Indiana's gun-friendliness gets it on a list Paul Helmke will make much of:
Nearly half of the guns that crossed state lines and were used in crimes in 2009 were sold in just 10 states, according to a report being released Monday by a mayors' group.
[. . .]
The Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives traced more than 145,000 guns used in crimes in 2009 and found that more than 43,000 of those weapons were sold in other states.
Forty-nine percent of those guns were sold in Georgia, Florida, Virginia, Texas, Indiana, Ohio, Pennsylvania, North Carolina, California or Arizona.
It's bothered me when people on our side of the argument made the claim to the effect that "some of the jurisdictions with the toughest gun laws have the highest use of guns in crimes." That's always been a weak argument. For one thing, it seems to scramble cause and effect and ignore the possibility that politicians in areas of high crime might feel the need for stricter gun laws. And the restrictions on guns mean little if nearby jurisdictions have much looser gun laws. It isn't that difficult to imagine, for example, that most of the guns used in D.C. crimes were purchased in nearby Virgina, and it isn't that hard for Chicagoans to bop across the state line and buy a gun here,
I'm not arguing for national control or even stronger state controls -- the Second Amendment is still the Second Amendment, and the focus still should be on the people who commit crimes and misuse guns -- but we should be careful not to accept every argument that comes along just because it bolsters our side.
