This post will be brief. Many gun control proponents find gun-owner intransigence infuriating, and can’t understand how people reject their “commonsense”, “reasonable”, “sensible” gun laws designed to keep guns out of the hands of the mental ill and restrict the use of high-capacity assault ghost gun clips (which are unnecessary for hunting).

Consider the Todd Akin case, where a buffoon of a politician said the following regarding abortion in case of rape:

Well you know, people always want to try to make that as one of those things, well how do you, how do you slice this particularly tough sort of ethical question. First of all, from what I understand from doctors, that’s really rare. If it’s a legitimate rape, the female body has ways to try to shut that whole thing down.

Naturally, pro-choice and Democratic activists pounced on this gleefully — and rightly-so. A person without the barest understanding of human physiology, or of the physiological realities of sexual violence, wanted to legislate against a woman’s right to choose. I think people of good conscience can disagree on the abortion (one reason I am pro-choice), but if you are proposing legislative restrictions on certain activities (either as a private citizen or as a legislator) you have a serious duty to understand the relevant facts thoroughly.

In the case of gun legislation, that simply does not seem to be the case. Dianne Feinstein claims that AR-15s are designed for “spray fire” “from the hip”. (They’re not.) Joe Biden claims that a good self-defense technique is firing a shotgun through a door, and that “double-barrel” shotguns are easier to handle than AR-15s. (I wonder what he thinks of this case. Or the actual physics of semiautomatic weapons, where a good chunk of the recoil is absorbed by the weapon’s reloading system.) Carolyn McCarthy argues that, among other features, barrel shrouds need to be banned — but doesn’t know what they are. Ignorance is inexcusable, right? And this is not random citizens hurling insults on the Internet: these are powerful politicians in the federal government. Yet they have decided that learning about the objects which they wish to regulate is beneath them, and is unnecessary. And when one side considers even the most basic research unnecessary before passing major legislation, intransigence ought to be an expected response.

Or consider the question of voter ID laws. To conservatives, it’s obviously foolish not to require photo ID to vote. Without a photo ID, why, anyone can claim to be anyone! And liberals, understandably furious at infringement on voting rights, point out that voter fraud isn’t a real problem. Voter ID laws feel like a good idea and they seem like common sense. But it turns out that there is no need for them whatsoever.

A similar problem exists with universal background checks for gun purchases. It seems like common sense: you don’t want anyone to be able to buy a gun! That’s dangerous! You want to ensure there’s a background check in place to stop this problem! Makes sense. The problem, of course, is that it’s not clear that background checks will interdict much of a problem at all. It is already illegal to sell a firearm to someone whom you know or reasonably should know to be a prohibited person. It is also illegal to act as a “straw purchaser,” buying guns on someone else’s behalf. People who wittingly sell to criminals are already committing a crime, and can thus ignore the further requirement of a background check at an FFL. If the person’s information is not in the NICS (a common problem), then the background check won’t stop the sale. The only people whose behavior is likely to be changed, then, are those people who unwittingly sell to prohibited persons, and whose names are in the NICS. And I simply have not seen evidence that this is a major problem.