In this USA Today article from earlier this week, Camden, New Jersey Police Chief Scott Thomson stated the obvious:
If people want to talk about guns, Thomson pointed out that desperate people on the streets can easily work around the many gun laws in place.
The article was a profile of the crime ridden city of Camden, in a state that the Brady Campaign says has the 2nd strictest gun control laws in the country, New Jersey.
NRANews.com host Cam Edwards spoke with J.D. Tuccille of about the article and a related Reason.com blog post.
It was refreshing to read this Op/Ed in the Washington Times, written by Kyle Scott, who teaches American politics and constitutional law at Duke University and the University of Houston. It is unusual to see someone from academia not push gun control as the answer to societies ills.
The thesis of the article is that crime is not caused by weak gun laws but because there is no moral compass in those who commit crime. Scott writes that most of us do not commit murder, not because of the law says we can't, though the law is important, but because we know it is wrong.
Most people would refrain from shooting someone whether there was a law in place or not. It is the rare person who would say, “The only thing keeping me from opening fire on innocent people is the law.” No, most of us don’t murder because we know murder is wrong — not because the law tells us it is, but because our moral compass does.
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