Joe Doakes from Como Park emails:
Once a week, the Minnesota Court of Appeals releases decisions in criminal cases that have been appealed. This week, four of them involve pistols possessed by people who aren’t eligible to have them.
One was handed his pistol by a friend just before the murder. One had a pistol in the trunk of a stolen car. One was carrying a pistol wrapped in plastic, secured with earbuds (not the way gun stores package the products they sell). One was found under the seat of a van – nobody knows how it got there.
The court doesn’t discuss how these ineligible people got their pistols, only the fact they had them. And these four cases are not everybody arrested with a gun, only those who had a strong enough case to appeal; but it’s an indication that the problem is widespread.
How would these crimes would have been prevented by universal background checks?
Joe Doakes
They’d give urban liberals that sense that they’ve dooooooone something.
Which is all that they really care about.
Joe, you’re forgetting: being a Progressive isn’t about accomplishing anything, it’s about feeling virtuous about your actions.
I had a discussion with a bubble-headed cousin at the weekend Superbowl party. She was going on and on about how Bernie was going to “go after Wall Street” and fund all his gifts by taxing capital gains. I said, “Really? Look back at the history of capital gains taxes for the last 100 years. Every time we’ve cut them, the government has gotten more money from them. And every time we’ve increased them, the government has gotten less from them. And that’s adjusted for inflation and all other factors. The people who have capital gains won’t sell their stocks if the taxes are too onerous, they’ll hold on to them longer and longer until they absolutely need that money for something vital. So if you really want to fund Bernie’s plans, you’d be for cutting the capital gains taxes rather than raising them.” It was fun watching her twist and turn trying to both want to get free stuff and at the same time strike a blow for “social justice.”
She stopped talking politics and went to get a refill in the kitchen. Win-win.