It’s always good to have more data and analysis on the effectiveness of public policies, particularly when they have life-and-death consequences. The gun-control movement operates largely on the belief that the devices themselves are inherently sinister – or, more properly, that possession of firearms will lead otherwise law-abiding people to commit violent crimes, or kill each other accidentally. This is combined with a deep belief in the uselessness of armed citizens, a refusal to believe that good guys with guns can deter or thwart crimes, unless they are law-enforcement agents. There is also an underlying conviction that society can be made safer by banning firearms possession entirely, although it is politically inconvenient for gun-control activists to express this conviction out loud – it’s the logical conclusion to most of their arguments, but they always take pains to assure us they have no intention of banning the weapons of hunters, or the non-concealable officially-approved instrument of home defense, the shotgun.

What keeps emerging from these studies is data that disproves all of these beliefs, making both the core convictions of gun control zealotry, and all of their current enthusiasms, matters of fantasy and offenses against our Constitutional right to bear arms. In other words, the gun control zealots are wrong both in principle and practice. They’re wasting a lot of political energy – not to mention time and money – on pointless efforts to impose an ideology that runs counter to reality.