one of my all time favorite authors, h. l. mencken writes here about gun control and i stand with his assessment;

H.L. Mencken (1880-1956) was the most influential newspaperman of his era and a prolific author of iconoclastic books and essays. This is reprinted from The Evening Sun of Baltimore, November 30, 1925. Copyright 1925 by The Evening Sun. Republication without credit not permitted.

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The eminent Nation announces with relish “the organization of a national committee of 100 to induce Congress to prohibit the inter-State traffic in revolvers,” and offers the pious judgement that it is “a step forward.” “Crime statistics,” it appears, “show that 90% of the murders that take place are committed by the use of the pistol, and every year there are hundreds of cases of accidental homicide because someone did not know that his revolver was loaded.”

The new law—or is it to be a constitutional amendment?—will do away with all that. “It will not be easy,” of course, “to draw a law that will permit exceptions for public officers and bank guards”—to say nothing of Prohibition agents and other such legalized murderers. “But soon even these officials may get on without revolvers.”

More than once, in this place, I have lavished high praise upon the Nation. All that praise has been deserved, and I am by no means disposed to go back on it. The Nation is one of the few honest and intelligent periodicals ever published in the United States. It stands clear of official buncombe; it prints every week a great mass of news that the newspapers seem to miss; it interprets that news with a freedom and a sagacity that few newspaper editors can even so much as imagine.

If it shut up shop then the country would plunge almost unchallenged into the lowest depths of Coolidgism, Rotarianism, Stantaquaism and other such bilge. It has been, for a decade past, the chief consolation of the small and forlorn minority of civilized Americans.

But the Nation, in its days, has been a Liberal organ, and its old follies die hard. Ever and anon, in the midst of its most eloquent and effective pleas for Liberty, its eye wanders weakly toward Law. At such moments the old lust to lift ‘em up overcomes it, and it makes a brilliant and melodramatic ass of itself. Such a moment was upon it when it printed the paragraph that I have quoted. Into that paragraph—of not over 200 words—it packed as much maudlin and nonsensical blather, as much idiotic reasoning and banal moralizing, as Dr. Coolidge gets into a speech of two hours’ length........read more.....