Why Gun Control Won’t Stop Assassinations

With the assassination of Charlie Kirk fresh on everyone’s minds, there are those who are trying to jump on it to push an anti-gun agenda. Of course, the weapon used appears to be a simple bolt-action rifle like you can get at any sporting goods store anywhere in the nation, even California. Hell, as noted on Friday, you can get the same rifle lawfully in England, of all places.

But let’s say, hypothetically, Americans decided to give up our guns entirely. It’s never going to happen–which is why I said “hypothetically,” for the reading impaired–but for the sake of argument, let’s pretend.

Well, we won’t see assassination attempts with firearms, now will we?

I’m sure Shinzo Abe would like to have a word to anyone who buys that.

For those who don’t remember, Abe was a former prime minister of Japan. While on the campaign trail in 2022, he was shot and killed in one of the most gun-controlled nations on the planet.

How?

The killer built a gun of his very own. He cobbled it together from various hardware store parts. This wasn’t a refined design like P.A. Luty’s backyard submachine gun, but it was still an option. Brandon Herrera replicated it on YouTube to show it could be done. He got demonitized for it, too, but he isn’t griping about that one.

Anyway, the killer put together something that looked like it came out of a steampunk movie made by a three-year-old and used it to kill someone who he felt was sympathetic to the Unification Church.

The fact that the son of the church’s founder also started Kahr is more than a little ironic to me, but anyway…

What we need to understand is that the old saying of “where there’s a will, there’s a way” applies to the world of political assassination. In fact, the assassination of political foes has a long and storied history throughout history. Egyptian Pharaoh Amenemhat I was the first known victim of assassination in 2,000 BC, and there’s little doubt he was the first ever.

They didn’t need a gun then, and they don’t now.

Someone tried to kill Pennsylvania Gov. Josh Shapiro through arson earlier this year, after all.

But if they want a gun, it’s way too easy to create one of your own. The early guns in the West were nothing but hollow tubes of iron with a touch hole where a spark would ignite the powder. We have pipes and drills. We have a myriad of ways to create a firearm if one is desired.

Again, Japan has some of the toughest gun control laws on the planet. We know this because anti-gunners continually invoke their low “gun death” rate as proof that gun control works.

Yet when one person decided to kill someone for having the wrong opinions, he didn’t need ready access to firearms. He just needed some time, some very basic raw materials, and a desire to kill.

Charlie Kirk’s assassin may not have had to cobble together a firearm, but there’s no reason to believe any level of gun control would have stopped him, either.