The idea of “reasonable” and “common sense” gun control laws is becoming an obvious sham.  Reasonable people acting according to common sense differentiate between policies in different states and balance facts such as how frequently a particular type of weapon has been used in crimes in the state where gun-control legislation is proposed and what the circumstances tend to surround actual shootings.  A state that already has relatively strict gun laws in which no high-capacity magazines have contributed to mass shootings and where increases in gun violence appear to be associated with increasing gang violence is not a place where common sense dictates a need to ban such magazines, particularly when doing so further reinforces the common wisdom that Rhode Island is not a good place to invest your life’s effort:

“It’s devastating,” said Jeff Goyette, owner of Pocasset Arms LLC. “I don’t know what I’m going to do.” …

“I’ve got my life invested in this shop right now, and I haven’t even finished it,” he said. …

“In the past few years that I’ve been stocking up, trying to get them into my retail store, probably over $250,000 worth of firearms,” Goyette said. “Eighty percent of those probably hold more than 10 rounds.”

The state’s message to Goyette, and those whose investments have been limited only to guns they’ve already bought, is, “You do not matter in this state.”  The people pushing these changes are not acting according to reason and common sense; they’re acting according to ideology and emotion, and the end goal (certainly of those who are manipulating the unreasonable) is not a balance of rights and safety, but control and the removal of all rights from people with whom they disagree.

Featured image by Jose Clement Orozco on WikiArt.