FTA: There will come a time, Glastris speculates, when “Democrats control both the White House and Congress.” He continues, “When that moment arrives, wouldn’t it be better if, instead of debating marginal fixes, there were new ideas on the table to actually address the root of the problem by substantially reducing the number of guns in circulation?”
Of course, there have been other “visionaries” who have dreamed of common ownership of the means of production. Karl Marx and Vladimir Lenin come to mind.
After every high profile crime committed with a firearm of any sort, there are always calls for gun control. But one particular proposal last week managed to distinguish itself amid the usual din, if only for its audacity and what it reveals about the mindset of people who wish to disarm their fellow Americans.
In a lengthy article in Washington Monthly, private equity investor William V. Glastris, Jr. pitched a plan under which the federal government would obtain the means of handgun production, ban handgun importation, and target the current private handgun stock with a massive, nationwide “buyback.” The plan’s ultimate goal would be for “the government to significantly lower the supply—and thereby raise the price—of handguns … .”
Glastris admits the proposal is “not modest” but insists “Americans deserve broad, sweeping reforms,” rather than “years of painstaking incrementalism … .” He also dismisses the more conventional gun control agenda of banning semiautomatic rifles and “high capacity” magazines, closing the “gun show loophole,” and imposing categorical prohibitions on certain criminals. “[I[t is hard to argue that these reforms, even if they all went into effect, would do much more than put a modest dent in the problem,” Glastris writes.
There will come a time, Glastris speculates, when “Democrats control both the White House and Congress.” He continues, “When that moment arrives, wouldn’t it be better if, instead of debating marginal fixes, there were new ideas on the table to actually address the root of the problem by substantially reducing the number of guns in circulation?”
Of course, there have been other “visionaries” who have dreamed of common ownership of the means of production. Karl Marx and Vladimir Lenin come to mind.
And while Glastris is admittedly limiting his proposal only to the means of producing handguns, it still suffers from the inherent problems that have doomed similar ideological projects throughout history.
by Ammoland.com
