Let’s talk about laws… and then gun laws
Let’s talk about laws… and then gun laws
First, a caveat. I own a handgun. I am considering getting a second one and possibly a shotgun. I have actually had to use my handgun to prevent a home invasion. I didn’t have to shoot the guy, merely let him know I had the gun and was willing to use it and he left.
This past February 2022 I wrote an article [1] discussing the difference between inalienable rights and legal rights (which some people call positive and negative rights). You can read it at the link below, but in a nutshell inalienable rights are rights that cannot be transferred (such as life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness). Property can be transferred. (A gun is property). The Constitution details LEGAL rights, not inalienable.
Now let’s review the concept of laws. In the context of gun regulations, a recurrent refrain is “that law would not have prevented this incident.”
We have laws against murder, yet people are still murdered. We have laws against speeding, yet people still exceed the speed limit. Laws never really prevent crimes. The point of implementing a law is to provide guidelines on behavior in society AND to provide penalties when those guidelines are violated. Going back to the murder analogy, since people still commit murder, why don’t we just eliminate all laws against murder? The laws didn’t prevent murders. No, but it provides penalties.
Daniel Brezenoff, in his article [2] on Medium details several standard trope arguments by the gun lobby and rebuts them readily. You can read it at the link below, so rather than go through each of the usual arguments (though I may touch on some during my problem solving exercise). I want to approach the discussion from a more systematic manner.
One very repetitive argument against gun regulations goes something like this:
A mass shooting occurs and people propose regulations designed to perhaps stop such incidents, gun lobby then argues “but that won’t stop some other crime.” It is also argued we have too many gun laws now. Maybe we do, maybe not. But we certainly don’t have effective gun laws and the fact that gun laws vary from state to state is a big part of the problem which is why we need NATIONAL gun laws that apply equally everywhere. And I am not advocating that national gun laws match the most strict of states’ laws, but of course national laws should be stricter than some states currently have on the books. Then there is always the argument that if guns are banned only criminals will have guns. But I am not talking about banning guns, merely regulating their sale and maintenance.
Gun-nuts will point to Heller v DC [3] as validating their positions. But Heller was a narrow ruling which overturned a very severe restriction in Washington DC that nobody could even have a gun there. Scalia certainly did not posit in his brief that one could have any gun, anywhere, anytime and by anybody.
But let’s look at a couple specific for the basis of national gun laws. I will address how guns circulate and what kind of guns should be regulated more heavily.
Problem- Criminals get guns in two ways:
- They buy them from someone else who essentially transfers the guns illegally
2. They steal them from people who didn’t secure the weapons
Solution:
Most states have laws against strawman purchases. Buyers have been known to buy several guns from a shop then sell them to other people who would not otherwise pass checks to get a gun. How to stop this?
First, register ALL guns: handguns, rifles, shotguns and link them to the purchaser in the registry. Then ban the sale of multiple guns to one person,. I have no fixed number, but let’s say you could only buy two at a given purchase. Then ban the sale of more guns to a person within a window of time. If the person above bought two in March, then he would not be allowed to buy another gun (or guns) for three months, for example.
Finally, gun owners must report to the local police department with their guns annually to prove they still have possession of them. If they cannot produce a given gun registered to them, that becomes an immediate misdemeanor with jail time. If they try to whine “it must have been stolen” then add a misdemeanor for failure to secure a firearm and failure to report it stolen and add jail time. Lastly, if the gun missing was used in a crime, the registered owner gets hit with another criminal charge similar to an accomplice in a crime. Make it a law that one must secure one’s guns. The Sandy Hook shooter got his weapon from his mother. The Oxford shooter got his handgun from his parents. The guns were not secured
These mechanisms would halt the flow of guns illegally on the street. New York City reports almost 74% of guns used in crimes there came from states like Virginia with weaker gun laws [4]. Chicago has strict gun laws but reports 60% of guns used in crimes there come from outside the city [5]. Only a national standard can stop this kind of transfer
This proposal above would stop or deter illegal transfers of weapons and hold gun owners accountable for possession and securing of their weapons. Will it stop all shootings? Of course, not. But we don’t need to stop all shootings, we need to reduce them drastically and make shootings that do occur less catastrophic like mass shootings we keep experiencing.
How to reduce mass shootings? Face it, firearms are a tool for KILLING. That is their primary purpose. Arguments about killing with cars and baseball bats are ludicrous. A car’s function is transportation and a baseball bat’s function is to hit a ball. A gun’s purpose is to kill- period. So how do we reduce the effectiveness of a gun in a mass killing?
First, ban high capacity magazines. If a shooter has to reload frequently, that give potential victims an opportunity to disarm the shooter or flee. Second, determine which weapons should be banned or purchased only with special licenses. In the wake of the mobster era, automatic weapons (machine guns) were banned to civilians and only purchased under a special federal firearms rifle. Weapons made explicitly for military use should be banned as well. And yes, I do mean the AR15. Despite propaganda, A.J. Stoner designed this for the military. Army engineers merely added the “automatic” feature to Stoner’s semi-automatic design. But it is the ammunition that is of particular issue. A.J. Stoner’s AR-15 was designed with the particular ammunition in mind. He said:
“There is the advantage that a small or light bullet has over a heavy one when it comes to wound ballistics. … What it amounts to is the fact that bullets are stabilized to fly through the air, and not through water, or a body, which is approximately the same density as the water. And they are stable as long as they are in the air. When they hit something, they immediately go unstable.”[7]
What this means is that an AR-15 will cause much more damage to a human body than other kinds of ammunition. And in combat you want to cause that damage to the enemy, because even if you only wound them, they are wounded much more seriously and likely to no longer be combat effective. There is no reason to use such a weapon in civlian life, even the semi-automatic AR-15. You wouldn’t hunt deer with it as it would shred the meat you are purportedly trying to acquire. And forget about getting any squirrel meat.
So there is a solid rationale for banning or regulating some types of ammunition and some designs of firearms. Until this discussion is had with reasonable people and politicians, instead of the steady shouting from each side, we will never get a solution.
And to my fellow progressives and liberals, please educate yourself on firearms. Stop calling all weapons “assault weapons,” which is too generic of a term to be meaningful. This allows the gun-nuts to lampoon you for focusing on ‘menacing appearance.’ Stop calling the AR15 an automatic rifle- it is not. When you make mistakes like this, even a gun enthusiast who might be tempted to agree with you looks at you as no longer credible.
Use facts, data, ballistic information, etc. to frame the argument. And of course you will have to have the whole Second Amendment argument incessantly.
[1] https://dennisbmurphy.medium.com/revisiting-rights-9502d494ca5c
[3] https://www.britannica.com/event/District-of-Columbia-v-Heller
[4] https://www.vox.com/policy-and-politics/2016/10/26/13418208/guns-new-york-iron-pipeline
[5] https://www.nbcchicago.com/news/national-international/chicago-gun-trace-report-2017/27140/
[6]
[7] https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2017/11/why-the-ar-15-is-so-lethal/545162/
