Disclaimer – I am a gun owner, firearms instructor and live in a community with a rifle range, pistol range and skeet and trap ranges all for the benefit and use of the residents. I am a member of the NRA, but do not consider myself a “gun nut.” I happen to like to shoot; at targets only by the way for all you PETA people. I would like to think I am making a logical argument here, but I will admit the possibility of bias.
While I am a proud liberal and a card-carrying member of the ACLU, I am also a member of the NRA, which is almost oxymoronic, given the two organizations have diametrically opposed, and almost mutually exclusive, viewpoints on gun control.
The more conservative wing of the NRA would have us believe that there should be no form of gun control in any way, manner, shape or form. I have spoken to individuals that have a very logical, but nonetheless ridiculous, argument. The Second Amendment was put into place by the Framers of The Constitution for, among other things, the purpose of allowing the citizens to rebel against a government that becomes oppressive.
Place this thinking into context; the United States had, in their recent memory, fought a bloody war and won independence from Great Britain and the oppressive rule of King George III. The Constitution was, at that time, giving the federal government significantly more power than it had under our first governing document, the Articles of the Confederation and Perpetual Union between the States of (fill in the 13 original states here). We use the short form to remember it by, “Articles of Confederation”. Thus, our Founding Fathers and Framers of The Constitution wanted to make sure “We the People” could rebel against the federal government, should it become oppressive, making revolution necessary.
If it becomes necessary to engage in a new revolution, the argument logically follows that, if the government has a weapon, we need one like it with which to revolt or defend ourselves. We have heard from some groups, even in our own time, that we have reached the point that so-called “Second Amendment” and “Tenth Amendment” remedies are necessary, because our existing government has become oppressive. I have this vision in my mind of pre-apocalyptic Tea Baggers from Montana and the U.S. military lobbing nukes at one another in the bad lands of the west, but that is ridiculous matter for another time.
This thinking, however, is why there are a not insignificant number of people that believe “We the People” should have available to us every weapon available in the arsenal of the United States Government, just in case we have to revolt. In particular, they believe that every citizen of the United States has an “individual right” to keep and bear arms. I strongly support the Second Amendment, and believe it to be such an individual right. The Supremes (Supreme Court of the United States) have said so, but I am certain that I have no desire whatsoever to maintain a thermonuclear deterrent, tank, artillery battery nor a flamethrower in my garage or basement, just in case.
I am not sure exactly where the line between reasonableness and nuts is drawn, but I am certain no one needs a personal A-bomb. I do not think that the government has a legitimate interest in knowing who has what specific firearms. Thus I am not a believer in gun registration. It would seem to serve only to allow the government to round up all the guns, if and when they feel it necessary. The interest of "We the People" is not best-served if the governments can effectively round up all the guns, especially if they see the natives becoming too restless for them.
Not having a government holding all the cards is a good thing. An oppressive government is a whole lot less likely to pick a fight with the governed when the governed can shoot back. If you think me ridiculous, you might recall that the Japanese never seriously entertained the idea of invading the continental United States during World War II because they were afraid they would get shot at by every citizen with a gun, and they believed, right or wrong, that every American had a house full of guns. unknowingly, gangster movies and westerns made an effective deterrent.
The above arguments notwithstanding, I support limitations on the private ownership of things like explosives, fully automatic weapons and limitations on the carrying of concealed weapons. When I say limitations, I mean things like background checks, licenses and such. If you are not a convicted felon, are not a “mental defective” (a legal term), you should be able to own and possess a firearm or get a concealed firearms permit. Oh, and when I say “mental defective,” I do not mean you have told your doctor you have been a little depressed, but if you are suicidal or feel the need to kill your ex-wife or local college students en masse, we need to talk. “Reasonable” is obviously a color that has a lot of different shades.
Gun control advocates, on the other hand, do not embrace this individual right interpretation. They believe that it is the right of only a “well-regulated militia", basically the National Guard in each state, to keep and bear arms, and believe it to be a collective right. Their ultra-left-wing nuts would insist that no one needs a gun for any reason and the private possession of firearms of any kind should be outlawed completely. I am as equally opposed to this ban as I am the personal nuclear option. The reasonable, as with most things, seems to lie somewhere between the polar extremes.
One of my primary considerations one the issue of gun control is that it is just impossible to eliminate private possession of firearms in the United States. Just as Prohibition did not eliminate alcohol consumption, gun control will never eliminate guns. Best estimates are that there are 350 million firearms in the United States. We live in a country where there exists a firearm for every man, woman and child in the country. No, not everyone has a gun, but there are enough people with bunches of them that they could be evenly distributed to everyone, with a few left over. In this environment we could not eliminate private possession of firearms, even if we wanted to. The environment would take generations to change and let me assure you there would be a bunch of people that would have weapons caches stashed all over the place. You know the old, when-they-pry-it-out-of-my-cold-dead-fingers types.
Second, I think you can make anything illegal and it does not necessarily eliminate the problem. Make it against the law to possess a firearm and there will always be individuals that possess firearms, and there will be too many to put them all in prison, trust me. You also set up the situation where only the bad guys have the guns. In my home state of Florida, there has never been a case of an individual that has a concealed weapons permit using a firearm in a crime. There are, however, cases in which individuals with concealed weapons permits, or are otherwise in lawful possession of a firearm, that have defended themselves or others using those guns.
Criminals are not notoriously future-oriented thinkers. They do not generally consider whether they face prison time or the death penalty before they rob and kill someone. I have interviewed hundreds, yes hundreds, of criminal defendants, and one thing was consistent, they did not think about the consequences of their actions before they did something incredibly stupid. That is why they are criminals…DUH!!
I had the very enlightening experience of working as an investigator for the Office of the Public Defender for the District of Columbia for several months. I could not carry a gun because it was illegal in D.C., but most of the clients, and many of the witnesses, I interviewed that were not at Lorton Correctional (used then as the pre-trial holding facility for D.C.), were strapping (carrying a concealed weapon, for the less street-wise). Probably the only reason I did not get robbed and/or shot was the fact that I was working for the lawyer of some “respected” (spelled: F-E-A-R-E-D) ne’er do well. They had to think, the ne’er do well might get off and he might not be happy if they screwed with the guy that helped get him off (Okay, so maybe they were a little forward thinking). I completely understand (not approve) why they carried illegal guns as they lived in neighborhoods where I would not get caught after dark on a bet. One of the axioms of P.D. investigators was not to be caught north of Rhode Island Avenue after dark. That was about 3 decades ago, however.
Let’s sum up; the Supremes say it is an individual right to own and keep them, too many of them exist to get rid of them, bad guys don’t care that it is illegal to have or illegally use them , some good people, in spite of any law making it illegal, will keep them anyway, and some good people have lawfully defended themselves and others with them. Yes, there were about 13,000 murders in this country in 2010 (the last year for which statistics are available). We also had 254 million cars and 32,000 traffic deaths that year and no one is clamoring to take your car away, but that is comparing apples to oranges.
I just don't think gun control will work, at least not for its intended purpose of reducing crime, no matter what you do. Having guns in our society is also kinda like being a little bit pregnant, only on a permanent basis and, as everyone knows, you can’t be just a little bit pregnant. There are guns out there. There are always gonna be guns out there and like the unwanted pregnancy, the time to have dealt with it was before it happened, but in our history we have never had a time when we didn't have guns. There have always been guns out there, and I don't see guns going away in the foreseeable future.
