On Hugh Hefner, Freedom, and Las Vegas

Last updated on: October 12, 2017 at 7:41 am by Dan Peterson

On Hugh Hefner, Freedom, and Las Vegas 2017-10-12T07:41:57-06:00 Dan Peterson

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My beloved Switzerland, where citizens are heavily armed, has one of the lowest homicide rates in the world.
(Wikimedia Commons public domain photo)

In the wake of the tragic mass murders in Las Vegas, I can certainly understand why the question of guns and gun control has yet again erupted into the headlines. And I do believe that there are obvious steps that ought to be taken in order to reduce the incidence of such horrors.

Realistically, I don’t think that they can ever be rendered wholly impossible. Consider, for example, the case of Anders Behring Breivik, who killed 77 people on 22 July 2011 — eight with a bomb, and sixty-nine by shooting them — in a country (Norway) that has fairly strict gun laws (though a high rate of gun ownership) and a notably low murder rate. (Incidentally, Mr. Breivik was sentenced to twenty-one years of preventive detention, which works out to just under 3.3 months for each of his victims. He will be roughly 53 years of age when he emerges from prison.)

It seems rather clear to me, though, that “bump stocks,” the tool that permitted the Las Vegas shooter (who will not be named on this blog) to convert semiautomatic weapons effectively into rapid-fire automatic weapons, deserve serious scrutiny and, very probably, a federal ban. (Even the National Rifle Association wants tighter regulations on them.) Moreover, although I haven’t been following this story very closely over the past several days, I did hear initial reports that the Mandalay Bay mass murderer had bought something on the order of $100,000 dollars worth of guns and ammunition over the past year — and it seems to me that weapons purchases of that magnitude ought to be red-flagged at the federal level.

However, in the discussions that follow — and that should follow — I hope that reason and logic will inform understandable emotion, and that facts will play an important role.

One voice that ought to be heard is that of Dr. John Lott. And it should be understood that the issues aren’t quite as simple and neat as some politicians, Hollywood celebrities, and others seem to imagine:

“Do countries with stricter gun laws really have less crime or fewer homicides?”

I write this as someone who grew up in a hunting and gun-loving family and who feels quite comfortable around guns but who, for whatever reasons, has never actually cared much about guns or hunting. For me, defense of the Second Amendment is no more important than defending other portions of the Constitution — and far less urgent and personally interesting than a very large number of other causes.

***

Those of you who care about liberty, and, specifically, about religious liberty, might find this piece of interest:

“They were kicked out of the market because of what they believe”

***

I posted a few links the other day to articles about the legacy of Hugh Hefner, who died on 27 September 2017 at the age of ninety-one:

“Among other things, five passages from the sadly departed William F. Buckley, Jr.”

Here’s another item reflecting on his life, his career, and his influence:

“The Emerging Moral Majority”

And here’s a British article from 2010 that might serve as a corrective for some of the fawning coverage that Mr. Hefner’s passing received:

“Playboy mansion? More like a squalid prison: Former Playmates tell of ‘grubby’ world inside Hugh Hefner’s empire”

Finally, this is a relevant new book by a sociologist for whom I have considerable academic and moral admiration:

Cheap Sex: The Transformation of Men, Marriage, and Monogamy

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