We Don't Need to Take People's Guns Away

If you saw last week's debate, or yesterday's interview with Beto O'Rourke on Meet the Press, you know that he's on record with a mandatory buyback of AR-15s and AK-47s and other 'weapons of war.'

Don't get me wrong -- I think these guns are unnecessary, and have no purpose other than inflicting a great deal of harm in a very short period of time. But the mandatory buyback - confiscation with pay, if you will - is wrong. And I don't think most Democrats, or most Americans, believe it's right, or constitutional, even though O'Rourke says it can be done using the Commerce Clause without stepping on the Second Amendment.

This is exactly the kind of position that will make it much harder to get Donald Trump out of office next year. Besides, there are too many other things the majority of us do agree on, such as background checks for all gun sales; red flag laws, given courts the ability to have someone's guns temporarily removed; allowing medical professionals to collect and study data on gunshot victims; and so on. That's where the current Congress should be focused, regardless of what O'Rourke and the other candidates think.
Back in 2013, a friend and I had a very long conversation about guns, which culminated in my post The One in which We Agree.... The post outlined what we, after days of discussion and negotiation via email and chat, were comfortable with to try and shift the dial on gun safety and enhance the principles of responsible gun ownership. Here's what we agreed was reasonable, not overly burdensome on current and prospective gun owners, and which might be achievable (if only...):

1. People choosing to exercise their right to bear arms need criminal and mental health clearance. Yes, this is background checks, and yes, it's intrusive to a certain degree, but it doesn't feel unreasonable to me. 
2. Registration of all gun purchases on a federal gun license. I'm okay with a federal license; I appreciate states having different tolerances for gun legislation and ownership, but certainly in the case of concealed carry permits, we need one law, not many.
3. Mandatory safety training for each type of firearm purchased. This is so simplistic it's ridiculous, and I'm not sure whether it's already the law of the land, but if not it certainly should be.
4. Yearly renewal of the federal gun license, including proficiency testing. Again, not rocket science. He suggested not only proficiency, but also moral simulation, to gauge a person's decision-making ability, such as when to fire vs. when to de-escalate, which I think is a fascinating approach. 
5. Reducing the price of ammunition, thereby making it more readily available so people can practice with their weapons. I had a hard time with this one, but coupled with all of the other things we'd change, and a couple of qualifiers, I decided I could live with it. My qualifiers? Eliminating Internet ammunition purchasing and adding mandatory reporting of large volume ammo purchases, similar to how banks are required to report large cash deposits.
6. We agreed we need to eliminate black market gun sales, but neither of us offered anything here. I'm not sure how to do it, other than good old fashioned police work, finding out who's selling guns illegally and stopping them. It'll take quite a bit of effort, but coupled with other changes, it may be possible to make a dent.

Yes - these would impact law-abiding gun owners more than they impact criminals. But here's the thing: when it comes to mass shootings, most of the perpetrators were law-abiding citizens right up until the point they started killing innocent people. With the right rules in place, it's certainly possible that we might have been able to prevent one or more mass shooting. 

Here are a few additions to our list, mostly stuff that we had talked about over the course of our many gun conversations (emphasis added):

1. Require states to submit all necessary information into the background check system, so that it's truly viable and prevents criminals from getting guns.
2. Enforce gun laws already on the books, including prosecuting people who attempt to buy guns when they know they legally can't, and prosecuting people who have others purchase guns for them, regardless of the reason.
3. If a gun - handgun, rifle, 'gun that an evil sick bastard just used to kill a bunch of innocent people' or anything in between - is used during the commission of a crime, there needs to be a minimum mandatory sentence for using the gun. And, that sentence gets served first, before the consecutive (not concurrent) sentence for the other crime. We need to make the criminal use of a gun very unattractive.
4. Gun legislation cannot have anything unrelated added to it. Politicians cannot attach a jobs bill or welfare benefit or unemployment changes or tax cuts or anything else to gun legislation. Period. If they try to do it, charge them with bribery.
5. People with family members with mental health problems should not be allowed to legally possess guns. If you buy into the theory that the reason Adam Lanza did what he did was because he had mental health issues, and his mother knew about them, you should be furious that she not only kept guns in the house, but taught him how to use them.

The whole concept of "...the right to bear arms shall not be infringed" is absurd. As we all know, the right to bear arms is infringed, it is constrained, it is legislated, just like our First Amendment rights are infringed and constrained and legislated. And everything would be just fine if it were infringed a little bit more in ways such as those outlined above.

Good guys with guns would still be fine and could still protect themselves from bad guys or from the government, as the case may be. And

• We also might be able to keep a bad guy from getting a gun.
• We might be able to keep someone we thought was a good guy from becoming a bad-guy-with-a-gun.
• We might be able to get help for people who fail a background check for a mental health reason.
• We might be able to get guns out of the hands of abusers.

Or?

• We can make it illegal to watch violent video games, or listen to death metal, or watch violent movies - until a lobbying/arm-twisting/kick-you-out-of-office kind of group to make sure politicians don't infringe their God-given rights to enjoy fake violence.
• We can legislate that all children must have a father in their life, and force people to stay together until the children are no longer eligible dependents.
• We can force everyone to pray to the right God in schools, that right God presumably chosen by the same people who conspire to legislate away the rights of others against whom they fight, in the name of the right God, armed with deeply held beliefs.

Or, we can do nothing, and our politicians can happily take their gun lobby money to the bank, dropping thoughts and prayers as they tiptoe past families of the innocent people who have died.

It's our choice.