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We remember the Saint Valentine's Day massacre and the gangsters of Prohibition, but this is history we refuse to learn from. Yesterday morning in Baltimore, 16 people were shot, two fatally, in an incident involving rival drug gangs. The body count from this single incident is extreme, but such extreme anomalies prompt the predictable calls for adding gun prohibition on top of existing drug prohibitions. Of course most major cities, like Baltimore, have already implemented a de facto prohibition on gun ownership, as has the entire country of Mexico. In both cases, the result of gun prohibition policies has been complete failure in the goal of reducing violence.

As a nation, America seems incapable of having a rational discussion about root cause and effect when it comes to drugs and violence. The rationale against drugs is simple: using drugs destroys the lives of users, their children and others around them. True enough. But the ravages of prohibition are worse and have a multiplying effect: prohibition leads to huge drug profits, which leads to gangs, which leads to murders and terrorized neighborhoods, which leads to urban blight and rural despair. Drug use harms users, but jail time makes them permanently unemployable and traps them in its pervasive criminal culture. Prisons might as well give out diplomas for all the lessons learned in them; and many gangs wouldn't even exist if it weren't for their ability to exploit the prison system to recruit members.

But we already know this. We just refuse to act on our knowledge or to insist our politicians do so.

Our policies now exist for their own sake; we have lost track of what started the call for prohibition in the first place: a desire to improve and save lives.

Like obsessed gamblers, our response to failed policies so far has been to "double-down" by spending more on enforcement and incarceration, and gradually accepting more and more restrictions and intrusions on our private lives and personal liberties. Like the children’s rhyme of the old lady who swallowed the spider to catch the fly and on and on until she finally ate the horse and died (of course), our war on drugs has created one casualty of civil society after another. Our policies now exist for their own sake; we have lost track of what started the call for prohibition in the first place: a desire to improve and save lives.

Second Amendment advocates have special cause for concern. Ultimately, the impulse to regulate guns and the impulse to regulate what consenting adults ingest, inject or smoke comes from the same Utopian desire for an avuncular government exercising control over our daily decisions, including personal safety. Events like that in Baltimore inevitably bring out calls for increased gun prohibition and other restrictions on firearms ownership and carrying. The general public reads about killings and is easily swayed to agree there is a “gun problem” instead of a diverse range of more complex public policy problems, including prohibition. If we are serious about protecting our gun rights from those looking for a quick fix, we must to be proactive in informing the public about the real causes of violence. We also need to take the lead in promoting real solutions.

Let the farmers in Peru and Afghanistan (or Kentucky) grow whatever they want to--once drugs were legalized the price would collapse and the warlords of the Taliban and FARC would have to get real jobs.

Speaking of solutions, consider this alternative: take the money currently spent on drug interdiction, policing, and incarceration and spend it on education and drug treatment. Imagine America finally using its resources to ensure every child has a chance at a real education. Imagine the results from fighting drug addiction as what it is: a public health problem. Go a step further and apply the same principles internationally: let the farmers in Peru and Afghanistan (or Kentucky) grow whatever they want to--once drugs were legalized the price would collapse and the warlords of the Taliban and FARC would have to get real jobs. Domestically, once the link between drugs and violence is severed, the profit motive for murder would be gone and violence involving guns would also decline along with misguided calls for gun prohibition. The anti-gun forces would have lost one of their biggest bait-and-switch ploys to use against us.

Is this just a pipe dream or a real possibility? Are you willing to challenge the conventional thinking on prohibition in order to protect your Second Amendment rights?