If I need to know how many guns I should be able to buy in a month, I'll ask my credit card

It seems that the "gun control" measure du jour these days is the "one gun per month" law. The thinking (I'm being generous here), apparently, is that this will prevent those nasty "gun traffickers," who don't themselves have criminal records, from buying handguns by the dozen, for the purpose of distributing them en masse to criminals whose records would prevent them from buying the guns themselves. When gun rights advocates point out that such a measure punishes everyone who wishes to buy a couple handguns at a time (or within a 1 month period), they are met with the reply that no law-abiding gun owner needs to buy 12 handguns in a year.

The most obvious problem with such a careless dismissal of the very valid concern that such laws would constitute a gross violation of rights is that "need" is completely irrelevant to the discussion. The buyers of no other legal product are required to prove a "need" for their purchase. Cars kill vastly more Americans than guns do, but a car buyer is never asked to demonstrate his need for a car. Even SUV's, the leading culprits in the conversion of a vital natural resource into potentially extinction-causing (depending on how much one believes in the global warming theories) pollution, are sold without any question as to the buyer's need for such vehicles.

Another problem is the question of where such measures are going to stop. When they are implemented, and criminals continue to get guns (as they always have and always will), and kill innocent people (as they always have and always will), how long will it be before it is decided that no one "needs" more than 6 guns per year, or 4, or 1? In fact, New York City's mayor Bloomberg is already pressing for laws limiting handgun purchases to one every four months. Where this is headed, obviously, is the ultimate goal of declaring that no one "needs" any handguns. The fact that the slippery slope argument is a cliche does nothing to make it any less true.

Instead of attacking the rights of law-abiding citizens, in a futile attempt to shut down the black market in firearms to violent criminals, let's get the violent criminals themselves out of circulation. Anyone who is so dangerous that the (almost certain to fail) endeavor to keep guns away from him is important enough to impose restrictions on our entire society, is too dangerous to be on the streets.