Prometheus was a sneaky Titan. He created man despite Zeus warning him not to. Then he brought men fire. In addition to punishing Prometheus, Zeus decided to get even.

He had Hephaestus mold a woman from clay and the gods breathed life into her filling her with all the finest attributes of the gods — beauty, creativity, kindness, and also curiosity.

Zeus then arranged a marriage between the woman and Prometheus’s brother, Epimetheus. Prometheus had warned his brother not to accept gifts from Zeus, but the brother did so anyway. He and his wife, Pandora, were given a box with a very clear instruction on it to never open it.

One day, Pandora, overcome by her gods given curiosity, opened the box. Pestilence, plague, disease, and sin poured forth from the box into the world. Last out of the box came hope.

Some will take issue with comparing guns to Pandora’s box, but in the discussion of gun control, Pandora’s box is the appropriate analogy. Try as we might, we will never, ever put guns back into Pandora’s box.

Gun control is a fool’s errand.

The cities and states with the toughest gun laws typically have the worst gun violence. In Chicago and Washington, DC, two cities with the toughest gun laws and restrictions in America, people have routinely been gunned down. The only people with firearms were the ones unwilling to obey the law.

Writing in the New York Times, Robert Ebert, movie critic and village idiot, wrote

That James Holmes is insane, few may doubt. Our gun laws are also insane, but many refuse to make the connection. The United States is one of few developed nations that accepts the notion of firearms in public hands. In theory, the citizenry needs to defend itself. Not a single person at the Aurora, Colo., theater shot back, but the theory will still be defended.

What Ebert misses in his zeal to turn a tragedy into a political issue is that the theater was a gun free zone. The law abiding citizenry with their guns obeyed the law. They could not fire back because they were obeying a restriction on guns that the criminal refused to obey.

And that is the point the left seems often enough to ignore.

If you take away guns, you will only take them away from the people you don’t have to worry about in the first place.

“But restrictions,” the left cries. “Men don’t need assault rifles.”

We’ve tried this game before. All the manufacturers did to get around the much heralded assault weapons ban was slightly change the specs on the guns. Suddenly what was illegal became legal.

What’s more, restricting the second of the Bill of Rights, does nothing but deter the law abiding. Restrict access to cartridges with lots of bullets and the law abiding citizen is deterred. The criminal is just challenged.

Gun control does not stop random acts of madmen. Gun control does, however, increase the body count in Chicago, Washington, and other places where the armed citizenry, disarmed by government, is confronted with evil unwilling to yield to the laws.

Pandora’s box is open. Gun control will neither put guns back in the box nor control guns. It will just control the people who really do not need to be controlled on the matter.