WASHINGTON -- While it is an article of faith among gun-control proponents that government restrictions on firearms reduces violence and crime, two new U.S. studies could find no evidence to support such a conclusion.
The National Academy of Sciences issued a 328-page report based on 253 journal articles, 99 books, 43 government publications, a survey of 80 different gun-control laws and some of its own independent study. In short, the panel could find no link between restrictions on gun ownership and lower rates of crime, firearms violence or even accidents with guns.
The panel was established during the Clinton administration and all but one of its members were known to favor gun control.
So a gun control panel made up of people who are in favor of gun control could find no evidence of gun control actually working to diminish crime. Either these panel members are exceptionally poor at their jobs or too blinded by their own narrow-minded beliefs to see when they're wrong.
Meanwhile, in San Francisco, city politicians push forward with efforts to ban the second amendment in that city despite no evidence that a surge in crime is either related to gun violence or would be solved by a ban on guns.
One can only hope that at some point in the future our country comes to its senses about guns.