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The Idiocy of Gun Control
by Jacob G. Hornberger

The news media is reporting that an armed man shot and killed a security guard at the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum yesterday with a 22-caliber rifle.

That’s impossible. It just cannot be true.

Don’t the media know that the Holocaust Museum is located in Washington, D.C.? Don’t they know that despite the recent U.S. Supreme Court decision in D.C. v. Heller, our nation’s capital nonetheless has maintained a strict regime of gun control? Don’t they know that it’s illegal in D.C. for people to carry a loaded rifle and fire it within the jurisdiction of the district? Don’t they know that there is even a law in D.C. against shooting someone else with a gun?

Well, then pray tell: How is it possible for a killing with a gun to have taken place in the middle of D.C. when such an act would violate D.C.’s system of gun control? It just cannot be true.

In fact, the media is even claiming that the alleged shooter had previously been convicted of a felony. Don’t the media know that the law prohibits a convicted felon from carrying a weapon? So, if it’s illegal to for a convicted felon to carry a weapon, how is it possible that a convicted felon committed the shooting at the Holocaust Museum?

As gun-control advocates tell us over and over again, all we have to do is enact gun control and all the would-be murderers in the world will obey the law. Gun control will bring a nirvana, one in which there are no more murders with guns because it would be illegal for would-be murderers to possess a gun. Voila!

A good example of this pro-gun control idiocy was reflected yesterday by D.C. Council Member Vincent C. Gray, who stated that the Holocaust Museum shooting showed the need for D.C. to fight for its gun-control laws.

Hello, Mr. Vincent! This is Earth calling. We’d like to remind you that D.C. has among the strictest gun-control laws in the world. And not to burst your bubble, but your laws didn’t stop the Holocaust Museum shooter from violating your laws. So, what good are your gun-control laws?

As a matter of fact, the shooting yesterday actually showed the horror of D.C.’s system of gun control. Because guess what all the tourists at the museum were doing. You know — the people who were visiting from around the country, including families with children. They were hiding on the floor, cowering in fear that their lives were about to be snuffed out by the shooter because they didn’t have the means to defend themselves because they, unlike the would-be murderer, were obeying D.C.’s gun-control law. D.C.’s gun-control laws disarmed them, not the guy who was threatening to murder them and their families with a gun.

At the risk of belaboring the obvious, if a person has no intention of obeying a law against murder, what are the chances that he’s going to stop and think to himself, “Golly, I had better not commit this murder with a gun because that would be against the gun-control law”?

So, there you have it. Yesterday’s shooting at the D.C. Holocaust Museum once again shows what gun control is all about. It prevents peaceful and law-abiding citizens from defending themselves and their families from would-be murderers who don’t give a hoot about obeying gun-control laws.

If that’s not idiocy, what is?

Jacob Hornberger is founder and president of The Future of Freedom Foundation, publisher of Your Money or Your Life: Why We Must Abolish the Income Tax by Sheldon Richman. Send him email.