On September 8 a Houston Chronicle editorial referenced the heinous shooting death of Deputy Darren Goforth then quickly shifted to police shootings of unarmed people and the “mentally disturbed” in a circuitous argument for implementing an Australian-style gun ban in the United States.
They lumped these officer-involved shootings in with numbers provided by the Brady Campaign to Prevent Gun Violence and suggested that we would respond differently to such “gun violence” if we were Australia, Britain, or Japan.
In the 1990s Australia banned all but the most rudimentary firearms and Britain did the same. In December 2014 the world watched as an armed man held hostages in a Sydney cafe, killing two innocents before all was said and done and, in July, Mail Online reported that rapes in Britain had risen 100 percent in 10 years.
What’s to stop a rapist in a country where carrying a gun for self-defense is banned?
The Chronicle did not mention these aspects of post-gun life in Australia or Britain. Rather, they pointed to an officer-involved shooting of “a San Antonio man who may or may not have had his hands in the air, who may or may not have been holding a knife,” then claimed this kind of shooting has been complimented by “one mass shooting per day, on average, throughout 2015.” CNN made this same claim in August, with host Fareed Zakaria hedging it in as “almost literally true.”
Toward the end of the editorial the Chronicle offered this “comprehensive” solution to the gun violence which they believe plagues America:
The comprehensive plan we need would include universal background checks for both private sales and gun shows to keep guns out of the hands of felons, domestic abusers and other dangerous individuals; limits on gun purchases to one a month to reduce gun trafficking; stronger penalties for straw purchasers; safe storage requirements; so-called smart guns and other safety measures; waiting periods to buy a handgun, and more research on what measures actually save lives.
They made no mention of the recent study conducted on criminals by the University of Chicago Crime Lab which showed that criminals avoid gun shows, internet sales, and any other place where they might capture law enforcement’s attention. The only people who would be affected by the Chronicle’s gun control proposals are law-abiding citizens who have no intention of committing a crime in the first place.
Follow AWR Hawkins on Twitter: @AWRHawkins. Reach him directly at awrhawkins@breitbart.com.
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