It was perhaps inevitable that the recent sniper killings in the Washington area suburbs would be seized upon by advocates of gun control. Like so much in the agenda of the political left, gun control arguments would collapse like a house of cards if people just stopped to think through what is being said, instead of being swept along by emotional rhetoric.
Start with the very name "gun control." Do gun control laws actually control guns? Why would someone who is obviously willing to repeatedly break the laws against murder be unwilling to break gun control laws?
Gun control laws do not control people who are in the business of breaking laws. Gun control simply disarms their potential victims, making crime a safer occupation, and hence one that can be indulged in more widely by more people.
Gun control laws would no more have stopped the current sniper than they stop innumerable other gun crimes in places with some of the strongest gun control laws in the country. Even the latest nostrum of the gun controllers -- ballistic "fingerprinting" of each gun that is sold -- already exists in Maryland, where this orgy of murder began.
There is no record of anyone's ever having been convicted of any crime as a result of this procedure. People who know something about guns -- which many gun controllers do not -- have pointed out how easy it is to change a gun's ballistic "fingerprint." But the real bottom line is that this law has no track record of working.
If you are going to look at the record, then empirical studies have already shown that allowing law-abiding citizens to own and carry concealed weapons tends to produce less violence, not more. Some communities have gone the opposite direction on gun control -- requiring each home owner to have a firearm in the house -- and this has led to fewer burglaries in such communities.
In the Falls Church sniper killing, the sniper was spotted by some people on the scene as he shot an innocent woman in a shopping mall. If we had an armed citizenry, do you doubt that they would have shot him dead on the spot?
Killings seldom start where someone else is known in advance to be carrying a gun. Have you ever heard of one of these supposedly "senseless" killers opening fire on a gathering of members of the National Rifle Association? They always seem to have better sense than to do that.
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