Trevor Burrus: How Shameful Policies Increase America's Gun Violence
As Prohibition-era America showed, banning a highly in-demand substance
increases the violence surrounding that substance. When legal methods
cannot be used to settle contract and other disputes, extra-legal
methods (i.e., the point of a gun) will be used. Moreover, unsavory
characters will tend to traffic the prohibited substances, further
escalating violent business practices. These new businessmen also
facilitate the illegal gun trade, brazenly ignoring assault weapons bans
and other cosmetic limits on gun ownership. Those guns then flood the
black market, giving easy access to would-be criminals and mass
shooters. A 2001 Justice Department study
found that 20 percent of prison inmates received their guns from a drug
dealer or off the street. Comparatively, only 0.7 percent of the
weapons were obtained at gun shows. Which "loophole" should we be
focusing on closing?
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