Because of what we do here at Bearing Arms, we see a lot of idiotic proposals for reducing so-called gun deaths. Not all of them are legislative, either. Some are cultural, and those can be especially problematic because we’ve seen the stigmatization of gun ownership already, and nothing about it is right.
But my colleague Jeff Charlies over at our sister site, Townhall, stumbled upon what might be one of the most bizarre and ridiculous ideas I’ve ever come across.
Columnist Megan McCardle penned an op-ed for The Washington Post in which she suggests a new idea: Pushing gun buyers toward long guns instead of handguns.
To be fair, she acknowledges that this plan is likely unworkable, but that she is introducing it as a new way of curbing gun-related violence.
For starters, McArdle points out that handguns tend to be more dangerous than long guns like rifles and shotguns. She notes that “handguns are associated with more harm” and cites statistics showing that they are involved in 90 percent of gun violence and a high number of suicides.
They start from a few simple and correct premises. First, handguns are associated with more harm than long guns — they are involved in 90 percent of firearm violence and a huge number of suicides. People own significantly more handguns because they are just easier to carry around and easier to conceal.
Second, most people who buy guns say they want them for personal or household safety. That’s a use for long guns as well. Displacing handgun purchases with purchases of less convenient long guns could reduce the likelihood of tragedy when the owner becomes angry or despondent.
So, what if the government gave first-time gun buyers a subsidy to choose a long gun instead?
Well, of all the takes I’ve ever heard, that’s certainly one of them.
And that’s kind of surprising, because while I disagree with McArdle regularly, she’s usually a bit sharper than this.
See, as Charles points out in his take, while many already use an AR-15 or other scary “assault rifle” for home defense, as others pick shotguns or other long guns for that purpose, a lot of people who want a gun for personal safety also want to carry it with them because not every bad guy is considerate enough to wait until you’re at home to threaten your life.
If this were just about home defense, this wouldn’t be the worst suggestion in the world. I mean, a subsidy to buy a gun? How many of us would be all, “Don’t mind if I do,” and take advantage of it if we could?
Yeah, that’s what I thought.
The issue here, though, is that there’s a lot more to why people own handguns than simply home defense. Plus, there are still a lot of reasons why I prefer a handgun over my AR if something goes bump in the middle of the night inside my house. That’s not going to change.
Plus, we have the fact that this is purely performative. Suicides can and have happened with long guns. If that’s what people have to take their own lives with, I’m quite sure they’ll do so. If they’re going to buy a gun to do it, they’re not going to be swayed by the subsidy.
Criminals, on the other hand, most definitely aren’t going to play along. They want handguns for obvious reasons, and that’s not going to change. Even if there were fewer handguns to steal, it would still be their preferred firearm, and what they want, they tend to get because they don’t care about the cultural taboos, legality, or anything else they’ll violate. They tend to think of themselves as beyond the rules.
So while this isn’t as invasive as gun control, and could actually benefit first-time gun owners with that proposed subsidy, it wouldn’t do a damn thing and just continues to demonize a category of firearms rather than acknowledge that the issues lie far deeper than any discussion of the tools people use to hurt themselves or others.
Editor’s Note: The radical Left will stop at nothing to enact their radical gun control agenda and strip us of our Second Amendment rights.
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