 Hello, I'm Dr. Mark Thornton. I'm a senior fellow with the Ludwig von Mises Institute, and I'm the author of the book, The Economics of Prohibition. In that book, I try to show how peace and free markets works for people and how prohibition doesn't work for people and how very often it leads to more dangerous and destructive products. And in the case of drugs, drugs that are more potent with more impurities. And so prohibition simply doesn't work. On today's Mises.org daily article, Dr. Audrey Klein applies this thesis to the area of guns. And she shows that prohibition leads to more gun sales in the country. Now on the one hand, she points out correctly that gun ownership in America has increased substantially due to the passage of state concealed carry laws, where people are free in some states to carry weapons to defend themselves. And there's been a corresponding dramatic decrease in the number of murders and a big decline in violent crimes. So this clearly shows that freedom works. And on the other hand, she points out that the number of mass shootings such as Sandy Hook has not declined here in the United States and may have actually risen over time. What we know about those mass shootings that in many cases, the shooters are young people who are on psychoactive drugs, drugs that were passed by the FDA but never tested on people of those young ages. The second major factor I think that's worth considering is that most of those mass shootings occurred in places where guns were prohibited. In other words, there was a local prohibition on guns, handling of guns on things like public school areas. And so this is clearly a case where prohibition has clearly failed and the number of these mass shootings may actually be increasing as a result. She also points out, I think it's very interesting, is that President Obama has been the most stringent advocate for gun control, virtually any American president. And anytime we have one of these mass shootings, the media and the president draw a great deal of attention to those sad events, those tragic events. And then immediately the media and the president make calls for increased gun control. Well, one of the economic effects that we've seen from this call for greater regulation and more prohibition of guns is that gun sales have increased dramatically under those conditions. When the state of Maryland had a gun control law go into effect, sales of guns increased over 700% year over year just prior to the enactment of those laws. So we've seen that the more gun control there is out there, which ultimately ends up being prohibition, that gun sales go up and that guns become more powerful and more dangerous and they get into the hands of people who are less skilled and trained and experienced with the use of guns. And so again, I think that it's very clear through her analysis that free markets and freedom have worked with increased gun ownership in the United States, driving down murders and violent crime, whereas prohibition and the call for prohibition and stricter regulation has not worked and has made the situation more dangerous. And that's the Mises view.