UNEXPECTED Way Gun Control Could Be Increasing Gun Suicides

One of the common themes that you see from every calm, rational analysis of anti-2A policies is the idea of unintended consequences.

Now, if you’re not familiar with the term, it refers to outcomes from an action (or policy) that the people putting the policy into place didn’t anticipate and plan for. For example, when your kid thought that they were nice to the cats in the neighborhood by feeding them, she didn’t realize that would have the unintended consequence of turning your home into the local cat shelter.

In the same way, anti-2A policies that politicians put into place to try to save lives (so they say) often have very different results. Michael Clements gives us details on one unintended consequence of a Washington State gun control policy: the very real possibility of increasing suicides by gun. Clements writes,

The chief executive officer of a Pennsylvania nonprofit and an attorney from Washington state say gun control laws touted as life-saving measures could have the opposite effect.

“They are making laws that make it impossible, and even criminal, to use our service,” Sarah Joy Albrecht, founder and CEO of Hold My Guns (HMG), told The Epoch Times.

The Washington State Attorney General’s office did not respond to an email seeking comment for this story.

Ms. Albrecht said HMG arranges the transfer of firearms to a Federal Firearms License (FFL) holder for storage. While the reasons for the transfers are confidential, HMG’s primary mission is suicide prevention by temporarily making guns unavailable to struggling people.

She said stricter enforcement of federal rules, laws restricting the transfer of guns to 18- to 20-year-olds, and a new Washington state gun ban have prevented HMG partners from accepting some guns for storage.

“I would like to see research on how refusing transfers to 18- to 20-year-olds makes communities safer,” she said.

However, stricter enforcement of federal laws and new bans on legal semi-automatic rifles, so-called assault weapons, make it impossible for HMG to provide storage services.

“They are essentially making it illegal to safely store firearms,” Ms. Albrecht said.

Who could have seen this coming? Oh, yeah, anyone who isn’t trying to look at the gun violence issue through the lens of their anti-gun-is-the-only-way viewpoint.

But this is the kind of ugly unintended consequence that is common when anti-2A zealots pass laws or issue executive orders.

God save us from the busybodies who think that it’s their job to save us from ourselves (and, therefore, make everything worse).