For the Record

Economist Walter E. Williams: “For most of our history, a person could simply walk into a hardware store, virtually anywhere in our country, and buy a gun. Few states bothered to have even age restrictions on buying guns. Those and other historical facts should force us to ask ourselves: Why … was there not the frequency and kind of gun violence that we sometimes see today, when access to guns is more restricted? … Moral standards of conduct, as well as strict and swift punishment for criminal behaviors, have been under siege in our country for more than a half-century. Moral absolutes have been abandoned as a guiding principle. … [P]rogressives want to replace what worked with what sounds good or what seems plausible, such as more gun locks, longer waiting periods and stricter gun possession laws. Then there’s progressive mindlessness ‘cures,’ such as ‘zero tolerance’ for schoolyard recess games such as cops and robbers and cowboys and Indians, shouting ‘bang bang,’ drawing a picture of a pistol, making a gun out of Lego pieces, and biting the shape of a gun out of a Pop-Tart. This kind of unadulterated lunacy … will continue to produce disappointing results.”