Bang Bang

What was almost funny (for want of a better term) to me in the aftermath of the Sandy Hook shooting was how some people kept saying “it’s not the time” to talk about gun control but everyone else ignored those people and talked about gun control anyway. The people who didn’t want to talk about gun control after the shooting will never want to talk about gun control. They’re hoping people will keep quiet during the mourning period (because as 20 parents buried their first graders during Christmas, God forbid America had to endure the monumental faux pas of a conversation about how to spare another 20 parents from burying their kids) and when anyone brings up gun control after the first mourning period expires, more shootings occur in public places and the mourning periods overlap and it’s never polite to raise one’s voice above a whisper about guns. Of course, you are right if you said it’s not the time to talk about gun control. The time to talk about sane solutions for keeping guns from insane people was years ago.

Rather than trying to repeal the Second Amendment, I think we should put public pressure on gun manufacturers and retailers to limit the manufacture and sale of guns and ammunition that are designed in quantities only made for killing people. This would respect the rights of responsible gun owners who want simple revolvers to protect their families against intruders and would be an extra-Constitutional means of keeping guns away from people who would shoot up schools or movie theaters.

Not many people talk about the gun companies in general or the way those companies profit indirectly from gun massacres. Whenever there’s a Sandy Hook or Aurora shooting, some National Rifle Association members freak out that Obama is coming for their guns and they run to buy more guns and ammo. (It was always odd to me that people assumed Obama would take their guns because through his whole first term, I don’t remember him saying one word about restricting Second Amendment rights.) I saw some data that gun sales did rise after Newtown. Why not pressure such companies that have made a ton of money after some nut used their products in such horrifying fashion?

I understand that the Supreme Court has interpreted the Second Amendment as an individual right to own firearms. But just because someone has a right to arms, that doesn’t mean it has to be easy for them to acquire submachine guns that can hold large quantities of ammo without reloading. There should be public pressure on such manufacturers not to make such insane weapons available to the general public. This would not violate the amendment. You’d still have the right to high-level firearms but they would be rare and that would hopefully keep them away from the crazy and/or evil. Arms would undoubtedly still fall into the hands of mass murderers but isn’t it worth trying this before we just declare that it will fail?

I liken this to the First Amendment’s protection of art some people find offensive. You have the right to watch a movie with the vilest filth imaginable but that doesn’t mean every movie theater has to carry that movie. You just have to search out that content. Just because the Constitution gives you the right to something, that doesn’t mean everyone has to lay out the red carpet to give you the easiest possible access to it.

We could also pressure retailers to put policies in place to deter potential mass murderers from getting hold of guns. This would also respect the Second Amendment because it wouldn’t be a law that would bar certain people from guns — it would be Wal-Mart’s policy. It’s like how a 10-year-old has a First Amendment right to play a violent video game but game manufacturers have voluntary rating systems to discourage that, all due to societal pressure.

I read a lot of commentary during the gun debate by people who reflexively said, “No, that won’t work” when anyone proposed any gun control of any type. How do we know these things won’t work? After watching elementary school kids led with their eyes closed past the bodies of their classmates, don’t you think it might be worth, you know, giving gun control a shot?