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by Mel Griffith
It's amazing how people in high places will tell us complete nonsense. Although any intelligent person can tell that it is phony, it appears a lot of folks believe whatever they are told. Two recent examples have to do with the relentless effort of control freaks to disarm the citizens of the country and leave them defenseless against criminals. It seems that Mexico has a high level of violent crime. It also has very strict gun control laws, which obviously do nothing to prevent crime. The United States, on the other hand, has a low level of violent crime compared to Mexico and, in many places, quite reasonable gun control laws. What is the Mexican president's solution to his problem? He thinks that the United States should adopt strict gun control laws, which have been proven to be useless in Mexico and unnecessary in the United States. His theory is that restricting the constitutional rights of Americans would somehow reduce crime in Mexico. Wouldn't it make more sense to fight crime in Mexico, where it is, instead of harassing innocent citizens elsewhere, where it isn't? Of course, the Mexican president probably really knows better, but it is much easier to blame the United States instead of addressing the real Mexican problem, which is that most of the police are on the payroll of drug dealers and make no effort to enforce the law.
In another case a con artist in the present administration, whose name I forget, was attempting to explain the high crime rate in Washington, DC which is one of the worst in the country. One of the reasons crime is high there is that unreasonable gun laws pretty well guarantee criminals that potential victims are unarmed. This official, who should have been smart enough to know better, and probably did, got it exactly backwards. The reason for the high crime rate in Washington, he explained, was that gun laws in surrounding states were too lax. If that statement were true, and crime was due to readily available guns, then the crime rate in surrounding states would be at least as high and probably higher than it is in Washington. But the crime rate in those states is much lower than in Washington, totally destroying his argument. No doubt he thinks, perhaps correctly, that most folks won't bother to think things through and realize how stupid his statement is.
Actually, it comes as no surprise that states with liberal gun laws have lower crime than Washington with its strict laws. Statistics collected over many years in widely scattered locations show that the easier it is for law-abiding citizens to have guns, the lower the crime rates. The reason for this observation is that the more likely it is that a potential victim will be armed, the more cautious criminals are about attacking them. A criminal who knows that the penalty for robbery may be instant death might decide on a safer line of work.
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