France has strict gun laws. Why didn’t that save Charlie Hebdo victims?

When American audiences read of a dramatic event in a foreign country, they often frame it in terms of the political debates occurring at home. As such, it was no surprise that after shootings at the satirical French newspaper Charlie Hebdo in Paris this week, some Americans began to wonder about gun control laws.

“Isn’t it interesting that the tragedy in Paris took place in one of the toughest gun control countries in the world?” American reality television star Donald Trump wrote on Twitter shortly after the news broke. The tweet prompted both praise (over a thousand retweets) and scorn (Trump was labelled a “moron” and an “idiot” by other tweeters).

Trump, a perennial attention seeker, was likely attempting to score political points and insult liberals with his tweet. But behind the disingenuity, there is is a genuinely troubling question: Why didn’t France’s gun laws save the Charlie Hebdo victims?

Umm…perhaps it’s that, by definition, criminals don’t obey laws? Mohammed bin Hajji doesn’t give a damn about gun laws when he’s got his psychopathic rage on.  What’s one more broken law when he’s already getting his splodeydope on?

It’s not gun control.  It’s victim disarmament.

(h/t: JWF)