

Guns, Security, and Liberty

by Tim Kelly December 19, 2012

The barrage of anti-gun-rights rhetoric in the aftermath of last week’s massacre at an elementary school in Connecticut was predictable. The usual suspects appeared on various network and cable news shows to politicize the tragedy by blaming private gun ownership and calling for stricter gun-control laws. Leading the assault on the Second Amendment was New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg, ...

The Gun Made Him Do It

by Benedict D. LaRosa December 7, 2012

During the 1970s, comedian Flip Wilson would excuse the bad behavior of a character he portrayed with the retort, “The devil made me do it!” We laughed at his attempt to shift responsibility for his actions because it was ridiculous. Yet, according to NBC sports announcer Bob Costas, guns cause crime! Costas, in halftime remarks during the December 2, 2012, ...

First Shots in the New War on Guns

by Scott McPherson November 13, 2012

Gun-control advocates commonly say they just want “sensible gun laws” that will “keep guns out of the wrong hands.” Yet none of their ideas ever work. That’s not just hyperbole: an intensive study of U.S. gun-control laws by the Centers for Disease Control found that they had done nothing — zip, zero, nada — to reduce crime. That ...

Don’t Let the Aurora Shooting Curtail the Right of Self-Defense

by Sheldon Richman October 1, 2012

The July shooting in the Aurora, Colorado, movie theater, which took 12 lives and injured 58 during the midnight premier of The Dark Knight Rises, has incited the usual bitter controversy over guns. One side says tighter gun restrictions could have prevented the horrible incident that night. The other responds that more guns in the hands of law-abiding people ...

The Lessons of Aurora

by Benedict D. LaRosa August 8, 2012

In the wake of the July 20, 2012, massacre at an Aurora, Colorado, movie theater, where a gunman killed 12 people and wounded most of the 58 injured, the debate over gun control flared up anew. The Aurora movie theater was a gun-free zone in that patrons were prohibited by local law and by theater policy from carrying concealed (or ...

The “Cans” and “Shoulds” of Gun Control

by Laurence M. Vance August 7, 2012

Liberals, Democrats, and other advocates of gun control are so predictable. The bodies weren’t even buried after the horrific shooting last month in the Denver suburb of Aurora, Colorado, at the Century 16 Theater in a shopping mall before some liberal pundits and politicians began calling for more-draconian gun laws. The suspect, James Holmes, killed 12 persons and wounded 58 with ...

Don’t Let Aurora Shooting Curtail Right of Self-Defense

by Sheldon Richman July 23, 2012

The shooting in the Aurora, Colorado, movie theater has incited the usual debate over guns. One side says tighter gun restrictions could have prevented the horrible incident that night. The other responds that more guns in the hands of law-abiding people might have prevented it. While the theater chain prohibits firearms, it is hard to say that the alleged shooter, ...

Self-Defense and the Anti-Gun Mentality, Part 1

by Scott McPherson June 27, 2012

Part 1 | Part 2 I recently attended a meet-up group started by a friend of mine. The goal of the group is to bring people together from across the political spectrum to discuss a variety of issues and to, as the mission statement reads, use “common sense ideas to build a healthier and happier community.” The group ...

Put Down Your Rights and No One Needs to Get Hurt!

by Wendy McElroy July 13, 2011

Few activities are as dangerous as watching a cop too closely, as John Kurtz knows well. Kurtz is the founder of the Orlando, Florida, branch of CopWatch, a network of activists in the United States and Canada who patrol the streets on foot or in a vehicle to monitor and document police activity in order to spotlight ...