What gun control could I accept?
The question that forms the title of this article will draw an immediate reaction from a particular type of reader who will shout either “all” or “none.” I understand the thinking of such purists, but in the real world, politics often involves making deals, and in any case, there are some among us who should not be allowed near weapons—violent felons who have not demonstrated sufficient reformation, for example. And even the purists in favor of gun rights are likely to agree that firing off rounds at random in populated areas is to be discouraged. And while the most fanatical supporters of gun control seem unable to be satisfied with any severity of restrictions, rational people should have no difficulty in seeing that some acts to disarm private citizens—nuking gun owners, as Eric Swalwell joked about doing, for example—would be excessive. With these boundaries in mind, are there any controls that could make sense?
We must begin with a guiding principle, namely the declaration that possession of personal weapons is a basic right. Unless that is taken as axiomatic, there will be no extremes to which a law could not go, no matter how realistic it may seem at any given moment. The Bill of Rights is not comprehensive, unless we take the Tenth Amendment at its word, but it has shown how to proceed in the relationship of basic rights and the government, and that is a good way to be getting on with. By personal weapons, I mean such arms as an ordinary human being can employ individually.
I specify this because someone will wonder if we ought to be allowed fighter jets, ballistic missile submarines, or nuclear warheads. If that sounds ridiculous even to ask about, be it known that I have seen such things spoken of as objects that it is our right to have, however much that may astonish and repeal most people. But all such devices are crew-served weapons, requiring a large logistics operation to keep them working.
And they are instruments of collective policy, not of individual personal action. Personal weapons can be used by individuals in self-defense without harming innocents. Personal weapons are the sorts of arms that a citizen might bring if summoned to militia service—a militia being a force distinct from the professional services. Collective weapons should require society’s judgment for their use, given their collective effect, whereas personal arms are best suited for interactions between persons. And so a divide between personal and collective weapons is the first type of control that I do accept—so long as we make clear that an AR-15, a Thompson submachine gun, and someday a hand phaser, for examples, are personal weapons.
The next question is how such weapons may be used. As I suggested above, popping off rounds where a lot of people are expected to be is rightly a crime. So is waving a gun around as a kind of primate dominance display. The concept of self-defense is well established in our legal theory, and while many gun control advocates would like us to adopt a European model that permits lethal force only as a reaction against an attack for which the law-abiding may make no preparations—i.e., may not have weapons at the ready—the consensus of most states in this country is that we may have arms for our own defense in our homes or on our persons and that lethal force is justified to stop an assault that may cause death or serious injury is a reasonable laying out of the range of permissible action. Defense of property is another matter for another time.
Hunting is another common use of personal weapons, as are practice at a shooting range and competitions, and here we bring in the matter of public resources. Many ranges are city or state land and in any case will have neighbors, and wildlife for purposes of this discussion belong to us all as a nation. Reasonable controls here bring into consideration where rounds may go—whose homes are on the far side of the range, say—or how much of our resources will be consumed—take bag limits in hunting as an illustration of that. Appropriate controls here will respect the interests of all involved.
But what about the usual list demanded by advocates of gun control: background checks, magazine capacity limits, red flag laws, bans on “assault weapons,” and so on?
I ask the reader to return to the principle that I stated at the start for an answer with regard to banning this or limiting the capacity of that and other such controls. The dividing line that I can accept is the one already drawn above, the line between personal and collective weapons.
The real question is with regard to who may or may not be armed. I have expressed my willingness to consider some form of red flag law, with the proviso that due process is guaranteed. As we all await the outcome of the Rahimi case before the Supreme Court, I will say again that people who assault romantic partners are one class who deserve to be disarmed—and deserve to be under close state supervision. But how do we all identify the few whose actions warrant such treatment?
Background checks are the obvious answer, if the system could be made to work and made to respect all basic rights, privacy included. Our current system records the firearm being purchased along with the buyer’s identity, which is a de facto registry—a vehicle for any government that wants to be intrusive to turn bans of classes of firearms into workable policy.
What would make sense instead is to have a means by which a buyer could request a check and receive a time-stamped go/no go document to present to the seller, along with something like a passport, driver’s license, or the like. This, of course, would require consultation with privacy experts, and there would have to be some accommodation for buyers without common ID, but those are manageable details. Add to this a carry licensing scheme that is only required for those who wish to be armed in genuinely sensitive places—schools and courtrooms, as examples, but certainly not public parks or city streets—and that should be the limit of documentation that any legal owner needs to have personal weapons.
As I said at the start, some readers will reject what I am saying here, and I have some sympathy with those whose opposition to restrictions is absolute, but I do acknowledge that some behaviors should not be allowed and some persons should not be armed. If we were to commit to the principle that possessing personal weapons is a fundamental right, we could get past the dichotomy of all or nothing. And we could build support for other programs that would address the causes of violence in our society.