The fantasy that is gun control.

WASHINGTON - Controlling access to guns would appear, on its face, the simple answer to preventing public massacres like the movie-theatre tragedy in Colorado.*

Tragic random violence like the senseless movie theater massacre in Aurora, Colorado last week always stirs the debate about gun control. However, the answer is not in more toothless and ineffective regulations on law-abiding citizens. Nor is it finding ways of allowing FEWER or NO guns in the hands of the people. Gun control is nothing more than a kneejerk "feels good" solution that is impotent in prevention of crimes like this and empowering for potential dictators, despots and other oppressive forms of oppressive government. An objective look at history shows that anywhere the citizenry has been disarmed and tyranny (soft or hard) and/or outright despotism has followed. And why not? What the hell's a disarmed citizenry going to do to stop it?

Rather the answer is to do away with all the stupid and impotent restrictions on the citizen's right to keep and bear arms. Forget the silly and ineffective "no guns" signs on shopping malls (remember Omaha and Ontario, Canada mall shooting rampages?), churches (numerous incidents of crazy people shooting up churches full of unarmed worshippers in Emporia, Kansas 1986, Long Island,NY 2002, Wichita, Kansas 2009 just to name a few) and educational institutions (e.g., Columbine High School in Colorado in 1999 and Virginia Tech in 2007) because they obviously don't hold back anyone who's made the decision to go violently anti-social. Instead, all those signs do is tell such psychopaths that there are a large number of unarmed victims inside.

No, instead, the answer is to let anyone legally licensed to carry their weapon do so - anywhere, anytime. That way at least innocent shoppers, church worshippers, university students and movie goers would at least have a fighting chance.

Liberals and other anti-gun types claim that to do so would increase the numbers of violent crimes involving firearms. Really? There's not been a case yet of someone legally licensed to carry concealed going off and doing something as insanely violent as happened in the Colorado movie theater this past week. Not only that, but during the days of OPEN-carry in the 19th century western expansion of the US (known by the slang term "wild west"), there was actually far less firearm violence than there is today. So, liberal fears of an armed citizenry creating more gun violence is just hysteria, not well supported fact.

Anti-gunners claim that people today are far more prone to violence than they used to be. Perhaps, but are they really trying to say that conditions like schizophrenia (Colorado movie theater shooting), brain tumors (see UT-Austin shooting rampage 1966) and other documented medical/psychological conditions resulting in anti-social gun-related violence have suddenly just been invented this past 40 years or so? Again, such rationales against allowing the innocent citizenry to protect itself is just hysteria and not supported by logic or fact.

Anti-gun folks think that if they outlaw guns, then guns will just simply disappear from everywhere but police and military arsenals and therefore gun-related violence will disappear. Really? Washington, DC has had the most-restrictive gun control laws in nation (if not the world) the past 40 years and during that time has led the nation (or been in the top 10 in the nation) in gun related homicides and other violent crimes. Besides, there are so many firearms already in the world, that to think mere laws will make them vanish is fantasy, sheer fantasy. And even if they did, the technology for making new ones is so well-known and widely available that there would be a proliferation of new firearms in no time. Besides, making liquor illegal did absolutely nothing during Prohibition to make it vanish from the face of the earth. Rather it created a criminal enterprise to supply it to the masses. Instead of far less liquor and crime, the country got far more of both - and violently so. So, again, such liberal fantasies are just that - fantasy and not reality.

And, while we’re looking at the historical record, let’s take a look at the government’s abilities to restrict and ban other things. The 18^th Amendment to the Constitution, commonly referred to as “Prohibition” tried to eliminate the manufacture, sale and/or possession of  “intoxicating liquors”(for other than religious and medical purposes). Such a ban was impossible to accomplish and instead of eliminating liquor merely served to increase the quantity and usher in the mafia who was happy to illegally manufacture it and through illegal means like “speak easys” and even extortion created a booming market for it. And to ensure their place in the market gave dramatic increase in violent crimes like the aforementioned extortion, arson, arson by bombing, homicide by knife and gun and so on. And the government’s war on narcotic drugs hasn’t had much better success.