At Townhall: Kamala Harris’s Poorly Thought Out Gun Control Proposals

Aug 17, 2019 | Featured

Dr. John Lott has a new piece up at Townhall.com about Democrat gun control proposals. The piece starts this way:

Democratic presidential candidate Senator Kamala Harris (D-CA) took flak for politicizing the shooting of police in Philadelphia on Wednesday. She couldn’t even wait more than an hour before pushing gun control. But there is a big problem with her solutions to have more regulations for gun dealers. She didn’t even yet know how the attacker got his guns, but it is delusional to think that any regulations on gun dealers are going to significantly stop drug dealers from getting guns.

She announced again on CNN Wednesday that she wants “to take the licenses of gun dealers who violate the law.” What she means is to drive out of business gun dealers who make even the tiniest, meaningless paperwork errors.

It is hard to ignore that the shooter, 36-year-old Maurice Hill, has a lengthy criminal history of drug dealing and gun convictions. He is not the type of guy who was buying a gun from a licensed gun dealer.

But one need look no further than Mexico, which borders Harris’s home state of California, to see how well her proposed regulations would work in stopping drug dealers from getting weapons.

Mexico has draconian gun control laws and has gone far beyond removing the licenses from a significant number of gun dealers. Since 1972, there has only been one gun store in the country, located in Mexico City. The military runs it, and guns are very costly. Only about 1 percent of Mexicans have a license to legally own guns. In addition, since 1972, the most powerful rifles that you can legally buy in Mexico are .22 caliber.

So how well has that worked in stopping drug gangs from getting weapons? In June, Mexico, a country with less than 40 percent of the US’s population, had over 3,000 murders. During the first six months of the year, they had over 17,500 murders. Their murder rate is nearly six times the US rate, and some Mexican states have murder rates over 100 per 100,000 people.

Philadelphia Mayor Jim Kenney is “angry about someone having all that weaponry and all that firepower.” But if you think that strict limits on what types of guns law-abiding people own will stop drug dealers from getting the weapons they want, again look at Mexico. Hint: drug gangs aren’t using .22 caliber guns.

So why is it so hard to keep drug dealers from getting guns? The answer is simple: illegal drug profits. Gang members can’t go to the police to ask for help getting their drugs back from other dealers who might have stolen their supply. Gangs need guns to protect their valuable property, and they can bring guns into Mexico just as easily as they bring in their drugs.

Drug gangs steal some guns from the Mexican military. Only about 15% of guns in Mexico come from the U.S. Since the U.S. is unique in requiring serial numbers on guns, it is relatively easy for Mexico to figure out what guns are from the U.S. Mexico guesses that about 17% of their crime guns are from the US and it gives those guns to the US to be traced.  It turns out that about 90% of those, or 15% of the total, did come from the US.

If Kamala Harris could click her fingers today and cause all guns to disappear from the United States and all illegal drugs, how long would it take for illegal drugs to start getting back into the US? If you are in El Paso or parts of Southern California, 20 minutes? How long would it take for these drug dealers to bring in the weapons that they would need to protect their valuable property? They would bring them in at the same time.  . . .

The rest of the piece is available here.

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