Mayor Bloomberg’s announcement that he will co-host with the mayor of Boston, Thomas Menino, a gun control summit next week reminds us to be careful for what we wish. When we first turned our attention to Mr. Bloomberg’s inauguration promise to get tough on gun-trafficking, we suggested he take a ride up Interstate 95 to Beantown. There he would discover, we noted, that Mr. Menino’s similar effort to blame gun trafficking from New Hampshire for Boston’s gun crimes had drawn skepticism from a United States Attorney in the Granite State, who pointed to data demonstrating that most of the gun crimes in Massachusetts are committed with firearms purchased instate. But instead of Mr. Bloomberg driving up to the Bay State, Mr. Menino is coming to the New York for a daylong parley on guns.

Our advice to Mr. Menino is to watch his wallet. This town is going to be crawling with some of the best policy pushers from all over, and he will be conversing with a veritable gaggle of mayors who will, according to the press release announcing the event, discuss “best practices from cities across the country.” The mayors will also hear from “the nation’s leading experts on gun crimes” and “discuss state and federal legislation and litigation efforts and identify specific issue areas where they can collaborate.” According to the release, “The goal of the Summit is to create a unified coalition of major American cities dedicated to working together on the issue of gun violence and illegal gun trafficking.”

We don’t belittle the horror of gun crimes. It is unimaginable to think of what must be going through the hearts and minds of David Pacheco Sr. and Joanne Sanabria, whose 2-year-old, David Jr., dressed in his Easter finest, was killed by a stray bullet in the Bronx over the weekend. But only an honest look at the facts is going to protect our city, and other cities. A glance at the list of participating mayors suggests that they could have as much to say about what not to do about guns as about what constitutes “best practice.” The mayor of the District of Columbia, Anthony Williams, is a conspicuous example. A complete handgun ban has been on the books in the federal district since 1976, and yet the city has consistently suffered one of the highest murder rates in America. Washington’s homicide rate increased 200% between implementation of the law in 1976 and 1991.

One likes to hope that the participants in next week’s conference will draw the appropriate lessons from the experiences of Washington and Massachusetts, but we’re skeptical. Gun control is one of those issues where the vast brain of a democracy has out-comprehended the regulators and the policy wonks. The great strides in law enforcement have not come from gun control. America’s founders resisted it – they enshrined Americans’ right to keep and bear arms in an amendment that has been called the Palladium of our liberties – for reasons that obtain today as they did at the founding. Messrs. Williams and Menino will meet in New York a mayor who has given us, in Raymond Kelly, one of the finest police commissioners in American history. They can ask him how he has managed to make so much headway against crime in this town without a major change in the gun laws.