Tragedies, Virginia Tech and Gun Control ...

This column by E.J. Montini of the Arizona Republic was published just after last week's murderous rampage by a known crazy person who had access to guns.

I did not link to the article earlier because it just seemed too soon for the inevitable discussion about gun control.

I cannot agree with gun-control advocates because when you get down to their basic message, control means a ban for most of us. This is the situation in most of the world. Governments and the rich (or their body guards) have guns. The rest do not. This is what is being advocated (albeit in easily digested steps) by most gun-control advocates. If you wonder why many Americans, not just NRA nut cases, are leery of gun-control advocates just follow the 'reasonable' steps that England took to ban guns making the country a robber's paradise.

Should we have law governing guns? Of course and we do. Could the laws be better? Of course. But I would suggest that our laws cannot improve because of the two extreme factions making sure they do not: the NRA and the ban-all-guns crowd.

From Montini's commentary: After the massacre, an argument over gun control

When I first moved to Arizona in 1980, my view was that it was entirely too easy for a person to get a firearm here. Over the years, that view has changed. In our own way, Arizona is a Petri dish on this issue.

If you believe that the more armed citizens there are the safer we'll be, owing to our ability to defend ourselves, Arizona should be the safest place in the union. If you believe that the more armed citizens there are the more killings there will be, Arizona should be the lease safe place in the nation.

As it turns out, neither is true. Which leads me to believe that on gun control, those on the margins have it wrong.

A reasonable middle ground is nationwide uniformity in gun legislation. If there is a problem now, it is that the variation in laws from state to state makes the system porous and unworkable. The states know this. That's why so many of them have passed legislation preventing individual cities and counties from establishing their own gun laws.

An overarching federal law is the only thing that makes sense. Which it why it will never happen.