Lots of people are predisposed to buy into the gun lobby's line. For the rest of us, the arguments they advance seem so weak that the natural reaction is: "What? That's all you got? You're persuaded by that?"
Penn and Teller, for example, deconstruct the Second Amendment in a You Tube video that, judging by my FB feed, lots of middle-aged white American males are enamored of. If only a loud, overbearing manner and the f-bomb were an argument! Here is a thought experiment. Suppose that the Founding Fathers had written
The right of the people to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed
instead of what they actually did write
A well regulated militia being necessary to the security of a free state, the right of the people to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed
and that it was now proposed that the short version be amended by adding the introductory clause concerning a militia. All the worshipers of the Second Amendment would be aghast. They'd view it as the first move in a heinous scheme to take away their guns. Today, ambiguity; tomorrow, confiscation. That's what they'd say. But the amendment of my thought experiment, which the gun lovers would despise, is the amendment that was actually adopted, and which the gun lovers purport to esteem as Holy Writ.
In any event, since they are all "constitutional originalists," the "arms" of the amendment cannot refer to weapons, such as the one used by Omar Mateen at the Pulse dance club, that hadn't yet been invented when the amendment was adopted. Right?
I mean, their bad faith isn't even below the surface.
Here is John Hinderaker, of the Power Line blog, explaining why an assault weapons ban is a no-good, crazy, stupid, bad idea:
[W]e had an "assault weapons" ban for a number of years in the 1990s, and it did zero good. The homicide rate later dropped dramatically as firearms laws were liberalized.
This is just part of his variegated argument--the rest is mostly "I know about guns and you're an ignoramus"--but what I like about it is that it can be fact-checked. Here, from the FBI, is the year-by-year murder rate (murders per 100,000 population) in the U.S. for a 20-year period that encompasses the ten years (1994-2004) that the federal assault weapons ban was law. I'll bold the years that the ban was in effect.
1990 (9.4)
1991 (9.8)
1992 (9.3)
1993 (9.5)
1994 (9.0)
1995 (8.2)
1996 (7.4)
1997 (6.8)
1998 (6.3)
1999 (5.7)
2000 (5.5)
2001 (5.6)
2002 (5.6)
2003 (5.7)
2004 (5.5)
2005 (5.6)
2006 (5.7)
2007 (5.6)
2008 (5.4)
2009 (5.0)
Let's review Hinderaker's claim:
[W]e had an "assault weapons" ban for a number of years in the 1990s, and it did zero good. The homicide rate later dropped dramatically as firearms laws were liberalized.
He is contradicted by the data. As is frequently said, you are entitled to your own opinion, but not to your own facts.
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