Living in China as I do, I am sometimes asked about guns, and whether they should be allowed or not. In China, of course, guns are not allowed for any ordinary citizen, and even policemen have to have a special permit to carry one.
So today I ran across a piece in the San Francisco Chronicle concerning one sort-of "bonus impact" of California's relatively strict gun laws, which is that Mexican drug cartels don't buy many guns in California, particularly relative to other states, such as Texas.
The original article is here: California gun-control laws cut flow to Mexico
Apparently, the feds (ours or the federales - doesn't say) did a study on about 3000 guns seized from drug cartels. Half were from Texas, almost a third from Arizona, but only 3% from California, despite the fact that more than 3% went through the state on their way south.
You know, in China, a ban on guns is probably a good idea, really - there are so many firecrackers going off all the time here that Al Capone probably could organize a hit with machine guns and nobody would notice, let alone report it, as long as it was out of sight of the public.
But in the US? California requires waiting periods and background checks for gun purchasers. It requires the registration of gun purchases and it bans certain types of assault weapons. Except for those, a law-abiding citizen can certainly get a gun, though - it's just a bit more of a hassle than in other states.
It's nice that the drug cartels aren't getting weapons from California, but one wonders how different it would be if Texas and Arizona also made gun purchases a bit less convenient. Perhaps the California gun purchases would rise in response. Who knows?
People often have the idea that criminals will simply "find a way" to get their guns no matter what. And "guns don't kill people - people kill people." I have some sympathy for that view, especially after viewing Michael Moore's Bowling for Columbine.
I had figured that that movie would be a simple anti-gun diatribe, but unexpectedly, Moore made it clear that it really is true that "people kill people." After all, there are just as many guns in Canada as in the USA, and the murder rate from guns there is not nearly so high.
It reminds me, too, of visiting Switzerland, where every able-bodied man is a member of the army, and they all keep their assault weapons at home. One of my hosts one summer in fact showed me where he kept his -- in a cedar chest at the foot of his bed, along with his extra blankets and linen. The Swiss don't seem to be gunning each other down so much, either.
And in fact, the murder rate from guns in the USA has been falling over the last few decades. The article notes, though, that another study has shown that this murder rate has fallen much faster in California than the average for all states. Has this been caused by the stricter laws, or is it merely a correlation?
Anyway, I think the evidence for beneficial effects from making gun purchases inconvenient is pretty strong, though not by itself conclusive. I figured others might be interested in knowing about it, when they consider their own support (or not) of gun control laws, so I wrote this diary.