The National Rifle Association recently elected its new officers and has embarked on a massive public relations campaign to push their message of free gun ownership to every American. The newly elected president of the NRA appeared on ABC World News Tonight Friday as the show’s “Person of the Week.” She came across as expected: a gun-ownership zealot.
Why has the painful and tragic history of this country’s gun control debate never been thought about logically? I have taken it upon myself to inject a little reason into this age-old argument and see if I can arrive at a solution.
First and perhaps most obvious is the Second Amendment. It states, “A well regulated militia, being necessary to the security of a free state, the right of the people to keep and bear arms, shall not be infringed.” The NRA, its supporters and gun owners have used this as the basis for their arguments. But let’s look a little more closely at the famed second article of our Bill of Rights.
The second and third words jump at me. “Well regulated” is a phrase the framers of the Constitution included in the document for a reason. They knew from firsthand experience that an armed fighting force was necessary to protect the country from invaders and to ensure freedom.
But the fighting force they intended was supposed to be a “well regulated militia.” Gee, that sounds a lot like our National Guard. Nowhere do I read that every private citizen is entitled to own, possess and carry firearms for their personal protection or recreation. The militia and its guns were intended to protect the country from invasion and tyranny.
But taking away every gun from every American citizen would be ridiculous if not impossible at this point in the game. After all, many Americans enjoy hunting and other recreational activities involving guns. We need to differentiate between the guns that are bad for private citizens to own and the guns that are good. But what would the NRA say about this topic? Wait, its very title gives us the answer. It is called the National Rifle Association, not the National Handgun Association, the National Assault Rifle Association or the National Automatic Weapon Association.
Therefore, we could take a cue from the NRA and make it illegal for private citizens to own a firearm that is not a rifle, one that is intended for hunting animals rather than humans. Any person with half a brain can tell the Glock and AK-47 were designed for one purpose-shooting at other humans. You don’t need, nor would you want a lightweight handheld pistol or an automatic weapon to go buck hunting. They are not the most effective tools for the job. Congress would have to pass a law defining a rifle, which private citizens could own, and what is not a rifle, which should be kept in the hands of trained professionals like police officers and soldiers.
Then there would have to be some way of getting the illegal guns away from those who use them to harm other humans. The Brady Handgun Violence Prevention Act (1994) requires a waiting period and a background check to purchase a handgun. That sounds like a good idea, but according to Justice Bureau statistics, 80 percent of prison inmates who used a firearm to commit a crime got the weapon from “family, friends, a street buy or other illegal source”-not a licensed dealer.
Perhaps an incentive program for turning an illegal firearm over to the authorities would work. Let’s say you could get $100 if you turn in a gun to the police station. But where’s that money going to come from? We could use some taxes to pay for it. It would be better spent that way. According to the Journal of the American Medical Association, American taxpayers take care of almost $10 billion in medical costs from gun injuries.
Maybe teaching gun safety is the way out of the darkness. The NRA prides itself on being the leading contributor to gun-safety programs in the United States. Then again, Philip Morris is the leading contributor to teenage anti-smoking programs.
The NRA’s rules for gun safety are available online, but I was taken aback by their No. 1 Fundamental Rule for Gun Safety. It is “ALWAYS keep the gun pointed in a safe direction. This is the primary rule of gun safety. A safe direction means that the gun is pointed so that even if it were to go off it would not cause injury or damage. The key to this rule is to control where the muzzle or front end of the barrel is pointed at all times. Common sense dictates the safest direction, depending on different circumstances.”
Wow! Being all caps and underlined, “Always” is a strong word. It doesn’t say “ALWAYS-unless you think someone is breaking into your home, or unless you want to steal someone’s money.” I guess if everyone followed NRA rules, no one would ever be shot. Unfortunately, they don’t. According to the 1998 Journal of Trauma, “A gun in the home is 22 times more likely to be used in an unintentional shooting than to be used to injure or kill in self defense.”
Perhaps I’ve gotten carried away with this whole thing. But I do know there is more gun violence in the United States than in any other industrialized country, even nations that have similar gun-to-citizen ratios. But you don’t have to take my word for it (see graphs below).