Guns / Firearms, Politics

In Defense of Guns… And Facts

Lost in the unsound rhetoric and facile reasoning around gun control are the facts, according to columnist Kayleigh McEnany.

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As the body count of Islamic extremism continues to climb, emotions run high but facts run thin.

There is perhaps no more paradigmatic example than the front-page New York Times editorial, “End the Gun Epidemic,” an editorial more suited for a Michael Moore rally than for the pages of one of the nation’s most esteemed newspapers (though this appellation has been in serious contention for some time).

Chock-full of unsupported conclusions and offering precisely zero facts in support of its thesis, the editorial board laments “the national disgrace that civilians can legally purchase weapons designed to kill people with brutal speed and efficiency.”

President Obama followed suit in a primetime address to the nation offering gun control as a counter-terrorism strategy. And his would-be successor, Hillary Clinton, has even gone as far as advocating for lawsuits against gun manufacturers to redress “the harm caused by people who criminally or unlawfully misuse their products.”

Lost in this unsound rhetoric and facile reasoning are the facts. In the legal profession, facts are our currency. So perhaps it’s time to share a few facts with regard to guns.

Despite extremely strict gun laws and a ban on “military-grade weapons,” France’s most recent four terrorist attacks were waged with guns that were illegal under French law.

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Such facts, no doubt, leave the New York Times editorial board befuddled: how were illegal guns obtained in a nation with some of the world’s strictest gun laws?! Perhaps the editorial board ought to enroll in a continuing education course on microeconomics, which no doubt will feature the doctrinal teaching of banned products creating black markets.

Indeed, just this happened in France. The Guardian reports: “[I]n recent years a black market has proliferated. The number of illegal weapons has risen at a rapid rate – double-digit percentages – for several years, according to the National Observatory for Delinquency, a body created in 2003.”

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The facts get worse for the anti-gun crowd when we move from anecdotal to statistical evidence.

Take Obama’s verifiably false claim earlier this month: “I say this every time we’ve got one of these mass shootings. This just doesn’t happen in other countries.”

On the contrary, this year alone, France has witnessed three mass shootings. John R. Lott Jr., President of the Crime Prevention Research Center, finds, “In 2015, France suffered more casualties than the U.S. has suffered during Obama’s entire presidency (508 to 394).” Beyond France, three of the four worst K-12 shootings have taken place, not in the United States, but in Europe.

Far from causing mass shootings, the absence of guns engenders them. It’s no coincidence that “Since at least 1950, all but two public mass shootings in America have taken place where general citizens are banned from carrying guns. In Europe, there have been no exceptions. Every mass public shooting has occurred in a gun-free zone,” reports Lott. Cowardly gunmen target the defenseless.

Moreover, there is no causal relationship between decreased gun ownership and gun safety. In Switzerland, for example, the government gives fully automatic assault rifles and pistols to all adult males. Moreover, gun laws in the country are lenient, leaving virtually anyone free to purchase a gun. “Nevertheless, Switzerland suffers far less crime per capita than the United States and almost no gun crime,” according to a Cato Institute study.

But let us, for the moment, consider a counterfactual, a country with stringent gun control – the anti-gun ideologue’s dream.

How would the nation be different, for instance, if universal background checks were in place? It wouldn’t; not a single shooting during the Obama presidency would have been stopped. Colorado extended background checks two years ago, but that did not stop the Umpqua Community College shooting. Similarly, France’s extensive background check system did nothing to stop its shootings nor did California’s system stop the San Bernardino attacks.

How about a ban on assault weapons? The type of weapon has little correlation to its lethal nature. The nation’s bloodiest school shooting at Virginia Tech, leaving 32 individuals dead, was conducted not with an assault weapon but a pistol. But even if these weapons were deadlier, assault weapon bans quite clearly do not work. (See France.)

And what about barring those on the No Fly List from purchasing a gun? Noticeably absent from the No Fly List were the San Bernardino shooters and the Chattanooga shooter and the Fort Hood shooter and the Boston bombers.

The aspirational world of the anti-gun activists looks bleak indeed. When the president and the wannabe president advocate for gun control as a solution to terrorism, what they are really doing is aiming at a straw man. For the weapon is not the problem; the September 11th attacks were waged with a plane and the Boston terrorist attack with a bomb.

But is it a straw man as much as a scapegoat? Though the weapons may differ, the underlying ideology is consistent. Radical Islam is at the heart of the global epidemic of terror attacks, as uncomfortable or inconvenient as that is for our president to admit. His reluctance to admit this, and his constant chastising of the American people’s “intolerance” towards Islam, are discouraging citizens from reporting valid suspicions out of fear of being dubbed a “racist.” (See here and here.)

In misplacing the blame on guns and refusing to call Islamic terrorism by name, we might achieve a contrived form of political correctness, but that comes at a bloody cost.

Kayleigh McEnany is a conservative writer and commentator who appears regularly on Fox and CNN. She is currently in the third year of pursuing her J.D. at Harvard Law School. Kayleigh graduated from Georgetown University’s School of Foreign Service and also studied politics at Oxford University. You can reach her by email at Kayleigh@PoliticalProspect.com or follow her on Twitter: @kayleighmcenany.

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