Another gun control rant. OK, here’s the thing a lot of people on both sides of the argument seem to get: there are both sufficient and necessary conditions to enable gun violence, and ya gotta deal with all of them. What the NRA-types correctly point out is that the mere presence of firearms is not a suffient condition–and they’re right. Lots of other factors come into play, and addressing the gun issue does not address the whole problem. And shame on certain members of the gun control lobby for missing this point.
What the NRA-types miss, however, is that guns are, in fact, a necessary condition for most of the mass violence we’ve seen of late. Even with all the other problems, the first-grade kid in Michigan is still alive if the other first-grade kid doesn’t have a handgun. Yes, the shooter still has lots of other problems, but those problems don’t result in the deaths of other children without access to guns. Shame on the NRA-types for missing this point.
On the whole, with limited resources, I’d go after the neccessary conditions first.
(original date: 2000.05.10)