I’m shocked – shocked, I tell you! – but it seems that Australia’s strict gun laws have had no effect on their murder rate.

Couple this with the same effect in Canada, and the increase in gun deaths in Merry Olde England and you have a pretty good idea of how these things work. But, we’ve known that in the states for a while – as the cities with the most strict gun laws are the ones that happen to have the worst gun death rates.

The lesson: Only the law abiding obey gun laws. Criminals do not, and therefore it does not matter what gun laws you pass if your problem is the criminal use of guns.

Obviously, there are other factors at work – it isn’t a binary (or even ternary) issue. But all these laws have done is disarm the victims and provide a determined attacker guaranteed kills. Witness school shootings – hey, they know schools are unarmed – we’ve made sure of it. Also note – I’m sure this is totally unrelated to that disarmament thing – that crazed killers don’t seem very interested in attacking police stations, gun ranges or NRA meetings. Gee, I wonder why?

Lucky for us I think we’ve seen the crest of this nonsense in the USA with the repeal of the “scary looking weapons ban” (also known as the “Assault weapons ban”). Well, not here in California (yet) – so, to make my rifle less dangerous I have removed the pistol grip. I’m not sure how that makes it less powerful, less accurate or slows the cyclic rate, but I’m assured that this is true. Thankfully, I’m no danger to anything that isn’t a paper target at the end of a rifle range.