In my prior essay, ‘Shootings’, I suggested that there is a way forward that would require both polar opposite sides of the gun debate to put everything on the table. “To the left, it is all about guns. To the right, it is all keeping the guns.” No one should be holding their breath. Suggesting a middle way is a guarantee to be roundly dismissed by both sides.
Rather than leaving this to hopelessly vague ideas, I’d like to suggest where the middle might be found. For all the gun wonks, I am not attempting to provide a technical breakdown on firearms; I limit classification to usage. There are appropriate models for home protection that do not blow out the wall and kill the person in the next room. You’re forbidden to use military weapons for deer season. Military weapons for non-combat usage are considered a hobby and should only be used at facilities/grounds designed for that usage unless you’re being pursued by JOWSCC, the ‘Joint One World Socialist Compliance Command’ (hypothetical agency of course 🙂 – but more on that later.
Here are a few suggestion:
Do for gun control what Trump did for taxes: take away a lot of small things, give something substantive in its place for the average Joe. The primary utility of individual gun ownership is personal protection and hunting. Ergo, place new restrictions on hobby firearms but greatly expand conceal carry for a much greater number of highly qualified gun owners.
Don’t just profile legal records in granting gun permits, ownership, and conceal carry; profile demonstrated civil stability and behavior derived from community information such as employment resumes, professional, church and civic associations, and last but not least shooting ranges. Localize permits. The Israelis are said to be far more successful at physical security due to an emphasis on behavior. We create a track record of behaviors that can now be collected and stored with unprecedented detail. A profile of a balanced person is far more than their age and legal record. A much larger data set may be built to identify citizens that are most likely to use their firearm to defend themselves and others in public settings. This would encompass a greater number of people than are currently allowed conceal carry. I’d bet better standards would also mean a smaller number of people would be granted permits for general gun ownership. Someone under 25 years of age should have the signature of two qualified gun owners before being allowed a firearm except with validated military training and service.
Weapons suitable for home protection and conceal carry are a tiny fraction of the firearm types currently available. Hunting firearms are also easily defined by the game they are design to kill. All other firearms falling under the usage of recreation and hobby should come under the auspices of firing ranges, clubs, or civic organizations that will further vet their members, monitor the sanity of the gun owning member and be bonded to assure the financially responsible for any casualties that come from those members. This is an important principle. It’s absolutely impossible for any government to ascertain and monitor aberrant individuals based on ideology, mental instability, psychoactive drug use (legitimate or abused), illegal drug use, dysphoric behaviors from activities such as compulsive violent video usage, and other risk that may result from devastating life circumstances.
My libertarian instinct is to allow minimum restriction on firearm ownership; however, my proposal is that we need to be much more smartly armed, not greater armed. Mass shootings are statistically, still an anomaly, but defense against active mass shootings by citizens is virtually non-existent. Your middle school biology teacher will not be defending students with the same semi-automatic weapon that some deranged kid has brought into class. Unfortunately, many mass-casualty incidents do involve weapons legally obtained. The system is failed. The feds and the FBI obviously can’t save you, the state is not doing enough. We need a paradigm. For the conservative reader, I’d just ask this: if someone came to shoot up your church, would you be OK if their AR-15 was legally obtained, or would you rather see a lot more roadblocks to limit that possibility?
The silent justification for minimal firearm regulation, particularly assault weapons, surrounds the notion of some future government vs. conservative war wherein all guns are seized from the citizenry. While that may have had some validity in past revolutions and perhaps many third-world dictatorships, for an American, you’re living a Rambo fantasy. You’ve showed up to a rumble with sticks in comparison to what will be used against you. If that ever happens, your cold dead hands will be pried off of that automatic weapon after an array of robotic machines has tracked you and killed you either autonomously or with a controller, sitting a mile away. It will probably involve a drone, most likely multiple varieties. This is not 100% here yet, but I’d give it two years max.
Conceal-carry by a fraction consisting of many more top-rated citizens than are currently licensed to do so, is the key to real civic protection. Hobbyist firearms do need much stricter regulation including limits on the number of units owned. Permits must have a much greater local dimension.
Commentary by Lee Jones