Once Again, It's Not About Guns. It's About Control.

And the hand-wringers can't see the forest for the trees, just the way governments like it. Insty points to a Telegraph op-ed that persists in repeating the "Do it again, only harder" mantra. At least they got the title right:

Gun laws that constrain the law-abiding

For James Andre Smartt-Ford, 16, Michael Dosunmu, 15, and Billy Cox, 15, the hand-wringing by police and politicians over the escalation of gun crime comes a little late: all three have been shot dead in south London over the past 10 days.

Public revulsion over such criminality is, shamingly, blunted by the fact that they appear to be victims of ethnic gang crime. Society at large sees it as "their" problem, not its own. Such a view is criminally complacent.

Don't feel too bad. We do it here, too, which makes me even more certain that "gun control" isn't about reducing crime. If its adherents were interested in reducing crime, they'd target the crime, not the tools.

We have, post-Dunblane, what are said to be the toughest gun control laws in the world. They have actually proved strikingly ineffectual.

You don't say!

Gun crime has doubled since they were introduced. Young hoodlums are able to acquire handguns - either replica weapons that have been converted, or imports from eastern Europe - with ease. With no dedicated frontier police, our borders remain hopelessly porous. The only people currently incommoded by the firearms laws are legitimate holders of shotgun licences, who are subjected to the most onerous police checks.

All of which was predicted prior to: the ban on full-auto weapons (1937), the ban on semi-auto long guns (1988), and the ban on all handguns (1997) - none of which even slowed the rate of increase in gun crime noticeably. But they did disarm the law-abiding, which is just another reason we don't believe the opposition when they tell us they aren't out to take away our guns. This fact also shoots in the foot every mayor and every governor who blames "lax gun laws" in neighboring states for the high crime in their own inner cities - where gun control laws are nearly as strict as England's. If an island can't keep them out, nobody can.

To the realist, that means it's time to pursue another vector. To the politician it means "Do it again, only harder!"

Even more disturbing is the insouciance with which guns are used. An 18-year-old Angolan refugee was sentenced to life this week for shooting dead a woman holding a baby at a christening party, in what was otherwise a "routine" robbery.

Seems a resonable sentence, no?

The truth is that the laws relating to possession of guns are nowhere near tough enough. Possessing a firearm carries a minimum sentence (ministers insist on calling it "mandatory", but it is not) of five years. That means release, in normal circumstances, after 30 months.

Let me do the math here... (carry the six,...) Um, thirty months isn't five years, it's two and a half. Is this "new math"? No, it's just the UK's version of "criminal justice." Continuing:

For those aged between 17 and 21, the minimum sentence is three years, which means release after just 18 months. Such piffling sanctions hardly amount to an effective deterrent to these young hoodlums. The police want the five-year minimum sentence extended to everyone over 17 and the Government should not hesitate to meet that request.

Don't you mean "thirty-month minimum sentence"? After all, it's not like a "life sentence" really means, you know, life. I wonder how long it will be before that Angolan refugee gets out to try again?

But more is required.

Of course! "Do it again, only HARDER!

In particular, the ludicrous inhibitions placed on the police when it comes to exercising powers of stop and search have to be lifted. So must the post-Macpherson burden of political correctness, which makes any police officer think twice before challenging a young black man on the street. There is a wider failure here.

Right! The police must be allowed to be more intrusive without fear of censure! Actually, it might be OK if they were just allowed to treat criminals like they get away with treating the law-abiding.

This Government came to power with high hopes of ameliorating the social crisis in Britain's sink estates. These were "their people" and they would be rescued.

Isn't that what they always promise? Remember Mencken:

The government consists of a gang of men exactly like you and me. They have, taking one with another, no special talent for the business of government; they have only a talent for getting and holding office. Their principal device to that end is to search out groups who pant and pine for something they can't get and to promise to give it to them. Nine times out of ten that promise is worth nothing. The tenth time is made good by looting A to satisfy B. In other words, government is a broker in pillage, and every election is sort of an advance auction sale of stolen goods.

Or, graphically:

(Chip Bok, Akron Beacon-Journal)

Amen.

But the fractured families, the inadequate schools, the crippling impact of welfarism, the appalling living conditions - all have stubbornly resisted New Labour's lacklustre efforts.

(My emphasis.) Well, a little recognition of reality at last.

Conditions in many inner cities have actually worsened. And what a price we are paying.

But your solution? "Dedicated frontier police?" "Mandatory five-year (30 month) sentences"? Greater police powers? It's just more of the same. Another Menckenism:

The whole aim of practical politics is to keep the populace alarmed (and hence clamorous to be led to safety) by menacing it with an endless series of hobgoblins, all of them imaginary.

Well, not all of them are imaginary. Some are real, and some of those are generated (or worsened) by government, but those that aren't imaginary are too often blown out of proportion for just the reason Mencken mentioned. But government "leading people to safety"? That's the promise - one that government cannot deliver on 24/7/365. Instead, it disarms its citizenry and does its dead-level best to convince them that they're not qualified to defend themselves.

In the mean time, it offers images like this:

Doesn't that make you feel safer? Hey, kids, let's do the same thing here! After all, the (nowhere near) Million Moms chanted "England can do it, Australia can do it, we can too!"

Not on my watch.