The debate Wednesday night seemed to go pretty well for George W. Bush.

He did a pretty good job talking about foreign policy, which probably surprised some people.

Bush opponents have long been criticizing him for a lack of foreign policy expertise, but he came across as quite knowledgeable during the debate.

Gore and Bush mostly agreed on the foreign policy matters they discussed. The only parting of the ways came when Bush suggested he might be more judicious with the use of armed forces around the world than Gore.

For the most part, I don't see vast differences in the candidates on matters of foreign policy.

But there are other issues where they have vastly different philosophies.

Take taxes, for example.

Bush believes that tax money belongs to taxpayers. That may seem ridiculously simple, but it eludes Gore, who believes that tax money belongs to the government.

That's why Bush advocates across-the-board cuts in income tax rates.

And that's why Gore's targeted tax cut plan keeps the money in Washington, where he can use it to fund expanded government programs.

Gore sees tax cuts as an incentive for social engineering. If you spend your money the way the government prescribes, you get some tax relief.

The Bush approach lets money stay in the hands of taxpayers. He believes that the people who earn the money should decide how to spend it.

The Gore approach depends more on the wisdom of government officials in Washington. He would rather use tax dollars to fund government programs to help us.

On abortion, Bush and Gore are at opposite ends of the spectrum. Gore is pro-abortion and Bush is anti-abortion.

Gore is urging hate crimes legislation, Bush isn't.

During the debate, Gore mentioned the case of James Byrd, the black man who was chained to the back of a pickup truck in Texas and dragged to death by three white men.

He criticized Bush for blocking hate crimes legislation in Texas even though Byrd's family urged him to help get it passed.

But Bush noted that the defendants in the case were convicted and received the death penalty.

"It's hard to punish them any more after they've been put to death," Bush said.

Actually, Bush erred in the debate. He said all three defendants in the Byrd case were given the death sentence.

Not true. Only two were. The third received a life sentence.

But nonetheless, Bush's point is well taken. Murder is murder. Why is it worse to kill someone because of his race than it is to kill someone because you want his wallet? And why would we need a law to say that it is?

The two candidates also are on opposite ends of the spectrum when it comes to gun control.

In Wednesday's debate, Gore touted his plan to create photo identification cards for all gun buyers.

Bush opposes that plan and generally opposes a bunch of new gun laws.

I have long thought that gun laws are ineffective.

I took a class in logic in college. I don't remember much from that class.

But I remember one thing that always comes back to me when someone wants to argue for more gun laws.

In logic class, they taught us that if you start out with a premise that is false, everything in your argument that follows can't be, logically, is false.

Lots of gun law arguments are based on the false premise that gun laws decrease crime.

That simply isn't true.

Nationwide there are more than 20,000 gun laws regulating everything from who can own a gun and how they can be purchased to where a person can possess them to how many bullets they can hold.

All that is fine, except the only people who abide by the law, by definition, are law-abiding citizens.

People who commit crimes don't abide by the law. And gun laws are the ones they're least likely to abide by.

The students at Columbine High School in Colorado broke at least 17 state and federal gun-control laws. Does anyone really believe that a few more gun laws would have thwarted their murderous rampage?

Does anyone really believe that the guy who wants to rob a liquor store will think twice because he is afraid to carry a concealed weapon without a permit?

Guns receive lots of bad publicity and it is always advantageous for politicians to hammer away on the gun issue.

But just how big of a problem are guns in America today?

A study from the U.S. Center for Disease Control and Prevention found that firearm-related deaths in the U.S. dropped 21 percent from 1993 to 1997 and non-fatal firearm injuries fell 41 percent.

Including all gunshot wounds - self-inflicted, too - reported at emergency rooms, gun-related deaths fell 15.4 per 100,000 in 1993 to 12.1 per 100,000 in 1997.

The Justice Department reports that 88 percent of all violent crimes do not involve firearms.

All this despite the fact that firearms ownership is growing. An estimated 80 million people own somewhere around 250 million firearms.

What percentage of those guns were involved in accidental or intentional death?

One one-hundredth of one percent.

Just last week the Justice Department released statistics showing that gunshot wounds from all types of crime fell almost 40 percent from 1993 to 1997.

Homicides fell 27 percent during the same period.

The study cites a drop in crack cocaine wars, a focus on illegal guns by big city police, the aging of baby boomers past crime-prone years and longer prison sentences for violent criminals as factors.

Seems to me that now is not the time for the proliferation of gun laws.

This is not to say that all gun laws are ineffective.

But even the most effective gun laws are aimed at symptoms, not causes.

If we really want to rid the county of gun violence, we need to get back to the values that once were the thread of commonality among us.

We need to recognize that guns and laws are less the problem than certain miscreants in society. [[In-content Ad]]