22 Oct 02

"Unintended consequences?"

From an LEO friend in Baltimore.

"Drug dealers here have now realized that police in my city (Baltimore) have begun to enter cartridge cases found at the scene of our (daily) murders here into a state database for comparison. Of course, the effectiveness of this 'database' is highly dubious, but their universal response has nonetheless been to abandon autoloading pistols and instead carry and use revolvers exclusively, so they don't leave cartridge cases at the scene.

The PD, most of whose members don't even remember the "revolver days," has thus had to refamiliarize itself with S&W, Colt, and Ruger revolvers."

Lesson: No matter what laws are passed, criminals will quickly develop ways to work around them, in most cases, with scant inconvenience. Restrictive gun laws thus have no effect on crime, but do have the effect of discouraging gun ownership among noncriminal citizens, which is, of course, their only real purpose.

/John