Add to ORKGWith each report of violent crime statistics (whether rising or falling) or of the latest firearms outrage, we hear the antiphony of the gun control debate. Advocates of increased federal regulation decry the inadequacies of a regime that permits relatively free access to firearms and argue that the availability of guns is itself a spur to more deadly violence. Advocates of minimal regulation, for their part, condemn measures that, they say, will primarily penalize law-abiding citizens, and instead call for more vigorous enforcement of existing laws, targeting criminals, not their weapons. When the antiphony intrudes on funerals, the effect can be jarring. But these are time-honored themes, which can be heard as loudly in the debate surro...