From a Bloomberg View editorial about gun control: "Two weeks ago, to protect residents of the Boston area from an armed suspect, authorities brought the city to a standstill -- a compelling expression of American values. Supporters of gun safety must work to instill the gun debate with a similar reverence for humanity."
I wasn't in Boston at the time, but watching from a distance, it seemed to me that forcing the shutdown of an entire city was not a compelling expression of American values. The Bloomberg editorial does not mention that the suspect was captured only after the shutdown of the city was lifted and a man who then felt free to leave his home discovered blood in his yard. The Bloomberg editorial also doesn't mention that when the suspect was finally captured, he was unarmed.
As David Warsh, who does live in the Boston area, put it:
With not much more than a shrug at the end of the day, the authorities ended their ill-considered "lockdown" Friday evening, fifteen hours after it began.
Ten minutes later, having been given official permission to go outdoors, a Watertown homeowner spotted tell-tale signs of the fugitive's presence in a tarp-covered boat in his back yard. Journalist Jane Jacobs noted fifty years ago that populous streets are safe streets. Next time the police should rely much more on citizens' eyeballs than their top-down expert systems.
Opponents of stricter gun control may agree with the editorial that there is a parallel with the Boston lockdown, but not the parallel of "reverence for humanity" that the Bloomberg editorialist is seeking.