Criminals don't kill; guns do

I was listening to Boston talk-show host Howie Carr—who I listen to via podcasts—and he brought up the topic of gun control after the recent shootings in the inner-city enclave of Mattapan ("Murderpan" as we Bostonians call it).
Howie is a populist conservative, so naturally he expressed dismay at the familiar attitude that it's guns that are the problem, not criminals nor a welfare system that breeds irresponsibility. He brought up a great point by referring to an old New York state statute called the Sullivan Law that stipulated if you were caught committing a gun crime, you went away for life. End of. Massachusetts and other states had similar laws as well. But now, with plea bargaining, the emphasis on the weapons charge basically gets dropped.
My favorite part of the segment, however, came when a caller asked, "Why do liberals believe that crime will go down if the law-abiding public is unarmed?" To which Howie answered (and I'm paraphrasing here):
"What they believe is the perfection of human nature, that somehow human nature can be perfected. Whereas conservatives acknowledge the imperfection of human nature."
It's true. Liberals believe that if you are generous with welfare bums, they will realize their debt to society by shaping up and at least living clean lives on the public dole. They believe that normal people should be willing to give up their security and protection by having pureblind faith in human nature.
And even though I admittedly do approve of some form of gun control myself—I think that if you have to learn to drive and register a car, you should surely be tested on your knowledge of guns and have them registered as well—I have to tip my hat to Carr for saying, "Gun control, yet another area for the government to poke its nose into. How's Obama-care working for you? How'd the BP oil spill clean-up go?" (Though, to be fair, I don't advocate a federal law; I want to leave gun control to the states.)
As for the thugs who shot five in Mattapan? Well, you just know they went through all the checks, didn't they? Registered their guns with the police and everything. What a shocker. It's not so much gun control or the lack of it that determines these crimes; it's the dissolution of Sullivan Law-type statutes.