By Brigitte L. Nacos
The Wall
Street Journal goes once again to bat for the sacred right to own handguns
arguing in the process that mass killings are rarer in societies in which guns
are readily available and more likely in countries with gun controls. “You
could more persuasively argue, as David Kopel does in The Wall Street Journal
today,” the paper’s editorial states, “that the presence of more guns on [the
Virginia Tech] campus might have stopped Cho sooner.” This is a favorite
argument of the right-to-bear-arms crowd—if more people have guns, the
bad guys will not dare to shoot and if they do, they will be targeted
themselves. Obviously, the opponents of strict gun control have no problem with
the prospect of Wild West style shoot-outs between people who have their finger
on the trigger of their gun at all times. The Europeans obviously do not get
it—along with liberals in the United States. According to the Wall Street
Journal, “Reading a summary of European editorials yesterday, we couldn't help
but wonder if they all got the same New York Times memo, so uniform was their
cultural disdain and their demand for new gun restrictions.” And in a strangely
twisted logic, the paper makes a triumphant statement: “Any gun control crusade
is doomed to fail anyway in a country like the U.S.with some 200 million weapons
already in private hands.”
And how do politicians and especially presidential candidates react to the mass shooting at Virginia Tech? As the Washington Post reports today, some of the traditional (McCain) and opportunistic (Giuliani) opponents of gun control were quick to reaffirm their pro-gun positions whereas the advocates of certain gun control measures were less eager to get into the pro-and-con debate.
Unfortunately, the Wall Street Journal may well be right in predicting that Democrats will not be at the forefront in a campaign for gun control. In the Journals words,“While New York Mayor Mike Bloomberg seems ready to stump for gun restrictions, we doubt many Democrats will join him. They did so after Columbine in 1999, only to lose the 2000 election in part because of the cultural backlash in America's rural and hunting counties.”
Although in the aftermath of Virginia Tech opinion surveys will once again show that a majority Americans prefer gun control, such polls will not prevail in an electoral system in which some of the smaller, rural states have disproportional influence on the outcome of presidential elections and in which the pro-gun lobby has disproportional influence on candidates and elected officials on all levels of government.
Comments