The dumbest response yet?

Charles Lane’s columns having a way of especially annoying me.  I think because he pitches himself as one of these liberal truth-tellers who just happens to agree with conservatives more often than not.  Now, of all the responses to the Aurora massacre, the idea that putting a high tariff on Glocks and similar European made guns would make a difference (and placing any of the blame on Europeans) strikes me as ridiculous.

For all the tut-tutting across the pond, America’s gun culture exists in symbiosis with Europe’s own culture of precision manufacturing — of which the Glock is a notable expression…

Glock’s customers have apparently included not only Holmes but also Jared Lee Loughner, charged in the January 2011 Tucson massacre that left six dead and then-Rep. Gabrielle Giffords among the severely injured — as well as the shooters in the 2007 Virginia Tech massacre (32 murdered), a 1999 Honolulu shooting (seven murdered), a 1998 Oregon high school shooting (four murdered), a 1998 Connecticut shooting (four murdered) and the1991 Killeen, Tex., massacre (23 murdered).

You might call Glock the favorite weapon of America’s Amoklaeufer, as those who run amok with guns are known in German…

All told, European Union members shipped just under a million handguns to the United States in 2010. Their domestic markets may be limited by gun control, but Europe’s small-arms makers can still get rich, and create jobs, thanks to the Second Amendment. Who knew?

Now, I’m no gun expert, but I’m assuming that there are American manufactured semi-automatic pistols.  And if there’s not, something tells me there would soon be if the best imports suddenly faced a high tariff.  Now, at risk of being called a hypocrite for suggesting limiting access to one type of gun would make any difference, to me the key distinction is that I don’t think this would actually do anything to reduce the cost or availability (at least after a short adjustment period) of high-powered semi-automatic pistols.  If there were not readily available Glocks, the killers above would surely use other similar guns.  If there were not readily available assault rifles, the killers would presumably be forced to use a less deadly (i.e., less portable and smaller magazines) type of gun.  I’m not suggesting you can stop these massacres.  And while only 9 dead and 30+ injured still sounds horrible, imagine the difference that would make to so many families if those were the figures instead of 12 dead and 70+ wounded.

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