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Gun control, etc.
Jun. 21st, 2015 04:17 pmAdam Gopnik writes in the New Yorker:
Even if the Congress passed laws that would set a prohibitively high barrier to gun ownership the laws would be challenged and either defeated or significantly diluted in courts. Unlike in Scotland, Canada, and Australia, the countries Gopnik considers to be good at gun control, the US Constitution explicitly gives the people the right to bear arms. The Congress and the courts would have to effectively kill the 2nd Amendment, which is not an easy task.
On the other hand, passing laws that facilitate commercial introduction of self-driving cars would not require a constitutional change and help save more lives than any new gun control measures. Therefore, we should expect that a rational citizen votes for a rational politician who advocates car control rather than gun control. As repulsive as it is, a racially motivated killing of innocent American children, either white, black, or brown, doesn't rise to the level of a constitutional change. Banning guns may be an easy technical problem but its opportunity costs are too high in the current legal context.
So don’t listen to those who, seeing twenty dead six- and seven-year-olds in ten minutes, their bodies riddled with bullets designed to rip apart bone and organ, say that this is impossibly hard, or even particularly complex, problem. It’s a very easy one. Summoning the political will to make it happen may be hard.
Even if the Congress passed laws that would set a prohibitively high barrier to gun ownership the laws would be challenged and either defeated or significantly diluted in courts. Unlike in Scotland, Canada, and Australia, the countries Gopnik considers to be good at gun control, the US Constitution explicitly gives the people the right to bear arms. The Congress and the courts would have to effectively kill the 2nd Amendment, which is not an easy task.
On the other hand, passing laws that facilitate commercial introduction of self-driving cars would not require a constitutional change and help save more lives than any new gun control measures. Therefore, we should expect that a rational citizen votes for a rational politician who advocates car control rather than gun control. As repulsive as it is, a racially motivated killing of innocent American children, either white, black, or brown, doesn't rise to the level of a constitutional change. Banning guns may be an easy technical problem but its opportunity costs are too high in the current legal context.
