Why Not Just Put A Tag In Our Ear?

It seems to be a standard New Year's resolution of the Left. Gun control politicians on the local level are advocating national-level remedies to their local problems. "If we can't fix it ourselves, then the rest of the country will just have to conform to us". What a novel way of looking at their fellow citizens. Mayor Bloomberg of New York started this with his call for tougher gun control across the nation to benefit New Yorkers. Now Boston joins the fray with a call to install GPS devices on all firearms.

Russell Nichols of the Boston Globe writes an article about Boston city councilor Rob Consalvo advocating not only putting a tracking device in every new gun, but having legal gun owners install them in their existing weapons so "owners and police can locate and retrieve stolen guns the same way police use a computer chip to locate stolen cars".

Councilman Consalvo thinks it's a "common-sense idea", and although he admits the cost might be high to accomplish this task, "it would be worth it". To whom, he fails to mention. The answer is rather obvious. It's advantageous to those who wish to control who buys firearms to make them prohibitively expensive. Since taxes and regulatory fees haven't worked well as alternatives to outright bans, the fallback is always the "safety issue". If you can't tax or regulate something out of existence, get 'em on safety. As long as it makes a de facto ban, who cares, right? If it leaves the poor unable to afford such a luxury item, what do people like Councilman Consalvo care? They have police protection, at least.

Now let's examine the reality of this. Although the article notes he's meeting with Smith & Wesson, that company's been burned before cooperating with gun control advocates, and it's unlikely they'll be as naive a second time. Their response basically seems to be "no comment", but undoubtedly what they will tell the Councilman in private is that a) you need a power source for the GPS attached somehow which might make guns unwieldy and b) how do we feasibly design such a thing without a criminal being able to rip it out? Sure, in a car, it's not an easy thing to take out of the car's computer, but cars have had computers for over twenty years. They need them. Guns, on the other hand, have no computer except the brain attached to their wielder. Where's it go, then? If Colt and S&W couldn't figure out "smart" guns for Clinton, then how do they expect to figure out OnStar for guns? I'm not sure either, but when have leftists let a little thing like reality interfere with such a grand idea?

Gun violence follows two general trends, lack of firearms in an area that encourage predatory criminals, and drug trafficking. If you want to eliminate gun violence in your area, and you've already disarmed your own sheep, I mean citizenry, then your choices are to try and infringe on honest citizens' rights outside your jurisdiction or to catch the criminals involved in said crimes. Often, it's easier and more cost effective to do the former. Heaven forbid we require government to actually fight crime, lock up criminals and keep the streets safe. Instead, they show us their main concern is worrying that we can protect ourselves and might get to the criminals before they do. Considering the cities that have thus far enacted total gun bans, even going so far as going door to door to confiscate weapons, I feel no need to make it easier for them by putting a big bulls eye on where I keep my firearms.

Councilman Consalvo suffers from the latest wave of the disease of the Left, the disease that infects its victim with a need to see those they govern as children or at best subjects to be ruled as they see fit, while ignoring the real problem, criminals. Put the criminals in jail. Execute the worst of them. Crime, amazingly, goes down. Disarm the citizenry, put an electronic leash on them, and watch your city fall to chaos. Folks like Mr. Consalvo must have a big light shined on them for proposing such ideas, so that those with the real "common sense" can vote them out next election. Farewell to bad rubbish, Mr. Consalvo.