THE SUCCESS OF PROHIBITIONS

So much for gun control
By RANDY ALCORN " Nov. 10, 2009

There is little to salvage from last week’s mass murder at Fort Hood, Texas,
but there are some stark realizations this heartbreaking horror exposes.
One is the wishful but mistaken notion that such incidents can be
prevented by laws prohibiting or severely restricting access to firearms.
The Second Amendment not withstanding, U.S. military bases
prohibit unauthorized personnel from carrying firearms on base.
Access to military weapons is carefully restricted and weapons
are secured in armories.

Never the less, even within the well regulated conditions of
a military base, a man was able to acquire and conceal two
powerful personal handguns which he used to murder 13 people
and wound dozens of others.

The argument that a prohibition against firearms will eliminate
the possession of firearms by anyone is clearly refuted by the
ample empirical evidence that prohibition simply does not
succeed in its intended objective when the subject of the
prohibition is something that enough of the population wants.
No matter how draconian the restrictions or dire the legal
consequences prohibition is defeated by desire.

Prostitution, booze, and drugs are or have been prohibited by law
with no appreciable effect on eliminating any of them.
In fact, illegal drugs consistently find their way into prisons"the most
secured, restrictive institutions in society.

Obviously, if prison inmates can gain access to drugs,
and military base personnel can gain access to guns,
in spite of heavy security and strict prohibitions,
how will laws prevent anyone from having either?

While good people are rightly concerned and alarmed by the lethal
violence visited on society through the device of firearms,
rational people understand that there is no legal magic wand that
will abolish such violence simply by prohibiting possession of the device.
People who want guns will get them. People who want to harm others will do so,
but the amount of harm they can do could be reduced if more people were armed
rather than disarmed.

If among the murdered and wounded at Fort Hood any had been armed,
the slaughter would have been less. The gunman would have been
confronted by people who could defend themselves rather than by
helpless victims. Free people should not only be able to arm
themselves, they should be able to carry those arms on their
person as they do their cell phones. Self defense is among the
most basic of human and civil rights.

Those who fear a dangerous wild-west scenario if citizens were
freely armed should consider that there is danger now. There are
not enough armed police to be everywhere all the time, and
anyone can be caught in a situation as occurred at Fort Hood.
Most people who drive cars do not drive them recklessly,
and most people who own a gun do not go around shooting others
without just cause.

Another realization coming out of the Fort Hood incident is that
twisted minds often wrap themselves around fixed ideologies.
That, however, does not prove a cause and effect relationship
between a particular ideology and the detrimental behavior of
those with twisted minds.

Unless and until science can develop a flawless wack-o-meter that
detects these aberrant personalities, they will always be moving
unidentified among us. Ironically, the perpetrator of the Fort Hood
massacre was a psychiatrist, the closest thing we have to a wack-o-meter.
So, maybe we should round up all the shrinks.

There are no ready remedies to prevent further incidents as
occurred at Fort Hood, but there is awareness, for those with
open minds, that police state restrictions or targeted pogroms
would not only be ineffective, they would undermine the very
essence of freedom and justice upon which this nation was founded,
and eventually make victims of us all. [all emphasis added by David]