A Myopic Focus on Guns Won’t Save Lives

By Jonathan Blanks Jonathan Blanks

On Tuesday, President Barack Obama announced new executive actions to deal with the more than 30,000 annual U.S. gun deaths. During the speech, the president became emotional discussing the victims of the Sandy Hook shooting and other victims of gun violence. His tears drew plaudits from media outlets and gun control advocates. But strong feelings neither change law nor create effective public policy. As for content, Obama’s remarks conflated the several major drivers of gun deaths, grossly misrepresented access to firearms via the Internet, and overstated the impacts of his proposals.

Nevertheless, The New Republic declared, “Obama Is Finally Changing the Debate on Guns.” The Los Angeles Times celebrated, “With gun epidemic raging, Obama finally bypasses Congress.” Yet, looking at the available details of the president’s actions — and understanding his limits acting unilaterally — it is unclear that he necessarily changed much at all. And looking at the nationwide numbers, it is hardly apparent the nation is in the midst of a gun “epidemic.” America can reduce its number of gun deaths, but this sort of executive action is unlikely to do it.

Perhaps the most useful part of Obama’s actions is increasing the number of …Read the Rest

Source:: Cato Institute