QoE – Because the QoD was taken.

The more things change…

Here I do not indulge in theory. The hard facts are publicly on display in New York State, where a law of exactly the same tenor is already on the books—the so-called Sullivan Law. In order to get it there, of course, the Second Amendment had to be severely strained, but the uplifters advocated the straining unanimously, and to the tune of loud hosannas, and the courts, as usual, were willing to sign on the dotted line. It is now a dreadful felony in New York to “have or possess” a pistol. Even if one keeps it locked in a bureau drawer at home, one may be sent to the hoosegow for ten years. …

With what result? With the general result that New York, even more than Chicago, is the heaven of footpads, hijackers, gunmen and all other such armed thugs. Their hands upon their pistols, they know that they are safe. Not one citizen out of a hundred that they tackle is armed for getting a license to keep a revolver is a difficult business, and carrying one without it is more dangerous than submitting to robbery. So the gunmen flourish and give humble thanks to God. Like the bootleggers, they are hot and unanimous for Law Enforcement.

To all this, of course, the uplifters have a ready answer. (At having ready answers, indeed, they always shine!) The New York thugs, they say, are armed to the teeth because New Jersey and Connecticut lack Sullivan Laws. When one of them wants a revolver all he has to do is to cross the river or take a short trolley trip. … The remedy is the usual dose: More law. Congress is besought to “prohibit the inter-State traffic in revolvers, especially to bar them from the mails.”

It is all very familiar, and very depressing. Find me a man so vast an imbecile that he seriously believes that this prohibition would work.

H. L. Mencken, The Uplifters Try it Again, 1925

H/T to Roberta X.