The Heller Decision and Prudery

Don Surber has a great post this morning pointing out that under the DC gun ban, murders tripled in the last 30 or so years.

Question: Did the murder rate really triple under the Washington, DC, gun ban?

Answer: Yes. The murder rate was 26.8 homicides per 100,000 people in 1976, when the ban became law. That would be its lowest rate for the next 30 years. It peaked at 80.6 homicides per 100,000 people in 1991.

He goes on to wonder why various high-profile columnists are ignoring this fact as they tut-tut about the Supreme Court's Heller decision. He suggests that these columnists are ignorant.

These are not ignorant men, they just do not know the facts about DC’s murders. The murders are not committed by the lawful exercise of one’s right to keep and bear arms but rather by a city policy that disarms the people and leaves them vulnerable to the very thugs that King complained about.

Close, but no cigar.

The years between 1976 and 2008 are the rise of the first generation where marriage had been abandoned by the biological parents. The destruction of the family correlates with murder and all other social pathologies. You can have all the guns you want (or not), if you don't have intact, married, stable, nuclear families, civilization gets washed away.

The reason the columnists all cling to the notion that gun laws will solve the problem is that they don't want to come out against popular culture. They don't want to be prudes.

Columnist E. J. Dionne of the Washington Post.
Beyonce.
Um, I think we found the reason E. J. is in favor of the gun ban. It's easy for E. J. to rail against conservatives. It's another thing entirely for him to attack Beyonce and Destiny's Child and Hollywood and ...