For those new to the party, until rather recently, I supported gun control measures. I'd like to say I was bright enough to see that such ideas were nonsense up front, but instead I just have to admit I have some leftist strains that run rather deep.

Thomas Sowell studied "preferential policies" around the world. (Admitting blacks to college with lower scores is one example of a preferential policy here in the US.) Time after time, he discovered not only do such policies not achieve their promised result (to the contrary, they typically make things worse), but they instead they inevitably produce demands for more such policies!

There are those who claim that some particular change, if only we would implement it, would certainly produce the ideal society. When that fails, there are two options: Learn, or blame others. Since learning involves an admission of failure, it's tempting to resort to the second option: "My idea was fine, but it wasn't done right!"

After the revolution this same sort of thinking produces bloody purges: Our glorious revolution didn't produce utopia! What could have gone wrong? Answer: There are still "counter-revolutionary" traitors in our midst! We must find and kill them too! The answer is given to distract from the very simple fact that our glorious revolution never could produce the desired socialist paradise.

Gun control is like that. Since banning weapons actually increases crime, the only answer for those who supported such policies is then to push them further and further. "Insanity", says my friend Steve, "is doing more of the same thing and expecting a different result."

So the gun ban becomes a toy gun ban. And a ban on knives. And when that fails, perhaps we'll fault "violent words" and push for a speech ban. Or let's try to go after "violent thoughts" next, shall we?

Or perhaps, if we're Canada, we'll blame the next door neighbors:

Gun control has not worked in Canada. Since the new gun registration program started in 1998, the U.S. homicide rate has fallen, but the Canadian rate has increased. The net cost of Canada's gun registry has surged beyond $1-billion -- more than 500 times the amount originally estimated.

Despite this, the Canadian government recently admitted it could not identify a single violent crime that had been solved through registration. Public confidence in the government's ability to fight crime has also eroded, with one recent survey showing only 17% of voters support the registration program.

So, if this hasn't worked, what's the solution? The NDP, which polls indicate may hold the balance of power in Parliament after June 28, has proposed a radical solution: "going across the border to the U.S. and actively engaging in lobbying to have gun -control laws in the U.S. strengthened."

Candians should pause and ask why Britain and Australia are having the same problem. Perhaps the problem isn't from the US, which has a much lower crime rate than Canada.

Australia saw its violent crime rates soar after its 1996 gun control measures banned most firearms. Violent crime rates averaged 32% higher in the six years after the law was passed than they did the year before the law went into effect. Murder and manslaughter rates remained unchanged, but armed robbery rates increased 74%, aggravated assaults by 32%. Australia's violent crime rate is also now double America's.

Gun control advocates, please listen to me: The whole point of gun controls laws are supposed to be to save lives, remember? I personally supported such laws because I wanted less people dead, and a safer, better society.

But when I went to pro-gun-control sites, they didn't promise me "less people dead." They promised me "less gun crime." But I didn't care about gun crime and gun murders -- I cared about all crime and murders! (A dead person doesn't feel more grateful to have been killed by a knife, does she?)

I stoppped supporting gun control laws because I was convinced by the evidence that they killed more people and produced a more violent, unsafe society. And again, we see more such evidence.

Please, consider that the whole point here isn't to win some political battle, or be "right" about something we once said. The point is to save lives. Stop making this a left/right issue and just learn from the data, please?

I did it. You can too.

(Hat tip to John Ray.)