At Least One Leftie Gets It

Dan Baum, in this article at the Huffington Post shows that at least one leftie gets it about gun control:

I'm not one for slinging statistics, because everybody can read into them what he wants to see. One, though, seems pretty hard to ignore: The rates of murder and other violent crime have dropped by about half in the past 20 years -- one piece of unalloyed good news out of the past two decades. During those same 20 years, gun ownership has gone way up, and gun laws have become far looser. 

Gun guys are convinced there's a causal relationship -- they say that criminals become timid in the face of an armed citizenry. I think the crime drop has more to do with changing demographics and smarter policing. Either way, it is obvious that more guns and looser gun laws did not cause crime to rise. We on the left, who have an impulse toward ever tighter gun laws, need to look squarely at that. If what we want to do is reduce violent crime, perhaps we should continue what we're doing. While it may be true that nothing can be done to keep guns out of the wrong hands, it is plainly false that nothing can be done to reduce violence. Lots is being done, and quite successfully. It just doesn't involve restricting guns.

I myself have written about this as well, but it is just terrific to see a liberal Democrat admit that gun control does not work. While more guns may not result in less crime, the last 20 years has shown that more guns does not necessarily lead to more crime. Now the left will have to come up with something more creative than a simple knee-jerk reaction.