The tragedy in Connecticut has stirred many emotions across the country. We are raised to treasure our children and to have so many innocents killed is truly abhorrent. My heart goes out to the families of the victims and to the whole community that has suffered this unspeakable event.

My worry is that we as a people will allow the emotions of this horrific event to stampede our rational judgment. We are already seeing the calls for tighter gun controls, or even to outright ban the possession of guns by private citizens. President Obama said in address, “So we have to come together and take meaningful action to prevent more tragedies like this. Regardless of the politics.” One can only assume this is a reference to gun controls.

While taking these steps might give us the sense that we are doing something to prevent these tragedies in the future, they will absolutely fail to do so and will erode our freedoms in the process. They are also quite likely to keep us from taking steps that might actually make a difference.

Some people are claiming that if only we didn’t have these types of guns or this type of clip (or any guns at all), our children would be safe. On an individual level, this is obviously false as an adult hardly needs a gun to harm a child if that is their intention. It is also false in terms of mass killings. In this country, the worst incident of this type took place in Bath, Michigan in 1927 when a disgruntled school board member killed 38 students and 6 adults without the use of a gun. (Though he may have used his hunting rifle to set off the explosives in his car.) Even a complete ban on firearms would not have prevented this evil man from committing the act that he spent months planning.

More recently, one can look to China for a potential glimpse of the failure increased gun control would have on keeping our children safe. Apparently on the same day as the tragedy in Newtown, Connecticut, a man in China stabbed 22 children in a primary school. In this incident, there were no deaths, but this is not always the case. In 2010 there were 6 similar attacks in a seven month period that killed 20 people and injured 50 others. As the Daily Mail in the United Kingdom said in an article about the incident:

Tight controls mean that gun crimes are rare in China and make knives and sometimes explosives the weapons used in mass attacks in China.

Read more: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2248054/China-stabbing-22-children-elderly-woman-stabbed-outside-primary-school-Chinese-knifeman.html#ixzz2FKM8lxHZ

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(HT to my brother for information about the incident in China)

Casting a bit wider net, you need only look at the 9/11 attacks, the sarin gas attack on the Tokyo subway, and the bombings on the London subway (and likely many more examples) to realize those with evil intent do not need guns.

A friend on Facebook posted the quote from the Declaration of Independence – “that they are endowed by their creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness” and questions why the right of someone to own an automatic weapon (we’ll leave aside the fact that in this case an automatic weapon wasn’t used) trumps the right to life of an innocent 5 year old.

The rights mentioned in that quote boil down to the fact that everyone has the right to live their own life in the manner that they see fit right up to the point where it infringes on the rights of others to do the same. The only way that someone can infringe upon another’s rights is through physical force (which also includes fraud), and no one has that right. This is our ultimate freedom – the freedom to choose and to act on that choice.

It should be obvious from the above that simply restricting guns (or clips) will not result in our children (or anyone for that matter) being safe from those who are intent on using physical force against them. Those with that intent will always find the means.

What such steps will do is further erode the rights of everyone to decide for themselves what is appropriate for them based on their own reasoning. Further, if people believe that restricting guns is the solution, they will likely stop looking any further for the underlying reason why these attacks take place, not just in the United States but worldwide.

Until the next incident, when the most likely reaction will be calls to restrict the means of that attack.

Following this pattern, how long before life is reduced to passing through a TSA checkpoint at the airport?

Regards.

Update: An interesting article from the Washington Examiner website echos my thoughts.