A football player’s apparent murder/suicide in
Kansas City has once again thrust guns and gun controls back into the
spotlight.
And just as quickly, gun opponents and gun advocates
jumped on the bandwagon. Bob Costas called for more controls of guns during
Sunday night’s football game, and faded rocker Ted Nuggent called Costas a dope
and “only fools blame the tools.” Unfortunately, two people are dead, for
whatever reason, and Costas was right in saying they might not be if there wasn’t
a gun lying around. The tragedy is that a 3-month-old kid now has no parents.
Look, I don’t want to take your guns, just make some
regulations a touch more reasonable before you buy them. And while guns will be
used by people in bad ways, it seems to me a few sensible regulations might
limit that.
While the press frequently confuses the “automatic”
vs. “semi-automatic” issue (automatic, hold the trigger and the weapon keeps
firing . . . semi-automatic and each trigger pull fires the weapon), legal
automatic weapons are not really the issue . . . you need a federal license to
get one, and you ain’t gonna be able to get that.
So the issue generally falls to gun shops and gun
shows, and to sensible laws that allow people to buy guns, but perhaps
eliminates some of the fringe ammunition and gun designs.
Four ideas:
Limit magazine capacity. There no reason for a
person to carry a weapon that boasts a 100-plus round magazine. Ok, it may be
cool, but there’s no real-world reason for it. Buy two smaller clips, you cheap
bastard.
Eliminate large ammunition purchases. Do you really
need 10,000 rounds of ammo?
Eliminate body-armor-piercing bullets. Seems simple
and logical, but it’s something the National Rifle Association has fought. Special
hardened metal alloys were initially designed for police use to increase
penetration of cars and windshields etc. since regular lead tend to deflect and
fragment (note the people injured by police bullets in a recent New York City
shooting). This ammo shouldn’t be available to civilians. Why on earth would
anyone need ammo like this unless it’s to kill cops?
Mandate background checks at shops and gun shows.
The gaps here are gun shows, where background checks are often not run. It
takes but a few minutes, so why not? Make it a federal regulation. Cops run a
check when they pull you over, or you go to get a driver’s license. Why should buying
a gun be any different?
We can argue the Constitutional right (or not) to
own guns until the cows come home and everyone will continue to agree to
disagree. But limiting some types of guns or accessories has little to do with
the Constitution . . .
Sen. Ron Johnson (R-Wis.)
said there’s a constitutional right to buy high-capacity clips and magazines.
Others have made the same arguments. “You simply can't keep
these weapons out of the hands of sick, demented individuals who want to do
harm. And when you try and do it, you restrict our freedom," he
argued recently on Fox News.
Politicians of all types cringe when the NRA starts barking. But some polls have shown that that bark may actually be less than the ultimate bite. Hunters and other gun owners have said that some additional controls make sense. And many are starting to walk away from the NRA’s extreme positions. There should be common ground once each side stops yelling at each other.
In an excellent New York Times op-ed piece (April 2012 “I Hunt, but the N.R.A. Isn’t for me), Lily Raff McCaulou notes that while the NRA boasts 4 million members, some 90 percent of gun owners aren’t members. And as a gun owner and sportswoman, she owns guns, but argues against many of the NRA’s political positions and posturing.
There will always be sick and demented people who may wind up killing people, but let’s tighten a few of the loopholes a touch and make sure we make people, even good ones, responsible for their actions and their gun purchases. It shouldn’t be easier to get a gun than get a driver’s license.
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