I haven’t linked to Fred Reed in a while, but he continues to do what he does best: writing plain common sense. His latest, from the first of this month, is about gun control. Excerpts:

The two most heavily armed countries in the world are (still, I think) Israel and Switzerland. In Switzerland, men of military age are (still, I think) required to keep an assault rifle and ammunition in their homes, and Israelis are similarly armed because, having enemies on their borders, they need to be able to mobilize rapidly.

In both countries murders by armed citizens are essentially nonexistent. By contrast, Mexico has strict gun control. Does anyone get shot in Mexico?

Yes, actually. Some 164,000 thousand shot dead between 2007 and 2014 (Figures vary. The foregoing are typical.) Pretty effective, gun control is.

Why do murders occur so exuberantly in a country with gun control? Because making guns illegal doesn’t make guns go away…

…If guns were made illegal in the US, not a single villain would turn his gun in. The bumper sticker, “When guns are criminal, only criminals will have guns,’ is exactly right. Guns, usually small and easily smuggled, are immensely valuable to criminals. Why would they turn them in? Criminals do not obey laws. It’s how you know they are criminals.

Curiously, the fewer guns in the hands of the law-abiding, the more valuable they are to criminals. When citizens may be armed, crawling in a window at night becomes much less attractive. And of course gun control would mean disarming white people, who tend to obey laws. Having witnessed Baltimore, Ferguson, and Charlotte, many whites are not enthusiastic about being left helpless.

One must never say this.