A friend of mine asked me about solutions to the plague of mass random shootings.
You can begin by defining the problem correctly. The vast majority of guns and gun owners pose no risk of mass violence. The problem arises when (a) a small fraction of weapons capable of mass killing come into the possession of (b) an even smaller fraction of social misfits/terrorists who intend to use them for an act of mass murder. Defined that way, you don't need a massive regulatory overhaul or the repeal of the Second Amendment or anything that drastic. What you need is to create some methods to prevent (a) the use of those weapons, and/or secondarily, (b) the ownership of them by sociopaths. That should be doable without turning the word upside down. I'd like to ban them altogether, but I don't think that's doable given the present cultural war.
So we have to bell the cat. But how do we do that?
(1) The first idea is not to ban assault weapons as such, but - relying on the 'well-regulated' language in the Second Amendment - to license them, and to require an extended course of education, comparable to driver's ed, before the license is issued. I'd contract out that education to private parties, including the NRA, with defined statutory minimum criteria and number of class session, and subject to local police supervision. Inclusion of the NRA meets a number of its policies, which emphasize education, training, and socialization.
This may seem plain vanilla, but it isn't. Most of these shooters are profoundly anti-social. The requirement of education, attendance in a class, exposure to other classmates, and an instructor are real inhibiting factors. So is passing a written test. Moreover, it gives conscientious instructors an opportunity to observe behaviors and attitudes. Someone who exhibits a lot of questionable behavior might not get his license. He'll have to content himself with a handgun. How sad. My heart bleeds.
So far, so non-controversial. The next isn't.
(2) I'm going to use social media to create watchlists. We use them for air flight, and there is not the slightest reason not to use them in this context. You own an assault weapon, you're on one. You publicize manifestoes with Nazi or jihadist language, etc., you're on another one, a bit more exclusive. And if in addition you fall into certain profiles - young, male, suburban, unemployed, etc. - you fall into a third. You might just get a police call, what's known in the profession as a 'knock-and-talk', to be sure everything is on the up-and-up. That's actually the essence of good community policing.
So why isn't this the most unAmerican thing you ever heard of? Because - like no-fly lists - this isn't going to be secret at all. If you end up on a watchlist, you'll have a due-process right to challenge the inclusion and have your name excluded. Of course you can always divest yourself of the weapon and be de-listed at once.
(3) Finally, if you accumulate more than a certain number of these weapons, i.e., assemble an arsenal, the assemblage will be subject to periodic inspection.. These are potentially public nuisances, and they should be subject to periodic inspection (something like a building inspection) to be sure they are being stored and maintained safely. This is the Sandy Hook provision - I'm damned if society is obligated to allow some idiot parent to purchase a gargantuan number of lethal weapons, store them on the same premises as her disturbed autistic son, and the rest of the world has to stand by and trust her judgment. No way. She can content herself with a Glock (poor dear) and pay for storage elsewhere, or not buy them at all.
Lest any of you think this is 1984 scary, this is EXACTLY the same kind of protocol we have been using for terrorists since 2001, with some controversy, but basically public acceptance. (Do any of you disapprove of no-fly lists? Possession of an AK-47 is far more sinister than boarding an aircraft.) The difference from Gestapo/KGB lies in (a) the due process and transparency, and (b) much more important, what triggers all this concern isn't your world view, no matter how scary racist or totalitarian it may be. What triggers all this machinery is possession of a weapon that is potentially useful for mass killing.
None of this is difficult. We could do it all tomorrow. Instead, we will get all kinds of partisan and cultural attacks. There are millions of good quiet Americans of all races and backgrounds who do not feel comfortable and safe without a handgun at home, safely stored and with no conceivable potential for mass violence. Threaten even indirectly their right to that possession, and they will stand up for assault weapon possession, despite all their misgivings, for 'slippery-slope' reasons. They're more scared of cultural bigots than sociopathic assailants, which is sad, and wrong (in my opinion), but understandable. In proposing solutions, you take people as they are, not as you want them to be, and with tolerance for all types. So one step at a time. In proposing solutions, we want to eliminate that slippery-slope concern in the interest of consensus.
But we won't. Instead, the El Paso and Dayton incidents will become simply more sad and stupid chapters in the long running cultural war in this nation, ammunition for a different type of bigot than racial, the cultural kind. It has long been my cynical opinion that gun opponents (like climate control catastrophists) aren't really interested in solutions. They're interested in denunciations. The fun of moralizing, the illusion of moral superiority, is far more important to them than actually addressing the problem.
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