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The Approach to Guns and Government

There are two basic ways to protect ourselves from guns: who owns them and the types they can own.

How we approach gun laws is a reflection of how we approach government. The standard line from conservatives about government is that they want small government, limited government, drownable-in-a-bathtub government. The background to their zeal is the idea that citizens must be protected from the dangers of government, and the key to protecting us is to keep government as weak and small as possible.

Of course, conservatives discredit the position by going big on military spending, on law enforcement and prisons, and on forcing pseudo-Christianity on everyone by government mandates against abortion, against gay and transgender people, and so on. But it’s a position that can be examined separately from their failures to steward it.

The rules to protect society against weapons, or against anything, can be broken down along the same lines as protecting against bad government. You can seek to shrink the quantum of harm posed, as conservatives claim to want to do with government.

In the case of guns, that would mean rules to limit ammo capacity and type, rates of fire, ease of use (concealability, mechanism of firing, etc.). You shrink the guns down so they don’t pose the same level of threat even if they are broadly available.

The other argument is that government shouldn’t necessarily be small, but it should be run by people of good character, and we should do more to ensure that we elect and appoint people who have the national interest at heart. This is what Democrats try to run on. They try to appeal to reason and sanity, compassion and science.

Of course, it can be hard to detect bad actors, as the wolf disguises itself as a sheep. But that’s the other method: ensure that people are educated and wise and that they will not try to be abusive jerks.

And again, in the case of guns, you have that other way of making them safer: background checks, licensing requirements including training and safety classes. You add red flag laws and follow the military method of disqualifying people who have shown flawed morals or dangerous behaviors.

I want to reiterate these two methods both work for other problems, be they financial fraud (limit access to funds, vet those with access), drugs (limit potency, vet those with access), or whatever problem you might seek to solve.

But in every case, the answer is obvious enough: do some of both. Adjust over time based on changing needs and circumstances. That’s what the founders did. They tried and failed with the Articles of Confederation, so they tried again. And they elected George Washington the first president, picking someone of (by that day’s standards) good morals and a commitment to good government.


I don’t particularly care about the guns themselves. But I do buy the argument that changing the types of guns available will shape what is done with them. I also think licensing makes sense, particularly if well-maintained licensing cuts some of the red tape for honest folks so they can buy or sell guns with less bureaucracy. But if that’s not possible, if the pain of bureaucracy is required to keep citizens safe from guns, that seems worth it.

And I do care when the ATF can’t use computers to trace gun crimes. I care when any organ of the government is made to act stupidly because it helps get idiots elected. It’s a stain on our nation that we would intentionally fund stupidity because Republicans can’t be honest with their voters and legislate reasonable government.

We have problems with law enforcement. Among the many problems is that we send them out on the streets to deal with gun crime, to effectively bail water from a boat with an unpatched hole that the Republicans know about and won’t lift a finger to deal with. It’s throwing cash into the graves of citizens.

We need to change the laws, but the Republicans hold a veto. The media should never let them pretend there weren’t options to protect people in the face of these massacres. It is Republicans’ choice if America does nothing. I once again ask you to register to vote. Please register to vote (Vote.gov). Please vote for candidates who will fight for smarter rules on guns.

Thoughts on the Direction of the Gun Debate

Rubio’s “Laws Don’t Work” Argument

Senator Rubio argued that if someone is truly determined to carry out a horrific act, the law will not stop it. This is true, to a point. The argument bears much more heavily on demand-driven products like illicit drugs, but we don’t hear Rubio calling for the end of prohibition.

The gun case, if sensible legal hurdles block even one in a hundred, without significantly infringing on sportsmen, it’s hard to understand why we shouldn’t make that change in law. More importantly, if it fails to stop the madman from acquiring on the black market, then we can at least bring extra charges, ensuring the liability toward those supplying murder weapons.

All in all, we should take the steps we believe will help, and evaluate as we go (i.e., use science and reason).

Mental Health

Pass a bill if you think mental healthcare is the way to go. Please pass one anyway, as it’d do us all a lot of good to have the ailing be treated.

But it takes multiple components to create these massacres, and one of the necessary components is the gun and the ammunition. Over time, our ability to predict and treat may improve. For now, it is inadequate. Restricting guns is our best bet.

The NRA and Paid Actors

One of the repeated attempts to undermine changes to gun laws is to accuse people of being “paid actors.” Family members, schoolmates, and other community members affected by a shooting are all targets of this tactic.

But the people putting forth these accusations are invariably paid actors. Politicians that take money from the NRA. Right-wing media types are paid to be extremist soapbox goons. The NRA’s actual spokespeople, from their executive on down, are literally paid to stop proper functioning of government to regulate commerce.

If the gun regulation community wants to pay people to advocate, they should feel free to do so. The NRA has done it for over a century.

Other Ideas

Public notice or direct notification to guardians, the school or workplace or therapist, if someone buys a gun or ammunition. This matches with the anti-abortion parental notification laws. At least a heads-up could help either alert security guards and administrators, or maybe even spur reporting or clamoring around an unstable individual so that treatment be rendered before the worst happens.

Learn from previous bans and stop using silly surface characteristics to categorize weapons. Learn from other ban systems. Use a whitelist instead of a blacklist. Use an FDA-style (ugh!) marketing compliance system where they have to apply to sell a gun, an accessory that modifies a gun, etc.


Doing nothing is worse than stupid at this point. It’s grossly negligent. If the Republicans cannot bring themselves to do anything useful, it’s time for them to go. We need a conservative balance to the progressive and liberal impulses of the majority, but we cannot afford that balance to be an anchor against any common sense actions for the general welfare.

The NRA has a lot of sway, but they never actually pass anything or do anything to address the issue. They don’t pass a bill for mental health. All they do is take in money and spew out lies. The only way to stop a bad guy without a gun is to sell the bad guy a gun and let a good guy with a gun shoot him.

The bottom line on guns is as it has been since the late 1990s: with every act of violence the probability of major changes to gun laws goes up. The NRA, gun enthusiasts, whoever, can bitch about that fact but they won’t change the math one bit. If the NRA or gun owners or legislators want to forestall more bad laws from being enacted, they should work on solutions before that probability reaches 0.5 or greater.

The Muslim Gun Paradox

Both political sides differ on refugees and gun control, which is odd in the face of their screening demands.

Trump wants to ban Muslims from coming to the USA. Many other Republicans have called for similar shifts, though only applied to refugees. In general, there is a right-wing consensus that Islam is a problem.

Meanwhile, many on the left want more gun control (or gun safety as they are wont to say). The New York Times even came darn close to the watchword of confiscation, saying some guns should be given up by lawful owners as part of a gun control platform.

The right wing says we either need super screening of incoming Muslim refugees, or maybe we should ban them all from coming. The left says we need super screening of gun owners, or maybe we should ban (at least some) gun ownership.

There’s some sort of pattern there. Something about needing to feel safe, being able to trust people. And both sides seem to agree that it’s needed. And yet they’re arguing as though they are living on different planets.

Why shouldn’t the right-wing admit that screening is a tool, whether it’s for immigration or gun ownership? Why shouldn’t the left-wing admit that, for the same reasons that anti-immigration agendas from the right won’t really do much, gun control isn’t a magic bullet?

Thing is, most of the people support a good screening. You don’t want to go to the doctor and she half-asses the prostate check. Get up in there. Make sure it’s nice and smooth. Maybe get a picture taken, for your social feed. You don’t want to go to the mechanic and she doesn’t change the oil filter, making the new oil just get cruddy double-time. And you don’t want people who aren’t thinking straight just going out and getting guns. You don’t want disturbed refugees to come in and spoil things.

It seems sensible to admit the irony. We need to screen, wherever someone comes from, but with greater scrutiny when they come from a warzone populated by people who might be part of a death cult. And certainly, when someone wants to buy a lethal implement, they should be given a good once-over. If someone wants to borrow your car, you tend to want to know who they are and a few more details like if they can drive, have a license, etc.

Thing is, as far as I can tell the Democrats want to screen refugees, and at least some Republicans want to have better background checks for gun sales. The fact that there are loud arguments seem to be the result of a bunch of idiots. So maybe the real screening needs to be in who we choose to listen to in arguments such as these.