Reply #59: That's an important point. [View All]

[DanTex]

Gun control is actually one area where there is quite of bit of evidence, more so than for most public policy questions. In this instance, you have not only all of the studies linking higher gun availability generally to homicide, gun violence, etc., but also some specific evidence that this very registry is working (e.g. the decline in long-gun homicides). And then there are the opinions of police who have hands-on experience of how the registry is used, and so on.

Killias's point is right on: it is silly to insist on the kind of "proof" you can get from, say, a repeatable and well controlled chemistry experiment before taking action, because if that were your standard, then no policy would qualify.

For example, someone in this thread earlier suggested that the money spent on the gun registry might be better spend feeding children. Of course, there is no "proof" that spending money feeding children actually reduces child hunger and malnutrition. The same right-wingers that deny all the evidence on global warming and gun control would surely argue that feeding children would probably cause obesity, or produce a culture of dependence and entitlement, or that it's "anti-freedom" to take my tax dollars and use them to buy food for hungry children...