Guns Don’t Kill People. Policy Does

We know gun control isn’t about safety.

First, Britain – awash in the same sort of virtue-signaling panic that befalls Big Left regularly – banned guns after the Dunblane Massacre.

After a couple decades of increases, London’s murder rate passed up New York’s for the first time.

Ever.

If you read this blog, you already know what the Brits are “doing” about it.

Last week, TheBlaze reported the number of murders in London, a traditionally safe city, surpassed the number of murders in New York City in February and March for the first time in modern history. The murders were mostly carried out in stabbing attacks with knives.

Now, London Mayor Sadiq Khan is taking action — by implementing knife control.

What is Khan doing?
In response to the spike in crime, Khan deployed over 300 additional London police officers to the city’s most crime-ridden neighborhoods to stop and search anyone they suspect is carrying a knife. In the U.S., such policies are very controversial and possibly violate the Fourth Amendment, but in England, police are able to stop and search anyone they suspect is carrying a knife.

The results?  The same sort of security theater that happens every time government tries to treat not the disease, not even the symptoms, but the tools involved in the symptoms (and, in the UK’s case, the very act of defending yourself from the disease). It’s like treating flu by banning vomit.

And when I say “security theater”, I’m not speaking imprecisely at all:

So after decades of dictatorial posturing, perhaps the number of knives available to criminals will drop (as Britons gnaw on food they can’t cut, or start buying their awful British food pre-cut for them).  That‘ll solve crime right?

Nonsense.  Criminals will start taping nails onto long sticks, or carrying socks full of five pence pieces.  And when the UK government gans nails and coins, they’ll switch to pointed sticks.  And when pointed sticks are finally off the streets, it’ll be rocks and pavers and fists and feet.

Britian keeps this “mind”-set up, they’ll all be legless, armless, immobile consumption machines in a few centuries.

Except the criminals.

13 thoughts on “Guns Don’t Kill People. Policy Does

  1. This is the result of static thinking. “If we ban guns then crime will stop.”
    It is inconceivable to our self-identified betters (the gun ban folks) that criminals might be adaptable enough to select other weapons and proceed with business as usual. To the elite cadres that promote gun control all criminals are nothing more than the caricatures they see in titillating movies and TV, easily and permanently controlled with simple common sense measures.

  2. PB, you’re exactly right. It’s the same “logic” as the middle school word problem: “If McDonalds makes $1 million selling a hamburgers at $1 each, how much will McDonalds make if they raise the price to $10 each?” The answer is NOT $10 million because in the real world, people will switch to Burger King or Wendy’s or maybe even Chick-fil-a. Economists call the principle “substitution” and every wage earner knows how to apply it at lunchtime but somehow we think it doesn’t apply anywhere else in life?

  3. So why isn’t anybody asking The Question?

    “We banned all those nasty old guns that formerly had been killing people but people still are being killed. Why didn’t it work?” Until you can answer that question, you cannot solve the problem.

    Personally, I suspect Evil Spirits, the kind that lurk in amulets, Aladdin’s lamp and Evil Black Rifles Who Shoot People All By Themselves. When guns were banned, the Evil Spirits simply fled their former homes and now reside in knives, bottles and household tools. They’re Evil, they’re not stupid.

    We didn’t need gun control and we don’t need knife control, we need exorcism. Who will be the first to call for it?

  4. Aside from the full-on SWAT operation in the video, have you seen the more “mundane” anti-knife activities? They include confiscating screwdrivers, pruning shears, electricians pliers and shovels. So, we’re keeping people safe but they cannot carry tools in their work?

  5. about 15 years back an acquaintance, who lived near Tiananman Square in June of 1989, explained to a group of awestruck south mpls artists at a dinner party that when the “bad stuff” started to happen the police went door to door to every home within a 5 km radius of the square confiscating all knives longer than 3 inches, they also cleared the streets of any rocks or debris that could be used offensively. The dinner party consensus was that it was a good thing because order was maintained.

  6. ” . . . including the so-called ‘Zombie Slayer’ knives” (embedded video). He said it with such a straight face I honestly can’t tell if this is parody or not. I want to believe it’s all a joke, but I’m afraid it isn’t. If it’s not, you can’t tell me that half of the people in the video aren’t snickering into their sleeves as soon as the camera turns away. They all play it so goddamn serious it’s impossible to tell whose in on the joke and who isn’t.

  7. Knife control: because by no means can anyone with a piece of metal and a rock make a knife, and because by no means can anyone make a passable knife with just a piece of flint and a rock, and because by no means can someone make a fairly lethal weapon by breaking a bottle, nor can someone make a reasonable weapon with a hardened pointed stick…..or kill someone with a rock or a tire iron or…..

  8. progressives, who think its still about the Sharks and the Jets, have been anti-gun ever since chino shot tony, it broke their hearts

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