Today's JPFO Alert urges gun rights advocates to remember that our fight for liberty isn't about numbers.
Gun ban zealots try to bolster their arguments with statistics all the time--to the point of coming up with
bogus stats, such as "A gun in the home is 43 times as likely to kill a family member as to be used in self-defense," or that, "Forty percent of gun sales proceed without a background check." They can afford to use numbers (even if they have to make them up), because their agenda is not troubled by collective punishment for individual crimes, or sacrificing the innocent "for the greater good."We, on the other hand, must remain better than that.
And as always, if you haven't seen all the great JPFO Alerts written by David, Nicki, Claire, and Mama Liberty, you owe it to yourself to fix that.
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1 comments:
The state has a right to punish individuals who commit crimes. It also has a right to place restrictions on individuals who (after due process) have been convicted of crimes (e.g., laws against convicted felons owning weapons). It does not have a right to punish one person for another person's crime, or to put restrictions on everyone because a few individuals commit crimes.
Reckless driving kills more people than all other types of homicide combined, but no one seriously suggests banning private ownership of cars. Instead, we prosecute those individuals who drive recklessly, and we allow responsible drivers to go about their business unmolested.
In fact, prosecutors in trials are not even allowed to argue deterrence, only retribution. That is, a district attorney cannot say, "You should sentence the defendant to prison because it will set an example and deter others from committing crimes." Instead, the DA can say, "You should send the defendant to prison because he committed a crime and he deserves to be punished for it," or, "You should send the defendant to prison because he committed the crime, and that proves that he is dangerous, so he needs to be confined to keep him from doing it again."
That's because the law recognizes that you are responsible for your own behavior. You are not responsible for what other people do, or for what they hypothetically might do.
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