By Tim Inwood

There are days after reading or watching news stories, that I am convinced a good chunk of the world has taken leave of their senses. In recent days I read an editorial in the Cincinnati Enquirer advocating the banning of handguns. The author of this tripe was a Cincinnati Lawyer named Robert B. Newman. Somehow he has gotten the notion that the solution to the crime problem in Cincinnati is for the city to ban handguns. Clearly one has lost their good senses and perhaps their touch with reality when they keep trying the same thing over and over again expecting a different result.

I responded to Mr. Newman's piece noting that I had lived just outside of Washington D.C. in the 1980s and saw first hand the folly of what he proposes. At that time Washington D.C. was known as the murder capitol of the United States. However, the homicide rates in the suburbs of Washington did not suffer the same high rate as our nation's capitol.

Why, you might ask? Well, in Washington D.C., in the midst of our bicentennial celebrations of 1976, the city fathers saw fit to celebrate the founding of the United States on one hand and violate the US Constitution on the other by banning the ownership of handguns. However, in the Virginia and Maryland suburbs of Washington this silly law did not apply. Since 1976 the criminals have ruled the streets of D.C. and thousands have died as a result. Other cities have also banned handgun ownership and it has been a failure as well.

Mr. Newman has not taken note of the dismal record of what he proposes. So it is no surprise to me that he has failed to notice that the United Kingdom has also fallen into the hands of criminal chaos since banning the ownership of handguns in the wake of the Dunblane shootings in 1996. How bad is it in Jolly Old England? It is so bad they are now wanting to ban large kitchen knives and pocket knives (next I expect them to go after sharp sticks and stones). The UK has made the same mistake many US cities have made--thinking an inanimate object is the problem, when the problem is criminals and not doing anything seriously to control them.

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