Supposedly Fact-and-Evidence Based Community Continues Ignoring the Facts and Evidence of Gun Bans

But this time, gun bans will -- like socialism -- finally work out.

It's just a matter of having the Right Elites running things, and this time we finally have the Right Elites.

Ignore the fact that all previous iterations of the Right Elites turned out to be the Wrong Elites, even though they thought they were the Right Elites. The current Right Elites are truly the right elites.

This time, it'll work.

We aren't alone in facing this problem. Great Britain and Australia, for example, suffered mass shootings in the 1980s and 1990s. Both countries had very stringent gun laws when they occurred. Nevertheless, both decided that even stricter control of guns was the answer. Their experiences can be instructive.

In 1987, Michael Ryan went on a shooting spree in his small town of Hungerford, England, killing 16 people (including his mother) and wounding another 14 before shooting himself. Since the public was unarmed—as were the police—Ryan wandered the streets for eight hours with two semiautomatic rifles and a handgun before anyone with a firearm was able to come to the rescue.

Nine years later, in March 1996, Thomas Hamilton, a man known to be mentally unstable, walked into a primary school in the Scottish town of Dunblane and shot 16 young children and their teacher. He wounded 10 other children and three other teachers before taking his own life.

In England, gun crime actually went up after gun bans; in Australia, it declined marginally, but criminals used other weapons to almost erase any declines.

But Our Elites are the elitest of all elites. They've got this.

Trust them. They listen to NPR. So they know what they're doing.

I've previously noted that Something, perpetually, Must Be Done.

One of the most frustrating thing about the politically unaware is their unchanging belief that Something must be done! (all attempts to panic the public into agreeing that Something Must Be Done! are directed at this cohort), but they have little idea of what, specifically, should be done. Something. You know, something. Something must be done, why are you not getting this?

...

It's the single thing they know about politics -- Something must be done.

Democrats have a natural advantage in playing to this crowd, as they are promiscuously in favor of government action in the first place.

posted by Ace at 12:36 PM

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