Guns

I was asked recently by someone I respect very much to write on the subject of guns. So here goes. This is my longest post to date, at triple my normal length. But how could it not be? Fifty thousand more American families will feel the pain of losing a loved one to a bullet this year. This topic is as important as it gets.

I won’t leave you in suspense. I am a conservative gun owner who believes it is too easy to get a gun and too hard to take it away. I believe the introductory clause of the Second Amendment to our Constitution is there for a reason.

I believe the right of parents to make sure their kids come home safely from school far outweighs someone’s right to entertainment, and frankly too much of gun owners’ want of a certain type of firearm is for entertainment. 

And unfortunately, nothing I say below will cure evil or sickness or take away the animalistic capacity of human beings to hurt one another.

The well-worn Charlton Heston notion that a gun in the hands of a good man is only a danger to a bad man tends to ignore the statistics on the harm that can come from the good man’s gun. A good man’s gun can be fired by a curious child at a sibling. A good man’s gun can discharge accidentally. A good man’s gun can be fired intentionally at an intruder that turns out not to be an intruder. And a good man’s gun can be turned upon the good man.

Citizenship is tricky business in a free society. And too often people focus on their rights instead of their responsibilities.

Yes, we have the right to have that loud after-market exhaust on our sports car, but do we have the right to wake everyone in the neighborhood when we pull into our driveway at two in the morning? Yes, we have the right to smoke or to eat a dozen donuts every morning, but do we have the right to have society pay our medical bills for the resultant lung cancer or diabetes? And yes, we have the right to bear arms, but do we have the right to bear instruments of war?

This issue, like every issue we face, hinges on the proper role of government. Where do we draw the line between too little government and too much? It begins by understanding why a free people consent to be governed in the first place. The only reason we do is because the natural order of things is dangerous, and we seek to be kept safe in our persons and property. So we consent to be governed, understanding that in agreeing to be governed we, by necessity, have to give up some liberty so that our neighbor can also be kept safe in his or her person and property. That’s the only way it works. The key, and the challenge then, is getting the balance correct so that we give up just enough liberty for the desired security.

Too little surrendering of personal liberty creates a government that cannot effectuate its primary goal. Too much needlessly infringes upon individual rights.

But regardless of where the legislative line is drawn, we as citizens can also decide that sacrificing a bit more for our neighbors is simply the right thing to do on the if-come it may just help in some small way, be it giving up high-capacity gun magazines or wearing a mask into a grocery store during a pandemic.

Our modern citizenry is too quick to call something an infringement on our liberty that would more accurately be described as sacrificing a bit for our neighbor’s peace of mind.

A refresher on what true sacrifice is, what our forebears gave to society and what limitations they accepted for the greater good, might be instructive. An 18-year-old dying on the beaches of Normandy before he had even lived a life was actual sacrifice. Little of what is asked of us today is.

We have a love affair with guns in America. We have the highest per capita gun ownership of any country, with more guns than citizens. We lose almost 50,000 people per year to guns. And more than half of those are suicides. We cannot know how many of those suicides could have been prevented if the means of death weren’t so readily available. But I imagine it is not an insignificant number, as evidenced by the large uptick we are seeing in a group that historically did not use firearms in suicide…young girls and women. I believe life is precious and the loss of any person diminishes us all. But I am also a small-government conservative who doesn’t believe government’s role is to protect a person from themselves, but rather to protect a person from others. So, I will concentrate this piece on violence perpetrated on another human being using a gun. More than half of all murders are committed with a handgun and by someone known to the victim. I wish there was something I could think of to stop that. No amount of magazine size restrictions or rounds fired per minute regulations will materially change those horrific outcomes. But where we can make a difference with sensible regulation is with mass shootings.

When I ran for United States Congress, I participated in a Republican primary debate the night after the school shooting at Apalachee High School in Georgia. Appropriately, a question was posed about gun regulation very early in the debate. Here is what I said that night. “I’m a gun owner and I believe in the Second Amendment. I believe in the right to defend yourself, the right to pass on a tradition of hunting to your family. But certainly a grandmother should be able to go to a grocery store, a child should be able to go to school, and a former president should be able to go to a political rally without being the victim of gun violence. We have smart people in this country and we have to figure out a way to protect my right to bear arms but your right to feel safe. And certainly, having that conversation, a sensible conversation, is not violative of the Second Amendment; it is simply recognizing that we live in common society with each other and we have to find a solution.”

The Second Amendment is one sentence but causes so much rancor. It reads simply, “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 founders were not casual with word choice. The introductory clause did not say, “In order that a citizen may protect his home.” It did not say, “In order that a citizen may teach his son how to hunt.” It did not say, “In order that a citizen may enjoy firing hundreds of rounds of tracer fire in his backyard.” This amendment was always about the ability of the State to protect its interest. The main battle lines of the Constitution were always about State verses Federal. And this amendment was no different. To some it was to protect the ability of the nascent nation to defend itself, knowing that state militias were needed in lieu of and then in supplement to a standing federal army. To some, leery of federal overreach (including interference in the affairs of slave-holding states) or tyrannical government, the purpose was to protect states from a federal standing army. Further supporting the belief that this amendment was more about state security, the original draft that circulated around Congress for months included a conscientious objector clause to ensure that someone with religious objections could not be pressed into service. That clause was dropped in the final approved version, but still speaks to intent. Now, I’m not arguing the founders didn’t believe in self-protection or gun ownership for other purposes. But that isn’t what they felt was important enough to enshrine, and so the fervent reliance upon this amendment by some on the right with such absolute certainty is misguided.

I am turned off by extremism in any form. And I do see a form of extremism in any one-issue advocacy, because no one issue exists in a vacuum. One cannot discuss taxation without discussing deficits or abortion without discussing the role of government or guns without discussing mental illness. But one-issue advocates would have us do just that – opine on their issue in a vacuum. And that is why I, as a candidate for Congress, did not fill out any of the dozens of surveys I received from issue advocacy groups, including those received from gun groups. I also find some extremism in the language those groups use that isn’t helpful to finding solutions. One gun advocacy group that sent me a survey ended their cover letter to me, a federal candidate for office, with the line, “Failure to respond to this survey will be deemed a hostile act.” A hostile act? I wonder what they intended by that or what they hoped I would infer?

James Madison, who drafted the Second Amendment, and Thomas Jefferson lived 30 miles apart in Virginia. I have visited both homes often. I have stared out their windows and walked their grounds, both in awe of our founders and in horror at the institution of slavery that existed on both properties. Today it takes 45 minutes to get from one property to the other. In their time, it took a day or two, long enough that they would typically stay a few weeks at a time to justify the journey. They could not have imagined a world where one could wake up in Portsmouth, NH, and be in Los Angeles by lunch time. During the Revolution a skilled marksman could get off two or three musket shots per minute. The founders could not have fathomed a world in which an AR-15 fitted with a bump stock could get off over 400 rounds per minute.

So perhaps the founders, as brilliant as they were, may have modified their view on guns given the risk of destruction inherent in new technology and may have modified their view on states’ rights in certain instances given the risk of geographic proximity inherent in modern travel.

As much as I believe in the Tenth Amendment – “The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States respectively, or to the people” – there are now times, because of the ease with which we can travel and relocate, when issues of safety or even of administration need to be addressed at a national level. Just as the Articles of Confederation fell short by providing a central government too weak to do the necessary like govern interstate commerce, so too is a states’ rights view of the world too weak to address our mutual safety. So, either we can embrace the need for strength of the federal government in certain areas, or we must embrace the chaos where the state with the most lax laws on guns or pollution or health governs our collective safety.

I said earlier that the attraction to certain weapons seems to me to be more for entertainment than self-defense. I like to target shoot as much as anyone. And I listen to others around me when I’m at the range or a gun show or even at a hardware store. I’ve never heard anyone say they modified their gun or bought a bump stock to protect their home better. No, it is typically because they like the way the trigger feels now or how many rounds they can get down range or some other such comment that always feels more akin to me to the concept of tuning a car for more horsepower or adding a few more inches of lift to an offroad vehicle. It’s preference, not necessity. And regardless of how much horsepower one puts in a car, we still have speed limits. Where is the infringement argument on speed limits? Where is the advocacy group?

I have heard the argument that citizens should have a right to bear more potent weapons to protect against a government that has gone too far. After all, the Declaration of Independence says it is “the Right of the People to alter or abolish” a government that has become destructive of the ends of liberty. Ignoring for a moment that there are more effective ways to address government overreach enumerated in our other rights – speech, assembly, and suffrage – I would also remind these people that the government owns F35 fighter jets. So good luck. At some point governing becomes more about addressing the likely, not the far-fetched. We have more than one mass shooting per day and haven’t had to take up arms against an oppressive government in 250 years. On which should our legislation focus?

Much of our legislation in this country, often written by lobbyists, is complex with both intended and unintended loop holes. Machine guns are illegal in our country. But the legislation banning them defines them not by the number of rounds fired per minute, but rather by the mechanical action that one pull of the trigger can fire more than one round. Loophole! Enter smart people and the creation of the bump stock. The bump stock is a device that replaces the traditional stock end of a semi-automatic weapon, the part that rests against the shoulder of the shooter. It harnesses the recoil of a fired weapon to essentially bump the trigger back into the trigger finger allowing it to fire a similar number of rounds as a machine gun. They are legal again in our country, but why are they necessary? Do we have the right to be lazy in the defense of our homes by not having to strain with a trigger pull for each round fired? Do we have the right to hunt deer with an AR-15 when, as the comedian Ron White used to joke, that elusive creature can so effectively be killed by a Buick traveling the speed limit with its headlights on and horn blowing?

We have to honestly talk about the real danger of owning weapons of war. What gun advocacy groups fail to acknowledge is that a law-abiding citizen who legally owns a weapon can still have a mental break or have his weapon taken by another. And limiting the damage he, or another, can do is the role of government.

Ceding a fraction of our liberty is the job of citizens seeking to live in common society with one another. There is a reason in our society we take steps like having a flight attendant go into an airplane cockpit when one of the pilots comes out to use the lavatory; we learned what can happen when one pilot is left alone and we vowed not to let that happen again. There is no difference between this, which we accept and see as common sense, and limiting rounds in magazines and access to assault weapons…it gives us a chance to tackle the gunman. It gives us a chance. It gives our kids a chance.

The recent Supreme Court rulings on guns are torturous to read, littered with examinations of word definitions, grammar, historical contextualism, and discussions of analogous verses exact comparison. And while in general these decisions are deemed to expand the scope of the Second Amendment to include self-defense, they all allow for reasonable restrictions on that right. The Heller decision ruled that the Second Amendment protects the right of a citizen to possess a handgun for self-defense in the home. Written by Justice Antonin Scalia, it acknowledged that there can be reasonable restrictions on that right, including which weapons a citizen can possess. It nodded to the notion that whether for self-defense or militia service, a private citizen would not be in possession of an instrument of war such as a machine gun, but rather ordinary weapons of self-defense. The Bruen decision went even further than Heller, saying the Second Amendment protects a citizen’s right to bear arms in public. Written by Justice Clarence Thomas it said that states can indeed require permitting, so long as it is on objective criteria such as background checks and not on arbitrary subjective grounds. And the Rahimi decision, penned by Chief Justice John Roberts with a margin of 8-1, ruled that gun rights can be taken away from those deemed to be a threat to another person.

To those who would say we should ban guns completely, I would say that we need to remember that different people have a different life experience. I live in a community where if I call 911 in the middle of the night, a police cruiser will come around the corner on two wheels screaming to my immediate defense. But some live in rural areas without a dedicated police force, some live in areas where the existing police force is over-strained, and, if we are being honest, some live in areas that are too often neglected. And all those citizens have a right to defend themselves and their families.

As an aside while on the subject of self-defense, we should acknowledge that there is a chasm between the laws of certain states as to what constitutes legal self-defense. And perhaps, just perhaps, the appropriate legal standard should be somewhere between the duty-to-retreat states and the stand-your-ground states. It should be common sense that I shouldn’t have to keep backing away from someone who is threatening me or my family with a knife before I end the threat. But it should also be common sense that I shouldn’t be able to take a life simply because someone shoves me to the ground.

We tend to accept the advancement of technology in every aspect of our lives. Our phones open on facial recognition. Our cars become more and more self-driving. Locks on our homes have keypads, biometric scanners, and remote phone-unlocking. We also have smart gun technology, guns that can only be fired by the owner. They exist. But on arguments of reliability, we tend to dismiss them. But in that dismissal, let’s be clear in what we are saying. We are saying that our life as the gun owner is more important than a life that could be spared by keeping someone other than the owner (be it a curious child or a criminal) from discharging that weapon. And, of course, gun advocacy groups are vehemently opposed to smart guns believing them to be a precursor to further regulation.

Another problem with legislation in our country is that sensible regulation always trails private sector innovation, whether it is addressing technology advances in fracking or AI or self-driving cars or guns. Ghost guns, be they assembled from a kit or built at home with a 3D printer, are a proper danger. And our regulation of them is trailing behind. Recently the Supreme Court upheld the ATF rule that ghost guns are subject to the same regulations as commercially available firearms. That is a start. But how will we address the next private sector innovation or screen for firearms at airports and public buildings as they become less detectible?

Background checks, reasonable waiting periods, mandatory gun safety courses, magazine-size restrictions, bump stock bans, and holding gunowners responsible for the storage of and access to their weapons are not overly burdensome infringements, especially when measured against the potential safety gains for society.

And if a citizen has threatened someone, or been adjudicated by a court of competent jurisdiction to be a danger to someone else, then his weapons must be taken away. That isn’t government overreach, that is an individual paying the price for violating his responsibility as a citizen in common society. Actions have consequences, criminals lose rights, and those in need should get the protection they require. That’s what civilized society does. Again, governance must address the likely before the far-fetched. And it is far more likely that someone who has threatened someone else, or is viewed to be a danger, will use that weapon illegally than it is that that person will require it for self-defense during the time period in which it has been taken away. Our default setting in those instances should be to take the weapon. And if a citizen raises that weapon against a law enforcement officer attempting to enforce that court order then we should treat that citizen to a cot and three square meals for a very, very long time.

Time after time we discover after a mass shooting that there were red flags. Parents knew their teenager was having difficulties but still bought them a gun as a birthday gift. School administrators were aware of a student’s threatening posts but didn’t do enough. FBI agents visited a home but closed the file. One agency flagged the individual but the background check didn’t have access to that information. This is low hanging fruit - taking threats seriously, saying something when we see something, removing weapons when someone in the home is in crisis, law enforcement files being universally uploaded and available to other agencies, uniform duty-to-warn laws, and state reciprocity in red-flag situations. Come on.

I said earlier that no single issue exists in a vacuum. We cannot talk about gun safety without talking about mental health, substance abuse, lack of financial opportunities, and proper funding for services that can help. Investment in these areas, making sure that people that work in our mental health centers and in our classrooms make more than the people cooking our french fries, might be a sensible start. Education is the silver bullet that cures all. Nothing reduces the chances that someone will turn to crime or be radicalized like giving him the education and tools necessary for financial opportunity. And to those who want less guns and more restrictions, I would say let’s be sure that at the same time we don’t continue to create an environment where more and more people feel less inclined to become law enforcement officers. It’s an impossibly hard job and they deserve our support, proper compensation, and funding. Because right now they are being asked to keep us safe, get themselves home safely to their families, and be on-the-fly mental health counselors all at once.

Nothing I have laid out here helps get the guns out of the hands of criminals or those that would skirt gun laws. And a 65 mph sign on the highway does nothing to stop a person from driving 95. But would anyone argue that keeping law abiding citizens from driving 95 mph on the highway has probably saved lives? Criminals will always seek weapons to facilitate their criminal activity. And with the advent of ghost guns and 3D printing and whatever technology comes next, keeping weapons out of their hands is most likely impossible. But what is possible is decreasing crime. And that means increasing opportunity. That means investing in education. It means creating and protecting a robust economy. It means eliminating any legislation that resembles a regressive tax or helps leave people behind.

Unfortunately, no regulations will keep human beings from killing or harming one another. No regulation will eliminate evil or sickness. But government isn’t about the elimination. Government is about improving the odds on a safe and prosperous outcome.

It can’t eliminate greenhouse gasses but it can reduce them. It can’t guarantee successful outcomes for all citizens but it can create equal opportunity. And it can’t eliminate murder, but it can reduce the body count. It can’t predict the future but it does have an obligation to learn from the past and implement reasonable measures to keep us safe. That isn’t infringement; it’s good governance.

And to my fellow gun owners, I would end by saying that true patriotism is putting one’s neighbor above oneself. How are we doing on that?