Guns 'R' US: Part 2

Despite the movement that survivors of the Parkland shooting are attempting to start, and despite what appears to be a growing demand from the public that the government “do something” about gun violence, I am not optimistic that anything constructive will be done.  Perhaps the anti-gun forces will manage to enact some sort of ban of something or other, but this is unlikely to do much beyond stimulating the black market.  Perhaps the gun fetishists will manage to get more guns into the hands of teachers, but this is unlikely to do anything but set the stage for a subsequent school shooting.  

     The primary obstacle to reasonable and sensible regulation of firearms is not the Constitution and the 2nd Amendment.  (If you don’t understand this, I suggest reading Antonin Scalia’s opinion for the majority in DC v Heller.)  It is, rather, the ideological fervor that so many people bring to this issue.  In the hope that we will eventually get past this to some more constructive discourse, I suggest three steps we could take.  None will prevent the next mass shooting, or the one after that.  But I think that all of them have immediate practical and philosophical value. 

     First, and most practical, we can make a much more serious effort to keep guns out of the hands of people who show a clear proclivity toward violence.  Our current procedures for doing so are a model of dysfunction.  The national database that handles background checks is woefully incomplete and doesn’t handle the data that it does have very well.   There are no consequences for failing to report individuals to the database.  And the criteria for inclusion in the database are far from clear.  We could approve this situation if we were of a mind to.

     Second, we can attempt to expand our knowledge.  We can insist that the manufacturers and sellers of firearms keep scrupulous records concerning inventory and sales.  This helped to reduce the amount of pharmaceutical-grade speed on the streets in the 70s.  By some accounts, as much as half of the methedrine and dexedrine produced disappeared directly into the black market.  By some accounts, the same is true of the gun industry.  Although many mass shootings involved guns that were purchased legally, much gun violence involves firearms obtained outside the system of regulations.  It behooves us to know all that we can about this market.

     Along the same lines, we can allow the CDC to begin research on gun violence.  The CDC currently does extensive research on virtually every cause of death except gun violence.  But Congress, bowing to pressure from the NRA and other gun lobby groups, effectively prohibits such research now.  Again, it behooves us to know.

     Finally, we can prohibit concealed carry.  This prohibition was common enough during the founding era; the idea was that you only needed to conceal your weapon if you were up to no good.  And it wasn’t until around 1970 that anyone seriously tried to invoke the 2nd Amendment to question the constitutionality of this and the myriad of other gun control regulations that were common during the founding era.  (The emergence of the modern gun rights movement is an interesting story for another post.)  The immediate practical benefit of this clear:  individuals would be able to make a much better assessment of the potential threats in their environment.  And the philosophical benefit would be greater public awareness of just how pervasive guns are in the United States.  Maybe everyone would go buy a few.  Or maybe they would do something else.  Again, it behooves us to know.

     Meanwhile, here is some pro-gun propaganda that looks like it might be entertaining.