First, it's the NRA and the extreme wing of gun owners who see any regulation as a diminution of their rights and so both unpatriotic and evil.
Then on the other side is the crying, screaming often legitimately anguished people who demand that everyone give up their guns or else right now because it's For The Children™ and besides, "The Constitution isn't a Suicide Pact!®" Well, I'm tired of both damn ideas.
Let's look at the right to keep and bear arms, in the most general sense, without the legalities.
First, there are four main reasons to own firearms. These reasons are (in no order) defense, either of yourself, your family or or your nation; providing sustenance by way of hunting; target shooting and collecting as either artifacts or as investments or both.
As for the self defense issue :
I hold, and I defy anyone to present any argument to the contrary, that every human being has the inalienable right to be secure in their person from physical attack. Not from mean words, not from having glitter thrown on them, but from being physically attacked. punched in the face, clubbed, stabbed, shot, whatever. Given that, it follows naturally that every human being has the right to use whatever arms come to hand in order to defend themselves, within reasonable restrictions. For example, nobody should be allowed to use a nuclear weapon to stop the guy charging at them with a board with a nail in it. Nor do you get to use a sniper rifle to blow someone away from a half mile out just because he bullied you in high school. Herein the legal standard of "The Reasonable Man" comes into play. Would a reasonable man, in a given situation, have reason to fear for his life, and so use force (lethal or not) appropriately ? If not, there are legal remedies available.National Defense :
We here in the United States have the world's most capable army. Not the world's largest, but certainly the most capable. No nation lead by a leader who is sane enough to actually function in public is going to directly attack the United States, period. We could at need use conventional arms to wipe any other nation off the map in a matter of weeks if not days. We could use our nuclear arsenal to turn any enemy nation into a radioactive-glass parking lot in a matter of hours, as a given. Thus, the need for the average American to own a Browning M2 50 caliber machine-gun is obviated. There will not be Chinese assault helicopters flying over the horizon anytime soon. Therefore the ownership of fully-automatic weapons can be reasonably restricted to collectors who are willing to undergo extensive background checks, pay a large fee and await the decision of their local "chief law enforcement officer" (most usually the county sheriff. )Gun collectors :
Every gun collector I ever met was a man who meticulously cared for every firearm, and who secured their collection properly, in locking gun cases or safes. I have never met a gun collector who handed out his guns to any dickweed who walked in the door and asked for one. Legitimate gun collectors are no threat to the general public, except those who wind up committing murder or other violent acts, a thing which is statistically unlikely but inevitable to the same degree as the rest of the population.But what can be done about these shooting incidents ? :
Everyone is tired of seeing these shooting incidents in the news, where some arsehole barges into some public place and starts blasting away with a gun because they want revenge on the world for being born. (the actual excuse used by the shooter might sound like something else, but believe me, they simply want revenge for existing. ) There's not really a whole lot you can do to stop someone bent on destruction.They wish to die, and to take as many people out with them as they can, wanting to end themselves in as horrible and painful-for-others way as they can. Men like this (and it's only been men so far.) cannot be stopped once they get under way, certainly not in today's society, where nobody gives a fuck about anyone else and is too busy watching cute cat videos on their lunch break from their second job that they took because wages are too low to allow them to only work 40 hours a week. What can be done ? What can be done is to change the current system to make it more difficult for the kind of people who would do these sorts of things to get themselves the arms to do it with. So far, we've seen a lot of talk about background checks. I want to change that. I want to change the firearms buying paradigm to one where the weight of responsibility is placed on the buyer to prove they are someone suitable to buy a firearm. This won't fix all the problems, but as some are so fond of saying, it's something, and something is better than nothing.
The firearms purchase system I envision :
It's simple. Almost elegantly so. First : Establish a national "No Buy" list. If the TSA can dictate who can and cannot fly on airliners, then BATFE can dictate who can and cannot buy guns, at the national level, because it's a national problem requiring regulation of interstate commerce. This is the plan I envision, in simple bullet points:- ) Establish a national No-Buy list. Anyone on the list cannot buy or be in possession of a firearm, full stop.
- Populate the no-buy list as follows :
2) if you are on the terrorist watch list, you cannot buy or be in possession of a firearm.
3) if you have been found to be mentally unstable or suffer from mental disease or defect that would either
make you likely to pose a threat to yourself or others or that you do not know the difference between right and wrong
(i.e. are insane under the legal definition in the legal sense dating back to Crown v M'nacten. ) then your name goes on the list until such time as you can prove to the satisfaction of an impartial medico-legal authority that you are not a risk to yourself or others.
4) if you are under a judicial restraining order or under indictment for felony domestic violence or stalking, your name goes on the list until either you are adjudicated not guilty, charges are dropped or the restraining order is lifted. Don't like it, appeal in court.
Next : what to do with the no-buy list:
Now that we've established a list of who cannot buy or be in possession of firearms, what do we do with it ?Simple enough. If you want to buy a gun, you go to the BATFE website (that does not exist yet) and put in your name, address and phone number. The system then checks your name against the list, and if you're not on it, it prompts you to print a certificate that says that.
This certificate must be handed over to the seller of your firearm and that person must then keep that record, with information listed on it as to what firearm you purchased, including the serial number of the firearm, in his records for a period of seven years.
This certificate would include in it one of those "ink blot" web links like the ones you see in magazine ads that links back to the BATFE page showing you are not on the list. Fraud in this case would be under penalty of federal perjury laws, i.e. 10 years and a fine per violation.
No Straw Purchases:
If you buy a firearm as a gift for a friend or relative, that friend or relative must not be listed on the No-Buy list, and must give you a certificate of such within 60 days of your gift. Anyone purchasing firearms for persons listed on the no-buy list is liable to a fine of 12x the list purchase price of the firearm in current price lists, and 60 days in jail. Subsequent offenses will land you on the no buy list.This is actually much more stringent and far more enforceable than current laws.
But if you don't like this, at least would you agree that we should actually fund the enforcement of existing laws, and push for prosecutions ?
More on this later, perhaps.
Added post on this topic : More thoughts on Gun Control
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