Just One Question?

John Lott asks "one question" ("I would ask gun control advocates one question: name a single place in the entire world where murder rates fell after gun control laws were passed.") Joe Huffman asks a slightly different one ("Can you demonstrate one time or place, throughout all history, where the average person was made safer by restricting access to handheld weapons?"). A few comments about these two "Just One Question"s.

Playing the Devil's Advocate -- as to Lott's question -- is it just murders that we wish to reduce by firearms control, or are we trying to lower the death rate by all causes which could be caused by firearms (murder, manslaughter, suicide, accidents, etc)?

And as to Joe's question, -- how do you define "safer?"

Gun Controllers should be asked "what is the goal of your proposal?" I suspect that for most, the true goal is to not have guns around and if that means an increase in the actual death rate (by other causes - knives, pills, baseball bats, etc) then that is acceptable. We don't like "guns," but we're actually OK with violence as long as it's not caused by guns.

In order to solve a problem the goal needs to be accurately understood. Jerry Pournelle provided a classic example of this recently. The WWII Battle of the North Atlantic. Initially the tactics of the Allies were chosen to optimize the chances of sinking German submarines. Then the strategists looked at the problem and decided that this wasn't the criterion at all: what was really wanted was for more cargo to get to England. Instead of using tactics designed to optimize the chances of sinking German subs, they switched to tactics designed to break up the submarine wolf packs, keep them submerged, and thus prevent them from attacking convoys. The new tactics didn't sink as many German subs, but greatly increased the amount of cargo getting through.

Back to gun control - civil rights restrictionists need to be questioned very firmly about the goal of their latest proposal. Why should society give up a civil right for a proposal that has very little chance of succeeding in its goal?