I’ve been thinking a lot about the Connecticut shooting (et al.), but not doing a lot of actually table-pounding posting about it because, aside from inarticulate wails of grief, there’s not a lot simple, straightforward, concrete to say to try and fix what caused this.
Because, sadly, there is no silver bullet (so to speak) for the problem of gun violence in America. None that are practical, either logistically or politically or socially, at least — because short of a massive confiscation of all firearms and a massive effort to police same, we’re not going to get rid of guns in America. And as tempting as that kind of grand gesture might be, I suspect the harm and disrupti0n from it would outweigh the good.
But I don’t accept that we simply shrug and give up, or treat this tragedy as just the price of having a Sacred Second Amendment. Saying “We can’t get rid of guns” or “No solution fixes the whole problem” doesn’t mean there isn’t stuff we can do to nibble around the edges, and look for ways over time to reduce gun violence to levels that might even begin to approximate those of the civilized world. That might reduce the blood that guns produce.
(Americans love cars. Lots of people die in car accidents. Getting rid of cars is impractical. So do we just shrug and accept the carnage? No. We’ve actually substantially reduced car deaths. How? Through car safety regulations. Through building safer roads. Through socially combating some of the behaviors that lead to auto accidents, like drunk driving and under-age driving and road rage. Do people still die? Yes. But fewer do. That’s hopeful, and a hopeful model.)
First, we have to define what it is we want to combat. Street crime with guns? Shooting sprees by madmen? Hunting deaths? Gang-banging? Accidental shootings? Armed robbery? Militia zanies? Kids getting ahold of guns? Assassination? All of these have widely different modalities, different weapons, different means of acquiring weapons, different targets, different ways that different approaches would affect them. We tend to conflate them — “gang bangers have guns!” vs “that crazy guy had guns!” vs. “those guys in that compound up in the hills have guns!” — but to tackle any of them requires different approaches.
That the debate is being driven by one of the least common form of gun violence — crazy guy shooting spree — doesn’t help the debate be held rationally (“You can’t do anything to stop crazy guys with guns because the gang-bangers will still get guns!” and “We need to get guns out of the hands of gang-bangers so that crazy guy will stop shooting up our schools and movie theaters!” are both unhelpful.)
All of this is made further difficult by the arguably legitimate reasons people own guns, from self-defense to recreational shooting to legal hunting to “I have the right to do so under the Constitution”. Each of those groups are affected different ways by different solutions to illegal / illegitimate / deadly gun use.
One could write a book (as hundreds have) on how to tackle the overall gun problem, with the understanding that any one suggestion is going to affect different _parts_ of the problem (or different of the problems, depending on how you want to look at it) in different ways. But here are some things that _I_ feel are legitimate actions, none of which will solve the problem but all of which might have some effect:
1. Less Deadly Guns. The infamous Assault Weapon Ban, as previously in place and as proposed to be reinstated, are not terribly helpful, as (from what I’ve been able to glean) they focus in mostly on cosmetics (see here for more). “Eek! It looks like a deadly machine gun army rifle thing!” If you want to make new weapons sold less lethal (for gang banging or shooting spree purposes, let’s say), then look at caliber and muzzle velocity, and perhaps barrel length as a factor. How easy it is to modify for illegal purposes (e.g., to make full automatic) might be considered, though that’s more difficult to objectively define. Having a serious discussion about what bullets can be manufactured and sold to the public would also be worthwhile. Limiting clip size would probably help, too.
These things wouldn’t affect the ability to hunt. They wouldn’t keep people from defending themselves from intruders. They wouldn’t even appreciably reduce the ability of the Common Citizen to Resist the Tyranny of the Evil Government Tyrants. But they might make it less likely that someone could kill a bunch of people (or even one person) quite as quickly and easily.
And, yes, doing something about new weapons sold doesn’t resolve the problems of older, already-sold weapons. We could try a national buy-back, to reduce a few from circulation, but they are out there in the wild. All we can do is change things from here.
And, yes, dedicated gun folks will hand-craft their own bullets, or build their own extended clips. Or maybe even sell them to others in a black market. And, yes, we can put penalties on that and try to prosecute, but some will still get out there. But fewer than now.
Again, none of this is a perfect solution, but we can’t let the perfect be the enemy of the good.
2. Monitor Purchasers. Everyone agrees we want to keep guns out of the hands of bad people — bad-nasty or bad-crazy. The only way to do this is by imposing meaningful restrictions on the purchase of weapons — mandatory background checks that include criminal record and mental health records. That may mean a waiting period, too. And it means requiring such reporting from all institutions that could provide it, not making it optional, or only if a state chooses to fund it, or whatever.
(And, heck, limiting the frequency / quantities of gun purchases is probably not a bad idea I’m hard-pressed to think of why someone would legitimately need to buy more than one gun in a given day, for example. Whereas I can think of a lot of illegitimate reasons.)
It also means that the only ones who can legally sell guns have to have a federal license, one of the conditions of which is being able to provide such checks, and keeping records showing that the checks were made. And that includes some way of dealing with such checks by Internet sales (and if there’s no practical way to do that, then such sales have to be illegal). And it means no gun show loopholes or private sales of firearms. And if that’s inconvenient, tough. (I suspect that “gun sale brokers” will pop up to support such business, which is fine, as long as the checks are made.)
Again, folks will dodge this, even if it’s illegal to do so. But it will reduce the number of known felons or people with dangerous mental illness from getting guns — not eliminate them (and not solve all crime violence), but it will help.
And what about the person who desperately needs a gun right now because they feel like they are in danger and the police can do nothing about it? I don’t know. If we can do some sort of instant checking, great. If not, then we balance that person’s safety vs. the safety of those endangered by a criminal or mentally ill person being able to get a gun right now.
As an alternative, or even addendum, I think we could probably constitutionally justify a federal firearms license (as part of that “well-regulated militia” clause in the Second Amendment). Getting such might create more uniformity in permitting between the states, and let the background check thing be simplified, if you could set up a system to then use that for instant check validation. And, yes, this will have some conspiracy-minded folks getting all paranoid about the Feds knowing who has guns, etc. To which I say, tough.
The goal here is not to prevent gun sales. The goal is to try and reduce the number of avenues that folks who should not legally have guns can get them. That will cause inconvenience to those who are legally allowed to buy guns — but that’s no different than the inconvenience of queueing up to show your ticket before you go into a concert, rather than letting everyone in and letting security figure out who didn’t buy a ticket.
3. Improving Mental Health Care. It’s way too easy to demonize the mentally ill and pretend They are not Us. But we need to do something about mental health diagnosis and treatment in this country. We’ve spent the last forty years trying to save money by shutting down state-owned residential mental health facilities (some of which were crap, some of which weren’t), and the results are not good by anyone’s measure. The provisions of the ACA that prevent mental health treatment from having different costs and deductibles and caps than physical health treatment is a fantastic start, but we need to be much more proactive about trying to find, and treat, people with mental and emotional problems.
And, yes, that will cost money. And, yes, that does run the risk of Horrible Tyrannical Government Types Sending Dissidents Off To The Gulag. But the alternative — what we have now — seems to be costing us much more, and raising much higher risks.
4. Moderating the Culture of Violence. Singling out violent video games or movies as promoting a culture of violence seems to me backward. Instead, we have a culture of violence that makes it profitable to produce violent video games and movies.
How do we get around that? By patience and insistence and social (not legal) pressure. The same way we’ve been slowly working on animal experimentation, or (fill in the blank) discrimination, or drunk driving, or any number of other social campaigns where people said, “This is not acceptable, and I will not only not tolerate this for myself, but I will exert social pressure for change in others.” It means responsible parenting (including “No, because last time you were over at Fred’s after school you played ‘Double-Tap to the Head 2012’ on the PlayStation, and that’s no more acceptable than if you were drinking beer when there, so no going over to Fred’s”). It means pressure on friends and colleagues (“Gee, Suze, You liked that movie? I decided it really felt like it was cheapening human life, so I decided I wasn’t going to see it”). It means changing hearts and minds.
The goal is not to get rid of violent video games or movies. Those are a symptom, a sign of what people like and want. The goal should be a culture and society were they are not seen as fun and entertaining, where most people don’t think ultra-violence is an acceptable thing to play with or view.
Which is why legislation is not terribly productive here, since it’s such a subjective measurement. Plus is not an organic change, but an imposed one.
And, again, this will never be perfect (because it will never be fully agreed what is or should be acceptable). But consider what was once tolerated movie fare — or social behavior — that is no longer socially tolerated (and thus no longer commercially pandered to by the media). Slapping your wife. A three-martini lunch. Movies in blackface.
If people are concerned that a culture of violence is leading to certain types of (gun) violence, then let’s change the culture. And cultures can only be changed from within.
5. Shaping the Culture of Guns. I don’t believe “an armed society is a polite society” (see DOF’s take on this idea from while back). I’d rather us strive for a society where guns are like abortions — safe, legal, and rare. To that end, I don’t think it’s useful to throw armed security guards everywhere or encourage the citizenry to get their CCLs and tote around firearms to safeguard the public in case a shooting takes place. Guns — in particular being armed with them — should not be normal, but an exception.
Something similar can be said about the culture of “guns as macho empowerment”. If we are going to have guns in people’s hands — and we are — then the sentiments of what seem to be sane, responsible gun owners — that guns are a useful tool that’s very dangerous, sort of like fire, so treat them with respect, don’t play with them, don’t take chances with them, make sure they are put away securely, etc. — need to be what we try to inculcate as an attitude toward firearms. People who swagger about with guns, or who consider their gun to be an extension of their personal potency and agency as an individual, need to be considered objects of scorn and derision, not admiration and respect.
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There’s a lot above that people aren’t going to like. But I think it’s all doable, and constitutional, and, again, that it will help overall reduce (not eliminate) the number and lethality of guns in the hands of folks who are looking to use them to bad ends. Which, I hope, we all think is a good goal.