Tuesday, December 18, 2012

Krauthammer: No Evidence That Assault Weapons Ban Reduced Gun Violence

Dec. 18, 2012

(Real Clear Politics) - CHARLES KRAUTHAMMER: I understand this reflects a move to do this. In principal I am not opposed to it. The problem is that we have some history with this. We had a decade with an assault weapons ban fro the mid 90s, it lasted for a decade. If you look at the studies it had no appreciable influence on gun violence or the lethality of individual attacks. And there are three elements here. Yeah, it's the shooter, it's the weapon, it's the environment. And all that liberals and the mainstream media want to look at, of course, is the weapon. But there are other ways of looking at this.

If you look at the shooter himself and the mental health issue, the fact that you cannot get a commitment on these kinds of people. I'm thinking mostly of Jared Loughner, the shooter in Tucson, Arizona. Everybody knew he was a grenade about to go off. Anybody who knew him, was in class with him said that. But you could only stop him after he killed.

And we have moved so radically the last fifty years to making it difficult to commit people who are dangerous, that there has to be a shift in the other direction. So that has to do be on the table. And there's also Hollywood with the desensitization to violence, the way they make it ubiquitous. They make it insensitive. You can imagine this kid, near autistic, playing these games where you mow people down without consequence. I can understand Obama speaking to the NRA. Is he going to speak to the ACLU on commitment? Is he going to speak to Hollywood on at least a voluntary curtailment of this obscene amount of violence in their product?

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