News Slants Toward Gun Control

Vincent J. Curtis

3 Feb 20

The Hamilton Saltpork & Rind dutifully reports obvious gang-land related shooting in the city in a manner that makes one feel the call for a gun ban in the editorial that inevitably follows.

Here is a news flash that the Saltpork & Rind, in its zeal to make the world safe for progressivism, seems to have missed.  Depriving people of their means of self-defence is not going to reduce the number of gang-land slayings.  It just won’t.

The SP&R has dutifully reported all sorts of shootings in the city over the last several years, and an uptrend seems evident.  But the stories are never about one irate neighbour shooting another; they are always about some guy getting plugged by an unknown hitman or hit team who then escape.  Gang-land style.  Sometimes they’re about home invasions.

Sometimes the wrong person gets hit.  Not all hitmen are created equal, but depriving the fellow down the street of his means of resisting a home invasion gone wrong isn’t going to stop the criminal underworld from acting violently.

A police crackdown on drug distribution can lead to an outbreak of gangland shootings.  When the flow of drugs is cut off, dealers will prey upon each other trying to steal reserves that may have been stashed for just such shortages.  And when money gets tight, debtors pay with their lives as an example to the others to pay in cash, now.  Seizing the guns of the law-abiding isn’t going to stop this kind of violence, and even puts the innocent in greater danger.

It is wrong to think gang violence can be stopped with a gun-ban.
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