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How do we handle cars? Not ideally, but we have a way that works most of the time. We don’t say, “Cars are dangerous, so we can’t let you have them because you might hurt someone else or yourself with them.” Neither do we say, “There can be no restrictions on owning and operating cars, because this is a fundamental American freedom.” We don't even say, “You may need a car, but you don't need a semi-automatic convertible, so you can't have one.”
We have fairly stringent rules about cars. Before we let someone drive one, we require that he or she show the ability to do so safely and competently, pass a test on the rules of the road, and get a license documenting that accomplishment. We require cars to be registered and maintained in safe condition, and we require people operating them to carry minimum amounts of liability insurance. We make it a serious crime to operate a car recklessly, without a license, under the influence of mind-altering chemicals, or when too tired to stay alert. We have speed limits, traffic signals, and other controls on how and where we can drive. But we pretty much guarantee that unless someone has demonstrated that he or she can’t be trusted with a car, that person can buy and drive any car that he or she has the money to get, and can drive it anywhere and in any manner that is not against the law in order to protect the community.
Gun owners strongly resist the idea of having to register their guns, because they have the very reasonable fear that if they are registered, sooner or later someone from the government will show up to confiscate them. Unfortunately, that’s a reasonable fear, because it's happened and because there are a fair number of politicians who advocate exactly that. You can bet that very few people would want to register their cars if they thought that might lead to their being arbitrarily taken away, either.
Would it work to treat guns the way we treat cars? Place some additional restrictions on their possession and use to protect the public, accompanied by taking more effective actions to enforce the laws against violent crimes that we already have, but guarantee that as long as they’re used responsibly their ownership will not be threatened? I believe it would be an improvement over what we do now. That might be a Constitutional amendment worth taking up. The Second Amendment is a marvel of ambiguity, and it would be good to clear it up.
If the solution of banning gun ownership doesn't work – and it doesn't in the case of many people who are already forbidden to possess guns, those who commit most of the gun crimes – what does or will? The status quo is not acceptable. A good starting place is research on two other dangerous crimes, domestic violence and DWI.
Task groups working on those issues here in New Mexico found that the most effective deterrent was the belief that if a person committed the crime he or she would be caught and punished, but that the severity of the punishment didn't make a significant difference. Another finding was that people were less likely to commit repeat DWIs if they went to counseling, but most people who were told by the court to go to counseling never did. To act on these findings, one group used their funding for two things: they helped fund extra DWI patrols during high-risk times, and they arranged for the scheduling clerk for the counseling services to be sitting in the courtroom when DWI cases were heard, so the appointments were made before people found guilty left the room, and people were warned that if they didn't show up the judge would be notified and they'd be re-arrested. When the word about the increased patrols went out, the arrest rate went down, and when all the people convicted of DWI had counseling appointments before leaving the courtroom, nearly all of them showed up, and the repeat rate went down substantially.
So one tactic would be to find ways to increase the odds of anyone committing a crime with a gun being caught and prosecuted.
Community policing appears to be another effective approach, getting the police out of their cars and walking beats, getting to know the people at a neighborhood level so they can spot people and situations that are risky and build trust with the local residents. The most obvious trend in law enforcement today, the SWAT/paramilitary look and attitude accompanied by being much to quick to reach for the pepper spray, baton, taser, or pistol, is worse than useless – it doesn't lower crime and it leads to police seeing ordinary members of the community as the enemy and vice versa. That's a digression for another essay.
People often cite the “gun show loophole” as a problem. To the extent that private parties – not licensed gun dealers – sell guns to each other at gun shows, they're right. Although those off-the-book sales occur in many places, gun shows do bring people together and facilitate the sales. There's an easy solution here, one I'm surprised hasn't already happened. To begin with, anyone who brings a gun into a gun show has to check it in by type and serial number at the entrance. They're checked again when they leave. If there was a requirement for one or more licensed dealers to be present, to process any sales and carry out the background check in exchange for a nominal transfer fee, there would be no loophole.
When it comes to people who are demonstrably too dangerous to have guns, we must improve coordnation and information-sharing among all the courts and law enforcement agencies nationwide. If someone has been convicted of a felony or ruled a danger to self or others, he or she is not able to legally buy a gun. If we'd done that, the Virginia Tech shooting wouldn't have happened – the young man in question had been identified as dangerous, but that information wasn't shared with the people who sold him the guns he used.
Another way to improve enforcement of existing laws, a seemingly unrelated action, would be making our drug laws more rational. Why? Because that would clear a lot of the legal logjam that prevents police and courts from effectively dealing with violent crime.
Some argue that gun ownership should be barred because people can't show a need for them. But that is fundamentally foreign to the way our society and legal system are supposed to work. By that reasoning, a lot of other things should be illegal, since no one can show that they need them, either. Prove you need a car (or a car with more features than a bare minimum.) Thinking of taking a trip somewhere? Prove you need to go. Prove you need books. Prove you need a computer, or access to the Internet. Those things sound ridiculous, because they are. So is asking someone to prove a need to own a gun, even a semi-automatic, if there isn't a specific reason to think he or she in particular can't be trusted with it. If we aren't going to apply that Taliban-esque logic to other things that are dangerous if misused, we shouldn't apply it to gun ownership.
I would have no problem with complying with any of the restrictions I mentioned about cars when it comes to my guns, if I was guaranteed in return that my right to own them as long as I used them only safely and legally would be respected. I’ve undergone training and I went through a licensing process to get my concealed-carry permit; any time I buy a gun, I submit to an instant background check to make sure I'm not on a “no-gun” list; and I accept the fact that I can only shoot them in legally sanctioned places in a carefully controlled manner. Further, due to their portability and potential for theft, I accept the need to keep them locked in a safe when they aren’t under my direct personal control. I keep them unloaded except when I’m going to use them, I don’t point them at anything I don’t intend to shoot, I don’t put my finger on the trigger until I’m ready to pull said trigger, and I make sure of what’s behind my target so I don’t shoot through it and hit someone or something else. I don’t drink or use recreational drugs anyway, but if I did, I wouldn’t shoot under the influence, and I don’t go shooting if I’m not rested. Although I have a concealed carry license, I don’t take one where I'm not supposed to. If we did require liability insurance for gun owners, I’d qualify for the “little old lady from Pasadena” rate.
Within those limits, I believe I ought to be allowed to own and use any gun I want and can afford, again as long as I am responsible and safe with it. George Lakoff did write that he saw automatic weapons as a problem and legal restrictions as a solution. On this topic, I think he needs to be better informed – he was talking about gang members using them to shoot people; that is already illegal, and those gang members don’t buy their guns legally anyway.
With guns, as with cars, the freedoms they help provide are important ones. In America, we’re free to pick up and head for the other side of the country if we want, but unless we have the means to do so, that freedom is meaningless. One of the telltale signs of a totalitarian system is tightly restricted domestic travel. When I was a teenager my family went on vacation in Mexico, which was certainly not North Korea but not exactly as free as we’re used to here either. It struck me as weird and creepy that every hour or so, we’d come to a roadblock where people in uniforms and sunglasses with guns would carefully look us over and inspect our papers before letting us go on our way. I’d never seen anything like that here (I have now, which doesn’t make me happy.) I want to be able to take it for granted that if I can afford to do so, I can get in my car and drive to Maine, Washington, or Florida without needing an internal passport or having to justify my trip to anyone. And I want to be able to take it for granted that if I feel like heading down to the shooting range and doing some target shooting, I can do that too.
The freedoms that guns provide are, if anything, even more visceral. I know that if I’m carrying a pistol I can do more to protect my family and myself than I could without it in situations where it would be patently unrealistic to think that the police could get there in time, even if I was able to call them. I don’t look for trouble, and I go out of my way to avoid it, but if I get cornered in a situation of last resort, I’ll have the means to protect myself.
