af40's Blog

In the wake of this week's horriffic events at Virginia Tech, a number of politicians, media pundits, lobby groups, bloggers and laypeople have brought the decades-old old gun control debate back to the surface. In usual fashion, the two primary opposing camps have summoned to the fore the same hackneyed slogans and talking points we have come to recognize by their jingoistic timber.

Essentially, the NRA and all who are either affiliated with it or sympathetic to it state:

'Guns don't kill people, people do.'

While the anti-NRA-philes say:

'Guns kill people.'

This pseudo-causal debate, not quite scientific, presupposes that either explanation alone is sufficient, and that it is mutually exclusive with any alternative explanation.

Which is, of course, obsurd.

Do people kill people? Yes. People ultimately kill, whether they do it with a handgun, a knife, a machete, rope, or any other number of morbid tools that are now available to miscreants and evildoers.

Do guns kill people? Of course. Guns are created for the sole purpose of killing. If guns were created for purposes other than killing, then we wouldn't be finding so many shell casings at the scenes of practically 99% of all urban crimes.

I find it sad that the debate has never evolved beyond this almost absurdly comic semantic sparring match. The NRA is correct in stating that ultimately people are responsible for their own actions. People can use any number of implements to kill or harm other people, some of which might not even be conventionally described as weapons.

For example, people can get into their cars and smash into other cars and people, something that has been outrageously popularized in a number of video games. Yet few of us think of cars as weapons of death and mayhem. In this same vein, almost anything can be used as a weapon to harm, maim, or kill other people. The NRA is correct in stating that people must ultimately hold responsibility for NOT using guns or any other number of potential weapons to do harm.

But the NRA's narrow focus in taking away practically all blame from the handgun industry and lobby in its efforts to make guns easily available and far removed from state control is also wrong.

For example, the Bush Administration has strongly opposed the sharing of background information on people who buy guns in one state that may have weak or lax gun laws, and who end up transporting those guns across borders, acting as proxies for convicted criminals who can't purchase handguns. While Pennsylvania, New York, New Jersey and other northern states limit the number and types of handgun purchases, guns can easily flow into northern urban areas from states with weak gun laws like Texas or Florida. As a result, Northern states often decry the fact that their own laws are rendered useless by virtue of the fact that criminals can simply come into the state with truckloads of weapons- all purchased legally in states with weak gun laws. The Administration staunchly opposes the sharing of electronic background information that might stifle this burgeoning gun trade.

In Virginia, where this week's horrible shootings occurred, the only true limit to purchasing a handgun is that you cannot buy more than one gun a month. And the guns you can buy- semi-automatics- are recognized universally for their intended role in killing people.

It is time for a new debate, one that doesn't involve the circular arguments over what ultimately kills people. Handguns- especially semi-automatics- are used primarily for shooting other people. While every American has a 2nd Amendment right to self defense, we must also recognize that in defending this right, we are also giving criminals the opportunity to buy and use weapons not for defensive, but for offensive purposes.

When the Founding Fathers crafted the 2nd Amendment, they never anticipated at the time that much more powerful weapons would be created in the future that could, in the blink of an eye, kill tens, if not hundreds, of people. They crafted the amendment at a time when memories of British limitations to a colonist's rights to guns were fresh. Most American colonists used guns for two major purposes: hunting, and defense against natives or foreign powers, especially on the Frontier. Today, a very small minority of guns are used for hunting. And the Frontier is long gone.

For its own part, what the NRA has failed to address is the fact that just as interpretation of the Fourteenth Amendment's equal protection and due process clauses have changed the rights we do have as Americans, so, too, must interpretation of the 2nd Amendment change so that we do not allow any number of powerful semiautomatic and automatic weapons to become readily available to criminals. The NRA's call for stronger enforcement of laws has some merit, but those laws are often weak by virtue of the fact that criminals simply side-step the laws that are available. But some laws- like the sharing of background information across state lines- can facilitate quick identification of likely criminal use.

It is incorrect to argue, as the NRA does, that having more gun laws does not, on its own, address the criminal's access to black market weapons. But law enforcement would be dramatically aided by laws that facilitate better background checks, because very often guns that do end up on the black market are first purchased by proxies who do not have any notable criminal record, but who should show up as a red flag for the high number of guns they purchase.

Furthermore, the very loose interpretation of the "right to bear arms" under the Constitution, especially of what constitutes an "arm", allows even such absurdly powerful offensive weapons as grenade and missile launchers, or tanks, to qualify. If laws cannot limit the weapons that kill people, then the courts should weigh in and define what constitutes an arm for allowable, reasonable defensive purposes.  Those same courts have narrowly construed what constitutes offensive and pornographic material.

And what could be more offensive, profane, or vulgar, than seeing people being killed- slaughtered- by handguns?

It is time for a new debate on guns that doesn't involve self-serving or dogmatic rhetoric, but which addresses the concerns of both handgun owners and those who fear the damage and destruction that handguns can and do cause.