If Only Stephen Paddock Were a Muslim (i.e., it’s about “gun control”)

From WhyEvolutionIsTrue. I hope I'm not making the dumb mistake
FoxBusinss makes above....

LATER (7 Oct): I wrote the below on my iPhone in a bit of a rush and I realise it may seem like I'm some kind of gun nut, or gun apologist, and making the mistake as the tweet above.  But I've never owned a gun and never will. And I support gun control: eg as in Australia, as in Europe.  My main point is that all the gun control that Democrats want will not achieve what they seem to think it will: a major drop in gun crime and homicides by gun.  Any reduction is good, of course, but the feeling seems to be -- at least that's what I infer from all the palaver in the wake of the latest atrocity -- is that "gun control" would rid the country of mass shootings and jihadi attacks (and here I could be accused of a straw man argument).  Particularly in the case of jihadi murders, if they don't have guns, the can make do with trucks and knives.  In the case of mass shootings, these people are going to be able to get a hold of guns, no matter what the laws.
What I didn't know until recently about gun control in the US is that no one -- not Hillary, not Bernie, not Elizabeth Warren, even, are talking about control of HAND guns.  It's all about control of automatic rifles.  Of course, it was rifles in LA.  But most gun killings even mass shootings, are done with handguns.  This alone means that any realistic gun control measures in the US is going to have limited effect.
Anyhow: to repeat: I'm in favour of gun control.  Just against the reflexive call for "gun control" as some sort of panacea.  It's not, and never will be.

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This article  by New York Times columnist Tom Friedman seems like a sensible argument at first glance. And I've liked Friedman often what with his facile pen 'n all. 

But then consider this. What if the weapon you're talking about is not guns but cars? People kill vastly more innocent people with cars ("cars" = any motor vehicle) than they do with guns. And average people kill vastly more innocents than all the jihadis put together at the wheel of a car. Yet we go after the jihadi with a car more intensely than we do the average car driver. [*]

The same goes for guns. The jihadi is inspired by an ideology. The likes of a Sandy Hook or an Aurora or a Las Vegas are random acts of random gun madness. In some of these cases, tighter control may have had some effect. But in most cases, it would have made no difference. At least not any gun control that would realistically get through Congress: which will never, ever, cover handguns.
So the reflexive call for gun control may make the likes of Friedman feel better and may stoke liberal outrage.  It's beside the point. Which point in the LA mass shooting, granted, is rather hard to see. And we can also grant that a ban on assault rifles may have made it more difficult foe Paddock to obtain the arsenal he did. Then again most mass shootings are done with guns that would be available even with the tightest controls we can imagine an American Congress passing. 

Meantime with jihadists, it's easy to see what the motive is. Eg: Orlando.  It's an ideology which must be fought against with rigour and fortitude no matter what the weapon they have at hand. In sum, it's the ideology, not the weapon, stupid. 

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[*]The obvious counter is that we've tackled car deaths by more safety in the vehicles, driver ed, and so on. Which, granted. But there are vastly more car deaths than gun deaths; even draconian gun controls are not going to save anything like the numbers that have been saved by improved car safety. Every life saved is precious, of course. But gun control is no panacea.