Guns Are a Problem, But Not THE Problem

With the continued frequency of mass shootings across the country, the most recent being the attack on the Orlando night club Pulse, with at least 49 dead and another 53 injured, the discussion, as expected, has come around again to gun control. Gun control advocates think that these mass shootings would go away, if only better regulations were in place. Opponents say it's not the guns, it's the people who use them. Advocates say the countries around the world who have very few, if any, gun fatalities in a given year is because guns are either banned or heavily restricted or regulated in those countries. They would be correct, but that doesn't settle every issue. And in this country, it's not so much about rights as it is politics.

Lobby organizations like the NRA would have you believe that the muskets available to citizens in the early years of the country and its Constitution easily translate to the military-style weapons and handguns of today. It's an idiotic premise rooted in the fact that the Founders are no longer available to confirm or deny it. The reason we have so many amendments in the first place is because the Founders knew things might change with the times, and so a mechanism needed to be in place to update the Constitution if the changes with the times were substantial enough to conflict with the intentions of laws previously written. One might wonder if the Second Amendment, as written, would still exist today, if the Founders had lived long enough to see the state of weaponry evolve, as well as the conflicting interpretations of "a well-regulated militia..." But since that is not possible, we are left with NRA Executive Vice President Wayne LaPierre masturbatorily pontificating about what the Founders really meant when they wrote the 2nd Amendment, while Charleton Heston's "cold, dead hands" statement at the NRA convention in 2000 practically had the membership cheering wildly to communal orgasmic release.

What is lost in all of this is the practicality of regulation. A big reason regulation is impractical right now is because our government does not address the black market. We only deal with illegal weapons when they interfere with the weapons the government themselves are dealing. We supply weapons to dictatorship countries, to guerrilla militias and revolutionaries. And as long as no one messes with what we do with weapons, we do very little to stop it. So our black markets continue to thrive, the government doesn't destroy weapons caches, nay, they raid them and supply them to criminal enterprises to "track" illegal weapons movement, e.g. Fast and Furious, and then sit back shocked and dismayed to hear those weapons have been killing our border guards, as if it's a complete surprise that Mexican cartels and coyotes would do such a thing. And this is the real problem: If the government is, itself, a supplier of illegal weapons, from where do they get the nerve to talk about gun regulations?

First and foremost, deal with the illegal weapons trade and black markets. Regulations on guns will not work if there is a plethora of places to get them. Regardless of what Wayne LaPierre says, I don't think most gun owners have a problem with regulations. They get their guns through legal channels and protocols anyway. And as long as they can get what they need, regulations are fine, so long as the criminals being targeted can't still get them without effort. If they can, then you are just making regulations for the sake of making regulations - THAT they have a serious problem with. So if the government takes the illegal trade seriously, instead of being the traders, people will take regulations seriously. To that end, here are the regulations that I believe should be in place, if we are ever to get to that point:

• Background checks at all purchase venues, including online. This should include criminal at all levels. It should also include all available psych records, such as Baker Act or any law enforcement cases involving psychological issues. The system should know if someone has psychological issues, even those not law enforcement related, but we have to create a system that secures that information to HIPAA guidelines so that doctors and hospitals will be willing to follow a regulation that requires them to put a patient's name into the system so they can't buy a gun. And it must be a closed system, ONLY accessible for weapons checks.

• Require a weapons license, just like a driver's license. Pass a written test that shows you know the laws regarding what you can and cannot do with your weapon, and a physical test that shows you know how to handle a weapon. If you do this once, you never have to do it again, the license follows you for life as proof of weapons competency, unless you are convicted of a crime that revokes the right to have a weapons license.

• Just like a vehicle, guns should come with a title of purchase. You should have to notify the registry agency of a gun sale by turning in a transfer of title, a process that should be streamlined to be handled online. You should be required to confirm that you sold the gun to a licensed purchaser, and provide the purchaser's name. The agency then contacts the purchaser via encrypted email to confirm the purchase and transfer of ownership. This information would be available to law enforcement, as a means of absolving the previous owner of any connection to, or responsibility for, any crimes committed with that weapon after the date of transfer, unless it can be proven that the weapon was reacquired by the previous owner without notification.

• All NFA regulations already in effect, as well as those involving Title II weapons. Miltary-style design weapons, such as the AR-15, should be added to the Title II list. I know the backlash here. But the reality is that people focus on the rifles being "semi-automatic" as the problem. That is a red herring argument. Most guns are semi-automatic these days, including most handguns. The real problem with weapons like the AR-15 is the power and range. Handguns, with their short barrels, do not have the effective range of military-style rifles. That's the exact reason the military uses such weapons in the first place. Even a hunting rifle with the same caliber ammunition is typically not carrying a magazine that can hold up to 100 rounds. The magazine capacity, combined with the effective range, combined with the semi-automatic capability typical in most weapons nowadays, are why civilians should not have access to them. This is not an unprecedented philosophy. We banned civilian access to machine guns, like the M16, in the 1980s. Well, the AR-15 is an M16. It's just been stripped of certain features, like selective fire (the ability to switch between semi-automatic, fully-automatic, and burst fire), so manufacturers could sell the weapon to civilians. And AR-15s were originally banned in Bill Clinton's Assault Weapons Ban in 1994. The weapons only became legal because the ban expired in 2004. So this is not a revolutionary argument. These are military weapons, and no civilian has a justifiable reason to have them. If the weapon, and all iterations of the kind, are added to the Title II list, there is no expiration.

These are just the basics. Even with these in place, we still have no way of guaranteeing the emotional capability of trained and licensed gun owners to react properly, to know when and when not to pull their weapon, to hold fire to protect innocent people from getting hurt instead of opening fire with adrenaline feeding it (the "cowboy effect"). We need to know that the people who buy weapons know how to use them, and know the laws governing them. And we need to know that weapons are not being bought and sold at will with no oversight as to who has them. Gun owners like to point to mental issues being addressed. But if we have no mechanism for knowing if someone has sold their weapon to someone with mental issues, it becomes a moot point.

And no matter what Wayne LaPierre says, no one is coming for your guns. This has been a common tactic by the gun lobby and manufacturers to stoke fear of government-turning-Gestapo, and they reap huge power and profits from such fear. Profits from gun sales exploded when Obama was elected president, because the race for your guns was on, and just a matter of when, not if. President Obama has never indicated, or even implied, that such a confiscation was even considered, let alone planned. And no president going forward will either, there are simply too many guns out there for that to be practical. But if the black market can be dealt with, most gun owners would not have a problem with common sense regulation. Having said that, you do not get to claim a standard that all law abiders who respect their weapons would already follow, yet leave the rest of it open to the criminals. And when the government itself feeds the criminal market, there is no respect to be had with the "do as I say, not as I do" argument.