Gun Thoughts….

I’ve been writing a lot around the web about what I feel about Gun Control and why I think it’s not the answer to the problem of mass shootings, but I’ve never really said what I think SHOULD be done with gun regulation, and since I’ve been saying I would and I’m on a flight to NYC, here we go….

First of all, I want to reiterate that I don’t believe ANY kind of GUN control will change the situation we have in America regarding large violent public attacks, be they with a gun or any other type of carnage. We have a culture of solving problems with violence in this country that extends from the very highest offices in the land, (both public and private), to every street in every city, and as long as we as a country continue to believe in the idea that you can solve problems with violence, we will continue to have violence. Guns are one way this easy “trigger-fixing” of problems is done, and an admittedly efficient one, but they aren’t THE problem.

The reason I argue so hard for not focusing on the gun part of the problem is simple, I believe it to be a distraction from the real problem. The real problem is our culture of violent problem-solving, and the gun-control distraction is not only counter-productive in terms of actual progress, but it is a fundamental misunderstanding of the problem that will waste YEARS in the social experiment of finding out that we won’t “fix” the problem by regulating guns, and many innocents will continue to die as a result.

Having said that, there ARE some things that I feel should be done in terms of regulation……and the NRA folks ain’t gonna like this very much…..

*Most importantly – REGULATE THE USERS, NOT THE GUNS!!

If you want to own a gun, fine. But you’re going to have to learn how to use it, and you’re going to have to prove that you can do so safely and responsibly. That means you’re going to have to have a license, and take a written as well as in-the-field test to prove that you understand the mechanics and safe use of the gun to get it. I’m not sure that means that you need to be a competent shot, (I think there are many people that will NEVER be able to shoot anything but their own feet with any degree of accuracy, and they should still be able to have one and do that if they want), but it DOES mean that you should be able to demonstrate functional familiarity with the workings of your gun and that you understand how to handle it safely and responsibly. (Which would likely cure the feet-shooting problem as well.)

Guns and ammo would be at least as easy as it is now to get, but you would have to show that license to even begin buying a gun, and you would have to be cleared on the particular weapon that you are buying before you can take it home. Obviously that would mean some kind of training/test before you go to buy it, and yes that would introduce a lot of extra work, but it would also get rid of the impulse/rage buying of guns that leads to bad choices about resolving your problems, and would stop a LOT of these events.

This scenario would also be less about tracking the actual guns. Instead it would shift to the owner’s competency to own a gun, and be much less about the gun’s serial number and anyone knowing who owns the gun and where it is. I DO have a problem with the government having a list of where all the guns in the population are, and I feel strongly that such a list is completely against the point of the 2^nd amendment, which I believe to mean that the people have the right and even responsibility to defend themselves against a government that goes bad on them…historically the people rising up is one of the few consistent ways that governments gone bad are kept in check. (I’m going to sidestep for now the obvious issue with the current technologies and our government’s clear hunger to use that technology to control the population in ways that have never been seen before in human history, that’s outside the scope of what I’m dealing with here today, however relevant.)

*Households with children under at least 16 (and maybe 18 is fine) would have to show that there is a functional gun safe/locker on the premises, and households with ANY member of the household having a history of mental illness would have to show that not only is there a gun locker that is not available to that member of the household, but also that biometric measures are used to ensure that person is not able to make the guns in the home function (an Apple Touch ID type-system could work very well here).

*Persons convicted of ANY type of violent felony would NOT be allowed to own guns. Period. Demonstrably violent people don’t get to own guns. (Sorry, learn to use your mouth/brain instead. Asshole.)

*As far as which TYPE of guns should be regulated, this is a trickier subject that gets in to some pretty grey areas, but I agree that people don’t need full-auto weapons in everyday life, and I come down on the side of not allowing private citizens to have them. I recognize that this position is somewhat at odds with the idea of defending yourself against a violent government, but I think that problem is overcome by sheer numbers, tho I agree this is something that ultimately comes down to my opinion, and is pretty tough to quantify.

*I’m on the fence about sniper-type weapons, which I’m going to qualify as being guns that are typically used by military snipers, a good example being the .50 caliber rifles that are capable of being accurate over huge distances. I have a hard time with this because I very much understand why this type of shooting is so much fun and attractive as a hobby. The kind of concentration, practice, and the development of skills, equipment, and technique that is involved in becoming proficient with this kind of shooting is very much akin to something like golf, meditation, yoga, or martial arts. All of these disciplines/hobbies require a clearing of the mental “table” and an almost zen-like clarity of mind that is difficult to achieve, but necessary to effectively pursue the activity, and that very much applies to this type of shooting as well. It can be extremely relaxing and meditative, which I know is hard to understand if you haven’t done it, nevertheless it’s true.
That being said there’s some very serious things to consider with this kind of weapon, they are capable of tremendous mayhem and in competent (but crazy) hands are capable of creating truly horrific situations like we had with the DC snipers, and that really does need to be considered.
I guess I could be ok with a solution that involves limiting access to those kind of extreme sniper weapons except to competitive shooters. In fact that could be a way to qualify it; if you can work your way up through the ranks of competitive shooting to the point where you reach that level of proficiency and can prove it, at that point you would be allowed to buy one.

*No one needs any kind of mounted or turreted type of high caliber machine gun, nor do they need tanks or grenades or rocket launchers or ANY of that kind of foolishness, and if there comes a time that the population DOES need them to protect themselves from the government, then I guess there’s gonna have to be some raids on the National Guard armories, because stockpiling those kind of weapons for THAT rainy day is going to cause way more havoc and problems than it will ever solve.

I think this level and type of regulation would solve a great deal of the practical problems surrounding guns and their use in our country, and introduce reasonable barriers to people who really shouldn’t have guns, much as we do the same to who should and shouldn’t be allowed to drive, or operate critical types of machinery etc without the appropriate training and screening.

So you see that my way of regulating would actually be MUCH more stringent than what is currently in place. I hope this reinforces the point that I don’t have a problem with dealing with the issue of violence in our society, I just have a huge problem with attributing that violence to guns.

The phrase “Gun Violence” itself drives me up a wall, there’s NO SUCH THING AS GUN VIOLENCE, however there IS violence with a gun. And I don’t care about arguments that use the premise of how much damage a given tool can do or what it’s designed for, there is NO tool anywhere that ever chose how it was used, that choice and how it gets made is what we need to be looking at.

Dealing with the how and why a weapon gets used in the ways that we have in our society is the only way we will stop these events in our country, and I really don’t want to legislate guns more only to find it didn’t change a thing except to make a few people feel like they did SOMETHING, when in fact they accomplished nothing but wasting time and lives going after the wrong thing.