In the United States whenever a mass shooting takes place inevitably calls for more “common sense” gun control arise. The rejoinder that is often heard goes something like, “Sure and let’s cut down on auto accidents by banning cars.” Now, according to Breitbart, sarcasm in America has become a serious public policy proposal in Sweden. In the wake of the Stockholm terror attack, an editorialist writing for the newspaper Aftonbladet has opined that it is now time to ban motor vehicles in city centers.
The jokes already write themselves. “If motor vehicles are outlawed, only outlaws will drive motor vehicles.” On a more serious point, one wonders at the mindset that suggests that people willing to drive a truck into a crowd of individuals would obey a law that bans said vehicle from the city center where his victims tend to gather.
Car-free zones are as silly as gun free zones.
Two things seem to be motivating this call for a crackdown on cars and trucks.
First, the editorialist is using the proposal to avoid the real issue, the sudden influx of migrants from countries with a far different culture than the one that prevails in Sweden and who refuse to assimilate. Stockholm has become the rape capital of Europe because of the unenlightened attitude of young, migrant men toward women and the refusal of law enforcement to come to grips with the problem. (A Texas-style solution would be to allow concealed carry for young Swedish women, but one suspects that would not go over well in that country. Nevertheless, the rape problem would be solved in short order.)
The other reason is that some governments are keen to ban cars for other reasons.
Banning cars would reduce the carbon footprint they cause. Sweden’s environment minister also suggested that driving is a gender equality issue since cars are alleged to be mostly driven by men or something like that. The theory is that women pedestrians are forced to make way for big gas guzzlers being driven by mean, insensitive men.
In any event, technology is likely to solve the problem of motor vehicles as murder weapons. Self-driving cars can be programmed to never deliberately try to Run down pedestrians even if the vehicle is placed under manual control with adequate cyber security measures to prevent a hacker from taking control of the vehicle.
Government officials and journalists not knowledgeable about technology are shocking bad at dealing with problems such as terrorism and male chauvinist automobiles. Engineers and business entrepreneurs often have some outside the box ideas that ought to be listened to.
