There's a reason that the old tale of the boy who cried wolf is such an ancient tale. Cries of unfounded panic, whether issued out of boredom or the need to serve an agenda, almost always come back to harm the panic-monger sooner or later.
Would-be gun-banners here in the United States are some of the worst wolf-criers in recent history. Every time the Second Amendment is reaffirmed by a court, every time a new law or policy is put in place strengthening that fundamental human right, they issue all manner of dire predictions, and every time, they end up being wrong, their warnings falsified. Now, they are at it again, as the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives is preparing new rules to make things a little better for legal gun owners and shooters.
As you might expect, our friends in the gun control industry aren’t happy about ATF’s proposed rule changes. They have a problem, though. Crime in America is at historical lows and continues to fall. At the same time, gun sales remain strong and more people are carrying than ever before. Even The New York Times ran a favorable piece Friday on an armed citizen who saved lives by opening fire on a spree shooter.
This presents a real problem for the civilian disarmament industrial complex. They only have so many tools to use in order to get their names in the media and continue to raise more cash. Their repeated apocalyptic predictions of soaring violence and chaos in the streets couldn’t have been more off the mark.
Still, that’s really all they know how to do. Stirring up fear and panic is their stock-in-trade, so they tend to fall back on it no matter what the reality IRL may be. They need to keep themselves in the media and appear to remain relevant. And member of the media, who almost unanimously agree with them on policy, are always there to help.
T'was ever thus. Way back in the 1980s, Florida was the first state to implement a "shall issue" concealed-carry permit law, mandating that law enforcement issue a permit to anyone who passed the requirements, forbidding any need to show a particular justification. The anti-gunners predicted all manner of mayhem, from shootouts over parking spaces to running gun battles in the streets. None of that happened, of course, or at least, no legal gun owners took part in any such.
That's the basic misapprehension under which the gun-banners labor. They propose laws that criminals will ignore. They propose laws that will only hamper the law-abiding. When those laws are struck down, they warn of mayhem that never happens, because the law-abiding are the only ones who pay attention to the laws. If anything, guns in the hands of law-abiding citizens deter crime. Some years back, when Colorado was still a reasonably sane place, the state passed a "shall-issue" law. My wife and I applied, and in due course were issued our permits, and I remember part of that conversation was a perfunctory interview with a deputy sheriff. Out of curiosity, I asked what he thought of the law. "We love it," he replied. "Every cop I know loves it. It's as good as having a few thousand more cops on the street. People who get permits aren't ever any problem, and the crooks don't know who might be packing."
We've seen some significant victories in the pro-gun, pro-Second Amendment side of things in recent years. We may well be seeing some more in the near future. But whatever happens, whatever arguments, pro and con, are mustered by both sides, the best argument for the pro-gun side remains this:
A well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed.
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