Clayton Cramer makes a good argument that Some People Shouldn't Have Guns:

A point that I often make to reporters--and they are usually surprised to hear me say this--is that not everyone should have a gun. There are people who the law prohibits from having guns--and I agree, such as violent felons. There are also people who the law does not prohibit, but whom I discourage from owning guns.

If you find yourself coming back to consciousness after a night of Jack Daniels wearing a leopard skin loincloth, holding a chicken, and a crowd of people around you is shouting, "Kill it! Kill it!" Well, maybe having a gun wouldn't be wise.

Of course, Thompson shot himself, so disarming him is a moot point. But Cramer is right, of course. The problem is, people who would be well advised not to have a gun are often incapable of being well advised, because they won't advise themselves, nor will they listen to advice from others.

Cramer continues:

If you are prone to severe depression, or you have a history of severe mental illness--even if you are doing okay now--having a gun might not be a good idea.

If you are short-tempered, and prone to flying off the handle, having a gun might not be a good idea.

If, like the person in the news report below, you lack anything approaching the common sense that an electric toaster has...

Warns Cramer, shooting mice with a .44 magnum is a bad idea -- in a moving trailer or not.

For those of you not familiar with guns, shooting a mouse with a .44 Magnum, assuming that you actually hit the mouse, will create a large red splatter where the mouse was. This is the right caliber for black bear, PCP-crazed body builders, moose, and (in a pinch), grizzly bears. This is clearly a person with a serious judgment problem, and she would be well-advised to not have guns. Or power tools. Or cars. Or ladders. Or maybe anything but a pacifier and a blanket.

Trouble is, we all argue. Few of us would allow arguments to turn into fistfights. Fewer still would use a gun to settle an argument.

But if we factor in UPenn professor Elijah Anderson's "Code of the Street" (and his related argument that opposition to gun control is "racist") and the unmistakable subtext of their message is that black people (at least, those who adhere to the "code of the street" -- whoever they are) should not be allowed to own guns.

But because of the nature of identity politics, black leaders can make that argument, while claiming that any white person who disagrees is a racist.

What has long fascinated me is that many the white people who most want gun control are often liberal racists of the dissembled condescending variety. Like my Berkeley neighbor who after a long argument finally admitted to me that she wanted to take guns away from black people, but couldn't admit it:

Despairing of getting anywhere with me, my neighbor finally confessed that her problem really wasn't with educated middle class people owning guns; it was with "the poor." Urban minorities. People "on welfare." But she quickly admonished me that she was not talking about race, and that laws had to be fair. And the only way to be fair was to take away all guns, from everyone. The "educated classes," in her view, should "set an example."

Sorry, but I consider that to be racist thinking, dissembled though it may be. It is based on the same statistics which gun control advocates want compiled so they can blame large urban gun dealers for the subsequent conduct of their guns.

What I think is being missed is the central moral aspect of the argument for gun control. A communitarian one, and an often unacknowledged one, but one which we disregard at our peril. I do not mean to make the case for gun control here, but I think there is something that no one wants to admit, and it is highlighted by the stark absurdity of Commissioner Johnson's sincere plea to go after the law abiding gun owners.

Some people are, for lack of a better word, impulsive. Ruled by impulse. Whether you call it "victims of the emotions," whatever it is, they exist. In fact, they're all over the place, and their numbers are growing. Lest anyone think I'm referring to uneducated people or poor people, think again. For years I lived in Berkeley, one of the best-educated cities in the world, and never have I seen so many impulsive people. People I'd never trust anywhere near a gun.

People who (ironically) wanted to take away my guns.

Just as there are people who should never take a drink, there are people who should never own a gun. Yet we allow the sale of liquor, and we allow the sale of guns. Why? Because this is a free country, and one which believes in the right to keep and bear arms, the right to self defense, and whose founders once hinted that there might be such a thing as the right to pursue happiness.

What that means is that people who can't control their impulses will buy guns, they will get into arguments, and they will then use the guns to settle these arguments.

Communitarians argue that the presence of irresponsible people alongside responsible people means that we must take away all guns -- in a top-down manner -- from the most responsible first, and then work our way down. I think this is a dangerously irresponsible argument, but we can't begin to address it unless we recognize the problem.

Impulse.

I hate to think that this country is on a collision course between the more-impulsive (the irresponsible) and the more controlled (the responsible), but I do think it lies at the center of the gun control debate.

To not recognize it is to not recognize reality.

People who shouldn't own guns probably shouldn't talk on their cell phones while driving. Or drink while fornicating.

Or do a lot of other things that they do....

I'm afraid it's one of the many contradictions of life.