THE WAR ON FIREARMS

In the wake of the Sandy Hook Elementary School shooting, the usual cadre of politicians, pundits and commentators are hitting the airwaves and condemning believers of the “guns don’t kill” rationale. This exercise in demonization is being followed with pleas to strip Americans of their guns and place a ban on vaguely-defined “assault” weapons.

What’s been lacking in the flurry of proposals that inevitably followed a catastrophe like Sandy Hook has been a deeper look at the kind of environment impressionable minds are coming of age in. Far too often, politically-minded observers fall back on reactionary emotion for the solution to problems without actually engaging in critical thinking as to the root of what they are trying to solve.

As Southwestern University School of Law professor Butler Shaffer put it, we tend to focus too much “attention on the consequences of our behavior” instead of the “casual factors, as the thinking that produces dysfunctional results.”

We then end up looking to government to solve problems which it has a hand in creating. Many pro-gun control advocates are quick to mention that there is little gun violence in countries with “reasonable” gun laws in place. Yet as economist Thomas Sowell points out, countries with stricter gun control laws such as Mexico, Brazil and Russia all have higher murder rates than the U.S. When you compare Switzerland to Germany, where the former has higher rates of gun ownership than the latter, Switzerland has a lower murder rate.

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