A Modest Gun Control Proposal No One Will Love

(Credit: Peretz Partensky, Flickr Creative Commons)

It never fails.

Whenever there is an outcry for change, there are always some who oppose that change who attempt to silence the outcry by demanding a detailed plan for change from those calling for it.

It’s an incredibly weak, yet sometimes surprisingly effective attempt at maintaining the status quo.

Of course, having a plan for achieving the desired change is a great, if not essential thing to have. But one need not have a detailed plan for change in order to speak out against the travesties empowered by the status quo. To imply as much is to actively contribute to systematic injustice.

Such is the case with gun control.

Another tragedy happens, another outcry comes demanding change, and more than a handful of anti-gun control folks attempt to deflect the obvious need for action by silencing the grieving with demands for a perfect plan.

I don’t have such a plan.

What I do have are some broad ideas which I offer not because I think they’re a perfect solution for the plague of gun violence destroying our country – in particular our children – or because I think my proposal is necessarily the best proposal I’ve heard to date.

Far from it.

That’s why I titled this post the way I did. My ideas aren’t revolutionary, they’re not exhaustive, they’re not the sort of dramatic change some are demanding, and while I hope some will like my ideas, due at least in part to their compromising nature, I’m sure few will love them.

But I think compromise is the only path forward. As my favorite Civil War historian once said when describing the start of the war, “[The war began] because we failed to do the thing we really have a genius for, which is compromise. Americans like to think of themselves as uncompromising. Our true genius is for compromise. Our whole government’s founded on it. And, it failed.”

There is an increasingly popular notion, particular amongst conservative leadership in Washington, that being uncompromising is somehow inherently virtuous. Perhaps it is in some instances, such as the demand for justice or equality, but there is nothing virtuous in refusing to compromise simply for the sake of being able to label oneself uncompromising. It’s that sort of juvenile mindset that in large part has our federal government in such an utter mess.

I believe it’s also that sort of refusal to compromise – from both sides – that, in part, keeps us from passing any form of new gun control legislation that will make our country a safer place.

Likewise, I believe another large hurdle on the path the peace is the misconception that the call for better control is a call to ban all guns. Certainly that is true for some and I understand that the fact that there are gun laws in place would lead some gun owners to believe that the next logical step is an outright ban of all firearms. But while I am utterly convinced that the laws we have in place now are simply not adequate (even when enforced), I am not proposing a total ban of firearms.

So what is my modest proposal for better gun control that no one will love?

Here it is….

I believe we need to begin with universal background checks. The so-called “gun show loophole” must be closed. Those seeking to commit an act of violence against their neighbors should not be able to legally skirt the law by purchasing their instrument of death on the secondary market.

Not super controversial so far, but here’s where I’m sure I’ll lose a lot of gun owners: While I have no problem with hunters keeping their rifles and shotguns at home (likewise for those involved in competitive shooting), I propose requiring all hand guns and military style rifles be kept at a gun range or other similar third-party location where they can be enjoyed at any time, but not used impulsive to kill others whether intentionally or by accident.

To me, this would accomplish several things. First, it would make our homes safer. For all the rhetoric about “gun free zones” it is an indisputable fact that having a gun in your home makes you more likely to be a victim of gun violence, not less. And, no, a good guy with a gun is not the only thing that will stop a bad guy with a gun. Better legislation that would keep the gun out of the bad guy’s hands in the first place will also stop a bad guy with a gun in a much safer and widespread way.

Second, keeping not-intended-for-hunting firearms somewhere other than home would prevent the sort of arsenal building that has made too many mass shootings far too easy to accomplish. Sure, people could build their arsenal at the range where they hypothetically store their weapons, but third party storage would make it much more difficult for someone to build an arsenal and use it to commit a crime totally undetected.

Third, over time, as fewer and fewer guns are found in the home and thus (hopefully) become less and less a part of our daily life, I believe our gun and violence obsessed culture would slowly begin to erode. It may be wishful thinking and our propensity towards violence may never go away, but the less guns are a part of our everyday lives, the more likely we are as a culture to stop turning towards them as the cure for all our fears and instead begin imagining alternative paths to peace.

That said, neither I nor Obama would be coming for your guns under my hypothetical plan.

In my plan, folks who already legally own guns – whether for hunting or otherwise – would be grandfather in. In other words, they would be allowed to keep them and even pass them on to their children ad infinitum. Mandatory storage at a gun range or similar location wouldn’t begin until some point in the future, say a year after such hypothetical legislation was passed. Any new guns from that point on would have to be stored elsewhere other than the home, but previous gun owners could get there guns at home like they always have.

This is where a lot of the compromise comes into my plan.

It’s a long-term goal, not a short term solution. It doesn’t remove guns from our society immediately or even in the future completely because I don’t think that is possible in the United States. But I believe such a plan does offer a path towards a safer, less violent society.

Now, of course, such storage would require the building of new facilities as well as the accompanying overhead costs of long-term storage for both gun and gun range owner. However, I believe both of these cost could be covered through a combination of tax incentives and government subsidies. I fully admit that I find the idea of the government subsidizing the cost of caring for our guns to be ridiculous, but we live in a ridiculous time where individuals have near unfettered access to weapons that can kill dozens of their neighbors in mere seconds with just the twitch of a finger. If it requires government funding to begin changing our gun obsessed culture and government assistance to keep handguns and military style rifles where they can be safely enjoyed instead of easily accessed to kill others, then that’s something I’m more than willing to support.

Besides, such a mass undertaking would require a ton of new construction and new infrastructure and that means new jobs and new money being pumped into the economy. That’s not so bad, right?

Like I said at the beginning of this post, this isn’t a perfect plan and I have no doubt there will be plenty of folks who hate it and think it’s ridiculous. And I’m sure I’ll get pushback about how this still won’t keep guns out of the hands of criminals and how it doesn’t address mental health issues. To which I say, it’s true we can never completely ensure that guns never make it into the hands of criminals. However, time and time and time again, the people committing mass shootings weren’t criminals before they pulled the trigger. They bought there guns legally because the laws we have in place now simply don’t work. Likewise, while it is true that some mass shooters have suffered from various mental illness issues, trying to dismiss the nationwide epidemic of gun violence as nothing more than a mental health issue is simply not accurate.

No matter where you stand on gun control, something has to change.

More of the same is simply not acceptable when more of the same means more death.

But change will not come until we are willing to compromise enough to imagine a way forward.

By no means am I claiming to offer the best way forward, but I do believe that a combination of universal background checks and fundamentally reimagining gun ownership could effect real change in our country through a compromise that allows current guns owners to keep their guns while moving a good chunk of future gun ownership out of the home. Allowing hunting rifles and shotguns to stay at home would still offer the sense of protection many in our country crave. While, removing the sorts of weapons commonly (though admittedly not exclusively) used in mass shootings and gun violence in general (i.e. handguns and military style rifles) from everyday life and (gradually) eliminating the ability to stockpile massive arsenals could together go a long way towards fundamentally changing our gun obsessed and violence prone society by eventually teaching all of us how to live without so many perfectly designed instruments of death at our beck and call.

I don’t expect everyone to agree with either my plan or my stance on gun control in general, but I do believe that all of us – gun owner and gun opponent alike – desperately want a safer country, even if we disagree on how to make that happen.

I share my ideas here, not because I think I’m right and everyone else is wrong, but simply because I am asked continually what I would do in response to the epidemic of gun violence plaguing our country and I want to put my ideas out there for anyone who was wondering.

But they’re just that: my ideas.

Well, “mine” in so much as I agree with what other people have thought up already.

That said, I’m curious to know what you think. How would you suggest we go about trying to prevent the seemingly never-ending string of mass shootings and maybe…one day…hopefully break our country’s addiction to violence?

Let me know in the comments section.

Just do me one favor: be respectful of other folk’s ideas.

Unless they start suggesting we ban bacon. In that case, you have my permission to ridicule their nonsense.