Timminz wrote:Ray Rider wrote:BigBallinStalin wrote:thegreekdog wrote:Ace Rimmer wrote:"True conservatives" such as Night Strike should hate this law, because it is an unconstitutional infringement on our rights to NOT bear arms.
Actually,
they should hate it because it requires people to buy something (like, for example, health insurance).
Three points:
(1) re: underlined, I know, right?
(2) Maybe it doesn't matter because nearly all of them already own a gun.
(3) Maybe it doesn't matter because the law won't be enforced. It's simply symbolic.
You're right about #3. From the article:
City Councilman Duane Cronic, who sponsored the measure, said he knows the ordinance won't be enforced but he still believes it will make the town safer.
“I likened it to a security sign that people put up in their front yards. Some people have security systems, some people don't, but they put those signs up,” he said. “I really felt like this ordinance was a security sign for our city.”
I don't really see what the big deal is about this. Kennesaw, Georgia passed a similar law in 1982 and although the gun control advocates warned the place would become like a modern Wild West, there was
not a single fatal shooting for over 25 years even though the population is now five times larger. Compare that to the trend of crime rates in other cities such as Washington DC and Chicago which tried to go to the opposite extreme and implement gun bans.
A town with fewer than 24,000 people (and only 5,242 when the law was enacted) is hardly comparable to Chicago or DC.
Yes they're on a radically different scale, but we do know:
*that on a small scale, Kennesaw's gun requirements have worked (or at the very least, haven't exacerbated the situation).
*that on a large scale, Washington DC and Chicago's bans haven't worked (or at the very least, haven't helped the situation).
Call that what you will.
If you want to compare cities of similar size, you could've continued reading the article I linked where they compared Kennesaw with Morton Grove, Illinois, which was the first town in America to ban handguns. In Kennesaw, the crime rate dropped after instituting the law; in Morton Grove, the crime rate increased thereafter. Actually, Morton Grove dropped the ban in 2008, so I guess it must not have been worth preserving.