Why the gun control crowd continues to lose the argument
John Podhoretz:
Podhoretz is right.
When people at CNN town halls tell gun owners that they have blood on their hands, they have already lost the argument. Implying vicarious liability to all gun owners is a good way not to be taken seriously. What it demonstrates is that some people are allowing their emotions to override logic.
They will never convince enough people that the answer to crime is to disarm the innocent people who did not commit it. Calling them equally as guilty as the perp is a good way to lose your audience.
Some facts.There is more.
There are 126 million households in the United States. In 35 percent of those households — some 44 million — there is a gun. There is an average of 2.8 people per household, according to the Census Bureau. This means that something like 120 million people in this country live with at least one gun in their homes.
In 2013, 107,000 crimes in the United States were committed with a gun. There are 330 million people in the United States. If we assume every one of those crimes was the work of a different individual, then .03 percent of all those who live with a gun in the United States used that gun in the commission of a crime.
That’s not 3 percent. That’s not one-third of a percent. That’s three-hundredths of a percent.
There are approximately 120,000 schools in the United States. If we use the term “school shooting” in the most capacious way, there have been 145 incidents since 2010. That means .12 percent of all schools in the United States have suffered the horror of a school shooting.
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Here’s the thing, my gun-restricting friends (and I have many). Those 35 percent of American households are geographically distributed in such a way that you’ll never secure your objective if you cannot engage the people who own guns in a conversation that begins with the proposition that you are better than they are.
Because they don’t think you are better than they are. They think they are just fine.
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What you have to understand is that while you believe you have all the moral force on your side, you cannot make a gun owner believe that he is the Parkland shooter. Because he isn’t. And let’s face it — somewhere, deep in your heart, you think he is.
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Podhoretz is right.
When people at CNN town halls tell gun owners that they have blood on their hands, they have already lost the argument. Implying vicarious liability to all gun owners is a good way not to be taken seriously. What it demonstrates is that some people are allowing their emotions to override logic.
They will never convince enough people that the answer to crime is to disarm the innocent people who did not commit it. Calling them equally as guilty as the perp is a good way to lose your audience.
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