I’m angry. I wrote this a week ago, in the aftermath of the latest US gun massacre, and decided to sit on it to see how I’d feel. But I haven’t changed my mind.
I’m so damn tired of the fools mouthing the slogan “When you make guns illegal, only the criminals will have them.” As if the 270 million existing civilian guns in the US will just evaporate. As if there is any remotely serious proposal to eliminate or ban all guns. As if the empty argument that because more gun control won’t stop all massacres means that it’s useless to try to stop any.
Let’s get real. For many people, gun ownership is a religion. They worship guns. They are irrrational about their religion; they take totally unrestricted gun ownership as their faith. But here in the world in which we actually live, it has been clear for many years that the gun religion is not good for our people or our country. Just as the rest of us don’t allow any other particular religion to rule us all, there is no good reason the gun religionists should rule us all.
The Second Amendment to the US Constitution, the core scripture of the gun fundamentalists, was, in my view, a good thing for its time. But we don’t live, as did the Founders, in the world of single-shot muzzle-loaded muskets. ”The Constitution is not a suicide pact.” Circumstances and technology have changed. It’s foolish to live as if that change never happened, and it’s foolish to read the founding documents of America in such a narrow fashion that it requires the unnecessary maiming and deaths of thousands of its citizens per year.
Laws like the expired Federal assault weapons ban were not a slippery slope leading to total gun confiscation; we know this because the law was in effect for a decade and it didn’t happen. We could enact such laws again, and if they make it difficult or impossible for one more madman to easily gather the tools to murder dozens of people, it will be worth it. Other common-sense laws could be put into place (all of these proposals are being blocked by the NRA):
- Criminal background checks for all gun buyers, no matter where they purchase their firearm *
- Making sure buyers aren’t on terror watch lists
- If you show you’re an idiot who can’t properly handle having a gun, society takes them away from you
- Registration, mandatory training, and testing in states that allow concealed carry, and bans on ownership by people convicted of violent misdemeanors or domestic violence
- Reasonable limits on purchasing guns and ammo in a short time
See? Nothing that most people would find onerous or especially difficult to live with. Except the gun worshippers.
People (mostly right-wingers) who think their guns are the only thing standing between them and their “tyrannical” government are delusional. They are living in a fantasy world where they have imagined themselves as part Nathan Hale, part George Patton, part Batman. But all of those historical and fictional figures had something in common that the self-styled militia of today do not share: the desire and call-to-duty to serve a greater community beyond themselves and their immediate families. Yet we, the clearer-thinking citizens, have allowed delusional gun maximalists free rein to indulge their paranoid fantasies, and as a result, it’s amazingly easy to assemble an arsenal in most of the US. We could stop that. I have no illusions that our politicians will do so; they are in the thrall of the gun religionists, who care so much about this issue that they will pay any price to impose their will on their fellow citizens, and to do it in the name of freedom. Last week, an idiot Republican from Wisconsin who bought himself a Senate seat equated 100-round magazines with freedom. That’s gun fundamentalism up close and personal.
It may surprise you to know that I am not anti-gun. I own three myself, purchased at a time when I thought I needed them for personal safety, and when I lived in a place where it was easy to go to shooting ranges. Learning to shoot and shooting was an interesting entertainment. The friend who taught me to shoot also taught me the level of seriousness required of a responsible gun owner. Because I came to it in my late twenties, I was never tempted to become a gun fanatic; guns never had that much importance in my life.
I have, however, become mostly anti-religion. Like many other people, I find religion to be more a negative than a benefit. And some religions, like the gun religion, are actively dangerous. I hope one day my country will back away from allowing the adherents of that faith to control the rest of us.
Edited July 31, 2012 to add:
* A commenter rightly pointed out I was not specific enough here, because guns purchased through licensed gun dealers already require a background check. I’ve edited the point to clarify my meaning, which is that all gun purchases, including casual sales between individuals and at gun shows, should be subject to the check.
Go for it, Tom.
I admire your honesty.
I think you should start a movement to repeal the second amendment, since, as you say, times have changed.
Tom, your article contains a few things that I know you’d want to have pointed out to you.
1. Gun buyers have been subject to criminal background checks since 1993. See http://www.fbi.gov/about-us/cjis/nics/nics.
2. It can be argued that the terror watch lists are a pure example of security theater, but I’m not going to make that argument; I’ll merely point out that there have been numerous cases of people being incorrectly put on the list.
3. Many states do require training for issuance of a concealed carry permit. Specifically, I know first-hand that Florida, California, Louisiana, and Utah do; they require both a written test and a practical shooting test.
4. People convicted of domestic violence are not allowed to own guns. See ATF publication 5300 (http://www.atf.gov/publications/download/p/atf-p-5300-4.pdf) for a complete list of “it shall be unlawful” restrictions. It’s already unlawful to sell a gun to drug users, people who have been committed to mental institutions, and people subject to restraining orders. (Side note: many jurisdictions already confiscate firearms from the targets of protective/restraining orders.)
Before you attack gun owners by labeling them as religious nuts, you might want to make sure you’re arguing from a solid basis of fact, and not of religious belief.
Cheers,
-Paul
Paul,
Thanks for your reasoned response (not withstanding the dig at the end, for which I’ll happily issue you a pass, considering my own intemperate language; I do note I have no religious objection to responsible gun ownership, being myself a gun owner). My comments re your points:
1, 4: The existing background check is inadequate in that there are honkingly huge loopholes in it. The two biggest problems with the current system: a) Only licensed gun dealers are subject to the background check requirement, meaning that casual gun sales in many states are background-check free. b) Reporting of the prohibited classes of people to the background database is quite lax, and varies from state to state. As a technical guy yourself, you know that the value of a database is directly connected to the accuracy and completeness of its information. Tightening up the reporting requirements, properly funding information sharing, penalizing state and federal agencies that do not share their information are all ways to improve the system and lead to better outcomes. Closing the casual sale loophole would also be of benefit.
Your implied point – that I was not as specific as I could have been – is valid, and I’ve edited the post to reflect that.
2: We’re not in disagreement on your point. However, to me that’s an argument to either get rid of a crappy list, or (again!) improve its accuracy.
3: You probably know it’s quite difficult to get a CCW in California, no matter what. I’m not familiar with the other states you mention, since I live in CA, but I’ll gladly stipulate your point. However, I find it inadequate to the problem. Looking at the map at http://www.handgunlaw.us/, it appears that by far, most states have Shall Issue laws on their books, and in the majority, there is no requirement for training. My argument is that a uniform nationwide standard for training would be better than 50 different state laws.
Tom
Tom,
I don’t have any problem with your suggestion that reporting of prohibited persons be improved. I strongly suspect that most law-abiding gun owners don’t either. We all have an interest in making sure that people who shouldn’t be able to get guns can’t legally or easily get them. But in doing that I believe we also have to acknowledge that law-abiding citizens have an absolute Constitutional right to keep and bear arms, and that we have to be very careful to protect that right.
I now live in California, which as you know has extremely strict gun laws. For example, I recently bought a pistol from a friend. I had to take it to a licensed dealer, register the transfer with the state, and then wait 10 days to take it home. These are onerous, but not terribly so– but ask whether these restrictions have made urban California a safer place than other urban areas, or even safer than it was before their imposition, and I’d have to say “no”.
As for training: I think it is entirely reasonable to require both classroom and range training in order to legally carry a concealed firearm in public. However, I also think it’s entirely reasonable to have reciprocity for concealed carry permits, such that they are nationally recognized just as drivers’ licenses are. Sadly, although the House passed such a bill, the matching Senate bill (S. 2188) is stuck in committee. A national standard that both specifies training requirements and provides licensing reciprocity would, I think, be well supported by reasonable people on both sides of the argument.
Cheers,
-Paul
[...] acquaintance Tom Negrino is tired of the gun religion. It won’t surprise many folks to know that I don’t agree with much of what he says, but [...]