Found by Sir Soyer @ Alphecca
Knives are used in nearly three times as many violent crimes as guns, yet no one calls for a knife registry. Even blunt instruments are used more often than guns without demands that government licences be required before one may buy baseball bats and lead pipes. So why do liberal-left politicians expend so much energy trying to restrict gun ownership or even ban guns outright?
The principal reason, of course, is that modern liberalism is the victory of symbolism over substance. A public policy or law is seldom designed mostly to solve an identified problem. Its primary purpose is to reflect well on the good intentions of the person or group proposing it.
So what if laws and social programs produce no tangible benefits? They remain on the statute books and retain full funding — complete with massive bureaucracies — because they enable liberals to convince themselves something is being done. Activity is confused with achievement.
Gun control is constantly put forward by intellectually lazy politicians and do-gooder activists because attempting to restrict gun ownership is easier than taking on real criminals. More importantly, anti-gun laws enable politicians and activists to claim they are doing something to cure a problem that concerns voters and donors, even though restricting gun ownership among law-abiding citizens has no mitigating effect on violent crime.
Lorne Gunter – A Handgun Ban Won’t Work – National Post – Canada
Take some time to read it all.
“Knives are used in nearly three times as many violent crimes as guns, yet no one calls for a knife registry….”
Not that I agree with it, but the argument goes something like this:
“Guns are different because a gun’s _only_ purpose is to kill. A knife can cut a loaf of bread; a baseball bat is made for playing a game; but a gun’s only reason for existing is to kill people (and cute defenseless fuzzy forest creatures — e.g. Bambi’s mother).”
I am sure the hunter that took Bambi’s mom respected her and the whole family ate well. I love target shooting, hunting and the technology involved in the evolution of firearms but then I am an historian and curator. My friends enjoy skeet and trap shooting. We spend a lot of our money supporting conservation programs that government neglects. We help the environment in any number of ways including the regulation of species that become pests. You may have no culture of firearms use but shame on you for looking down your nose at those that do. Ours is not just a hobby. It is a culture and lifestyle..