The idea of lawmakers in Illinois wanting more gun control isn’t earth-shattering, to say the least. Especially after the deadly shooting on Independence Day in Highland Park.
The problems arise when they want to push those ideas onto the rest of us.
Unsurprisingly, it seems they’re trying to do just that.
Sen. Dick Durbin (D-Ill.) set the stage Wednesday during a Senate judicial committee hearing on the deadly Highland Park shooting.
“The attack in Highland Park was the 309th mass shooting in America this year. There have been 47 more mass shootings since the Fourth of July,” Durbin said.
No, there haven’t.
Stop using the Gun Violence Archive’s numbers, Senator. They intentionally broaden the definition in such a way to make the numbers far scarier than they actually are.
Moving on…
Durbin and others would ban the sale and manufacture of powerful, military-style firearms that have become the weapons of choice for mass killers who now strike more than once a day.
The committee’s ranking Republican Sen. Chuck Grassley promised to block that, instead offering a plan to instruct Americans on how to spot potential mass shooters.
Which, of course, would ultimately be more productive.
Grassley also pointed out that the assault weapon ban accomplished nothing with regard to mass shootings, which triggered another Illinois senator.
Sen. Tammy Duckworth (D-Ill.) challenged that assertion.
“After the assault weapons ban expired in 2004 and the ranking member quoted statistics from 2004 that says there had been no significant change as of 2004. However, since the assault weapons ban was allowed to expire, mass shootings in this country have tripled,” Duckworth said.
Post hoc ergo proptor hoc.
After, therefore because of.
That’s a logical fallacy that argues that simply because something happened after something else, then it must have happened because of that thing. I mean, the Boston Red Sox won the World Series in 2004 as well. Is that also responsible for the rise in mass shootings?
The argument may look strong, but we also know that contrary to what the media claims, most mass shootings aren’t carried out with AR-15s. Instead, mass shooters prefer handguns.
Frankly, Duckworth and Durbin both fail to note that Highland Park had an assault weapon ban that did jack squat. Illinois requires licensing for gun purchases. That did jack squat as well.
Highland Park illustrates just how little gun control actually helps.
If there’s an upside to this, it’s the fact that there’s absolutely zero chance this gets a vote. The Senate already got all the gun control it was going to get with the bipartisan deal they reached in the wake of Uvalde. One of the architects of that deal has already said there won’t be anymore.
So really, this is just Senate Democrats puffing their chest up and pretending they’re going to solve the problem.
The issue is that they don’t even understand the problem. No one does. No one has really delved into why mass shootings happen or why they seem to be happening so much more now.
Instead, people like Durbin and Duckworth just blame the guns, all while pretending their state’s gun control laws aren’t a complete and total failure.