Phyrfight Intel

Dan Baum over at the Huffington Post has written an article asking liberals to not to be tempted to call for tighter gun laws in the aftermath of the shooting in Tucson. His theme of the article I think is expressed best by this quote:

Gun control not only does no practical good, it actively causes harm. It may be hard to show that it saves lives, but it’s easy to demonstrate that we’ve sacrificed a generation of progress on things like health care, women’s rights, immigration reform, income fairness, and climate change because we keep messing with people’s guns

I am impressed by his honest understanding that this issue is a losing one for Democrats, or any politician. However, from reading the article I get the feeling that he doesn’t truly believe that people should have the right to bear arms. It seems that he has given up the issue in order to pursue other causes which are more important to liberals.

I do have hope for the liberals and Democrats when the author compares gun control to the prohibition of marijuana:

It’s helpful to think of gun control as akin to marijuana prohibition — useless for almost everything except turning otherwise law-abiding people into criminals and fomenting cynicism and resentment.

This statement gives me hope that he is on his way to becoming more libertarian. I heard someone once say, if we can get the gun guys stop worrying about drugs and the drug guys to stop worrying about guns then we would be on our way to a much better country.