Brady Board member and gun control activist Joan Peterson deserves credit for trying to engage in dialog, rather than dodge. I am not prepared to declare Reasoned DiscourseTM at this point. Her latest post is clearly an attempt to try to understand our point of view. She asks a series of questions, so I will do my best to answer them. Note that I speak for me, not for the entire gun community, but there are certainly those out there who share these views. Twenty questions is a lot, so this is going to go long. Bear with me.
1. Do you believe that criminals and domestic abusers should be able to buy guns without background checks?
I believe it’s perfectly constitutional for the state to strip the rights of citizens who have been convicted or adjudicated through due process of law, of violent crimes, and this can include their right to bear arms.
2. What is your proposal for keeping guns away from criminals, domestic abusers, terrorists and dangerously mentally ill people?
3. Do you believe that a background check infringes on your constitutional right to “keep and bear arms”?
I’m going to answer these together, because they are kind of the same. I think the government can take reasonable means to keep firearms out of criminal hands, but my definition of reasonable is vastly different than the Brady definition of reasonable. I don’t believe background checks are facially unconstitutional, but they could be, depending on how the system is being administered. What if the system that does the checks is down for two weeks? The key to reasonable is whether it’s imposing a substantial burden on the right, and whether there’s a less burdensome way of accomplishing the goal. Making it difficult to frustrate the exercise of the right should not be constitutional.
I could also envision a system where licensing could actually be less burdensome than all these background checks, and commercial restrictions on sales and transfer. But the Brady folks would never accept such a system, because the licenses would have to be freely available, for nearly no charge to anyone who was eligible to possess a firearm. Think fishing licenses that you can get at Wal-Mart, except good for life, and for all future purchases.
4. Do you believe that I and people with whom I work intend to ban your guns?
Absolutely. If they could find a way. The people you work with tried to argue DC’s gun ban was constitutional. Anyone who says no is either kidding themselves, or trying to pull the wool over everyone’s eyes. If Brady weren’t in favor of banning guns they never would have filed an amicus supporting DC’s position. Maybe you don’t want to ban guns, but then you’d need to explain why DC’s position is tenable, and why the organization who’s board you are on shares their position.
5. If yes to #4, how do you think that could happen ( I mean the physical action)?
How did it happen in DC and Chicago? How did it they confiscate a bunch of long guns after they made semi-autos illegal in New York City? How did they manage it after Katrina?
6. What do you think are the “second amendment remedies” that the tea party GOP candidate for Senate in Nevada( Sharron Angle) has proposed?
7. Do you believe in the notion that if you don’t like what someone is doing or saying, second amendment remedies should be applied?
Most anyone who has been following this blog for any period of time knows that I think “second amendment remedies” are a very last resort, against a criminally illegitimate government. I don’t think they have any place in our current political climate. We are still free to advocate for and vote our government out of power and elect a new one, as you’re going to see come November.
8. Do you believe it is O.K. to call people with whom you disagree liars and demeaning names?
9. If yes to #8, would you do it in a public place to the person’s face?
Welcome to the Internet. If you think being on my side makes you immune, you haven’t been interacting with folks on Al’s Internet very long. Remember this rule. This one is also very useful for Internet debate. This is more true than any of us care to admit. Thick skin helps.
10. Do you believe that any gun law will take away your constitutional rights?
I’m not an absolutist on the issue. Some gun control is constitutional, but obviously much of it is questionable, especially in states that have laws which are outliers. Many of California’s laws, for instance, are probably going to be unconstitutional. New Jersey and Massachusetts will have a lot of explaining to do too.
11. Do you believe in current gun laws? Do you think they are being enforced? If not, explain.
I do not believe that any gun law is effective at keeping guns laws out of criminal hands, or at least not effective enough to warrant the restrictions it means for the law abiding. Criminals are resourceful, and guns are a part of their line of business, which often involves trading in other contraband products. They will get guns. Are they enforced? That depends on whether you have something that will cause the police to plea bargain away the gun charge. If you don’t, because you’re otherwise law abiding, I would expect enforcement. If you mean do gun laws get enforced against criminals? Then no, they don’t. We keep saying this is an actual problem, and you guys keep suggesting more laws, or more enforcement on legal channels, rather than criminal traffickers.
12. Do you believe that all law-abiding citizens are careful with their guns and would never shoot anybody?
The vast majority, yes, and the vast majority would never shoot someone except in self-defense. This is, I suspect, the key difference between you and me. I believe that most people will do the right thing most of the time, and can be trusted with dangerous objects. Obviously, there are people out there who are too irresponsible to have guns but who are nonetheless eligible to own them. I think that number is a) small, and b) there’s no good way of identifying those people without making a default assumption that everyone is irresponsible.
13. Do you believe that people who commit suicide with a gun should be included in the gun statistics?
No. Many societies who restrict guns heavily have much much higher suicide rates than the US. Suicide can tear families apart, but the only thing gun control accomplishes is reducing the number of suicides by gun. In Japan, jumping in front of trains is common enough that there are often rail delays caused by it. To me, suicide is a private matter. It’s not something we ought to be make public policy for, other than to facilitate suicidal people finding help. Any public policy aimed at reducing suicide through control of dangerous objects will infantalize the population. That path doesn’t have a happy ending for a free society.
14. Do you believe that accidental gun deaths should “count” in the total numbers?
Counting accidents is fine, but you should make sure when you say “children” they are actually children. It’s also a serious omission to not mention that gun accidents have been declining for years, largely through education efforts.
15. Do you believe that sometimes guns, in careless use or an accident, can shoot a bullet without the owner or holder of the gun pulling the trigger?
No modern firearm will do this. There are some older, less well made firearms that can go off if dropped, but that number is pretty small. Note that this is not a reason to ban them. Many of them are collectors items. Many of them are the only means of defense poor people can afford. There’s no gun that’s inherently dangerous, that if handled with care, will just go off. Some guns just have to be handled with a bit more care.
16. Do you believe that 30,000 gun deaths a year is too many?
Only about 16,000 of those are homicide, and some of those are justifiable. See previous point about suicides. As for the homicides, legalizing drugs would do more to bring down that number than gun control ever would.
17. How will you help to prevent more shootings in this country?
I’ll continue to advocate that cities like Philadelphia lock up violent criminals and impose harsh sentences. That currently doesn’t happen, as I’ve demonstrated repeatedly on this blog. You can’t bring violent crime doing without getting violent criminals off the street. The left’s solution is to leave them out there, and turn the whole country into a low level prison.
18. Do you believe the articles that I have posted about actual shootings or do you think I am making them up or that human interest stories about events that have happened should not count when I blog about gun injuries and deaths?
I think the stories you post are completely legitimate, but your solution to the problem will accomplish nothing. You can’t make all the guns already out there disappear, and even if you could, they aren’t hard to make. Your basic semi-automatic pistol is a 100 year old design at this point. A gun can be made in a garage with the right machine tools, and that’s exactly what criminals are doing in countries where guns are very restricted, and there isn’t an existing stock of illegal guns to keep drawing from.
19. There has been some discussion of the role of the ATF here. Do you believe the ATF wants your guns and wants to harass you personally? If so, provide examples ( some have written a few that need to be further examined).
Getting into the problems with how ATF administers the gun laws is too big a topic for this discussion here. I am not as knee jerk anti-ATF as many gun people. A lot of the issue is that our gun laws are an absolute mess, often completely nonsensical, and difficult to make work when they meet reality. This is Congress’ fault. That said, ATF does a remarkably poor job of interpreting and administering them, and has chosen to use policy, often varying that policy from case to case, rather than using federal regulations, which are much ore stringent. The famous example is the Akins Accelerator, which ATF said was not a machine gun, so Akins started selling them. Then they changed their minds and said it was a machine gun, making everyone who bought one criminals. It’s not always easy to say what’s a machine gun legally, but there ought to be unchanging policy on how to evaluate such things, and it ought to be handled through administrative procedure rather than policy that can change at a whim, depending on who’s looking it it. But as I said, this is a big topic.
20. Will you continue a reasonable discussion towards an end that might lead somewhere or is this an exercise in futility?
It’s probably an exercise in futility. We’re starting from vastly different assumptions about our fellow citizens, and about our constitutional structure. You’ve also had a loved one murdered with a firearm, whereas I have not. My tragedy in life was losing my mother to cancer when I was twenty and she was forty three. I currently work in the Pharmaceutical business in the hopes that maybe I’ll contribute to something that will prevent other people from going through what my mother went through. I understand the grief driven desire to do something good, and trying to make a loss something other than senseless and tragic. But it’s difficult for me to understand trying to do that by trying to take choices away from people. I wouldn’t try to ban or restrict fatty foods, ban alcohol and tobacco use, and mandate people eat less and exercise, all of which would certainly reduce people’s risk of cancer. You’re trying to restrict people choices, choices their constitution tells them are a fundamental human right, and I’m not even sure in the end it’s going to accomplish what you think. You can’t eliminate all tragedy. I’m not even sure if you could, it could be done without fundamentally altering what it is to be human. The only thing dialog helps is understanding where the other is coming from. At the end of the day, even if you understand each other, you just have to agree to disagree.