No Guns. No Problem.

In light of the recent VT massacre and subsequent discussions of gun control (here and personally on various chat protocols), I thought I'd point out an article in the UK's Guardian which outlines some fo the problems of gun control laws. Here's a snippet:

Handgun crime has soared past levels last seen before the Dunblane massacre of 1996 and the ban on ownership of handguns introduced the year after Thomas Hamilton, an amateur shooting enthusiast, shot dead 16 schoolchildren, their teacher and himself in the Perthshire town.

It was hoped the measure would reduce the number of handguns available to criminals. Now handgun crime is at its highest since 1993.

[source]

Indeed, according to the BBC, the number of firearms deaths has doubled in spite of both the gun ban and increased police forces.

Closer to home, Morgan Reynolds found the following:

In 1976, Washington, D.C., enacted one of the most restrictive gun control laws in the nation. Since then, the city's murder rate has risen 134 percent while the national murder rate has dropped 2 percent. Defenders of the Washington law say it isn't working because criminals are getting guns in Virginia, where the laws are more relaxed. But just across the Potomac River, Arlington, Va., has a murder rate less than 10 percent of that of Washington (7.0 murders versus 77.8 per 100,000 population). Can the difference be explained by the fact that Washington is a large city? Virginia's largest city, Virginia Beach, has a population of nearly 400,000, allows easy access to firearms - and has had one of the country's lowest murder rates for years (4.1 per 100,000 population in 1991).

[source]

That last statistic is key because it provides a wonderful contrast between two cities with nearly opposite gun control laws, fairly reasonably demonstrating that cities that restrict people's ability to acquire a firearm have higher rates of crime. It's well nigh criminal to suggest that America should further restrict access to firearms when all the data indicate this will increase violent crime.

The last bit of evidence I'll leave you with is a little easier to swallow than the statistics I've quoted so far. It's yet another episode of one of my all-time favorite shows, Bullshit! It's a pretty blatant emotional appeal, but it does a good job considering her story sounds nearly identical to the descriptions of Cho's mass execution at VT. And that the school just this year banned firearms.

I recommend watching the other clips from that episode you'll find strewn about YouTube and Google Video.