Hard-left mayor of New York Bill de Blasio has a problem, and he thinks he knows how to fix it.  The problem is that New York City, once the safest large city in America, now has a skyrocketing crime and murder rate.  Despite near-miraculous improvements in emergency trauma care, the murder rate is up almost 20 percent in 2015 alone.  De Blasio’s solution?  “Get a lot of guns away from the bad guys.” This notion that violent crime would be reduced if only the inanimate instruments of such crime were somehow taken away from the people is the most faith-based article subscribed to by the left today.  Almost nothing is more empirically refuted in the social sciences, and almost nothing is more passionately believed by the mayor and his followers. But as Professor John Lott and others have pointed out, “shall-issue” right-to-carry laws actually reduce violent crime.  The list of peer-reviewed statistically based economics...(Read Full Post)