Recent tragic multi-death shootings in America have served
to showcase America’s love affair with guns and have elicited the emotional
response to legislate stricter gun controls, if not to eliminate firearms
ownership in America altogether (perhaps requiring a Constitutional Amendment).
CNN dedicated much effort to comparing guns per citizen in
America to other countries. They even interviewed American gun enthusiasts,
attempting to establish that all Americans are “gun crazy” and live in an “old
West,” cowboy fantasy world of “shoot first, ask questions later.” Perhaps a
few do…
With freedom, especially the kind Americans enjoy, comes
increased opportunity for aberrant behavior. Crime flourishes when the counter
forces are weak or tolerant. Crime can be heavily suppressed when civil
liberties are suppressed (think Nazi Germany and Stalinist Russia). Not many of
us would vote for that!
The American Constitution allows, if not encourages,
American citizens to protect their country and themselves by bearing firearms. It’s
simply impossible for armed police and security agents to protect all citizenry
from insane, aggravated or terrorist attacks. If only bad guys have guns, the
security balance is unfavorable to the good guys.
To repeat an old cliche, “Guns don’t kill; people do.” If
someone decides to kill, he or she will use whatever weapon is available: gun,
knife, poison, rock, poison gas, radiation, explosives, etc. Certainly, if guns
are readily available and accessible, they will be used more frequently because
of their lethality, ease of use, accuracy and range. The question that screams
for answering is “Why would someone want to kill another in the first place?”
People were murdered long before there were guns. Weapons
evolved from sticks and stones to knives, spears, arrows, each more
sophisticated and lethal than the last. Why did lethality develop so
efficiently and rapidly? The easy answers are security, aggression, deterrence,
etc. I submit that humans developed weapons to facilitate their need for
dominance.
Let’s briefly explore “dominance.” Since dominance is a
subset of ego, it’s no real surprise that most mass killers are male. Expanding
the concept of “my father can lick your father” to extremes, we try to dominate
others politically, socially and religiously. “Honor” races forward as an
excuse for even killing one’s own children. Conflicts, like the Hatfield and
McCoy feud (still smoldering?), pit honor and dominance above all else; even
human life. Killing has become a shortcut to achieving dominance, replacing
tolerance, negotiation and compromise. This transition has intensified as we
increasingly lose our respect for animal, especially human, life. (It’s no
accident that we’re hunting or displacing one animal specie after another into
extinction.)
We can’t, and shouldn’t, legislate morals. Murder is illegal
because it attacks the rules of order, the rights to life and the rights to
security. Whether murder is sinful is not a case for the courts. Moral strength
is important to the survival of any country, but it must come from the culture,
the family and the religious sectors. I submit that all three of these sectors
are complicit in the violence that rages in America (and other parts of the
world).
If all of the world’s guns were eliminated, murder would
still prosper; albeit more slowly. We have become a folk of resorting to
violence, often mortal violence, as the first solution. We tend to kill
ourselves and others for insignificant reasons or we exaggerate our
circumstance so that killing becomes a “logical” solution (racism, jihadism).
Imagine the paradox of killing someone so we can be rewarded by God in heaven.
Unless, there are major changes to how we think and how we
raise our children, the carnage will continue. If we can learn to respect life
and tolerate difference in our fellow humans, we will have begun the healing
process. We can keep our guns under those circumstances, or not. It wouldn’t
matter.
I am confident, however, that we can improve gun control, if
only to prevent some killings resulting from passion, insanity, and radicalism
and coupled with easily accessible and efficient killing weapons. The cost of
effective and consistent control will be expensive and must be largely carried
by gun owners themselves; hence, the taxes on gun sales and ownership.
Consider
a few possible solutions:
·
Raise the minimum age to purchase and
conceal-carry weapons (to 25?);
·
At buyer’s expense, perform a National Agency
Check for all gun buyers (this assumes
that all national law enforcement agencies exchange information); any negative,
including juvenile infractions, would trigger a prohibition to gun ownership;
·
Prohibit gun ownership for all who have violated
any gun regulation;
·
Require all gun buyers to complete a short
psychological survey to be reviewed by a professional not under the influence
of the gun seller (FBI?);
·
Prohibit gun sales to anyone who is taking
certain medications, especially to control psychotic or emotional issues;
require a doctor’s attest to support a waiver;
·
Require strict gun registrations to be
maintained by a central national agency (the FBI?). Create a nationwide
database accessible to all law enforcement agencies.
·
Place a high federal tax on new and used gun
sales (50% and 30% respectively?);
·
Place an annual federal flat tax on each
registered gun (eg. $100);
·
Substantially increase penalties and fines for
possessing an illegal weapon (citizens and sellers);
·
Make registered gun owners fully responsible for
how their guns are used. They must report stolen guns prior to the commission
of a crime;
·
Pace heavy penalties on gun owners who allow a
gun to fall into the hands of a juvenile or person otherwise not authorized to
own a gun;
·
Place enforcement and administration of gun
controls on local police with FBI oversight;
·
Make ownership of any weapon capable of automatic
fire illegal;
·
Limit the number of registered guns in a
household to one handgun, one shotgun and one rifle per adult family member who
is living at the residence (not for each adult family member);
·
Restrict hunting licenses to only those with
registered weapons relative to the game to be hunted. Check registration before
issuing the hunting license.
·
Require a proficiency firing range test per gun
owned for all gun owners every five years;
