...why not just ban crime?

Oh wait. We did, and the courts are still full of criminals, demanding treatment guided by the very rules they broke.

Whether fracking or plastic bags, many bans are vainglorious, peacock tail demonstrations of governmental power and resolve. They don’t target destructive antisocial behaviours, they go after what was normal and useful until banned. Compliance is impressively high and prompt, because they don’t target criminals, they make criminals out of constructive, creative people, who want to abide by the law and be held in high regard: those with the most to lose. Oil majors and retail giants are highly organised, successful enterprises, and whose contributions are demonstrably more satisfying to the public than those of the government, whose income relies on force rather than persuasion.

It’s a costly ritual with the only sure result being to reveal and inconvenience the very people we had the least to worry about, like the helpful individuals voluntarily handing in their guns in New Zealand, and this, as if such simplistic correlations were a guide to real world effect. It takes very little reading of the historical stats to know that if you really wanted to “ban things that kill people”, you’d ban governments.