A Pragmatist's Approach to Reducing Gun Violence While Protecting 2nd Amendment Rights

Like many Americans I have struggled over the past few years with the harsh juxtaposition of the freedoms granted to us in the Second Amendment with the rising rate of homicide that our children now face. It is a sad reality now that if you are under 18 you are more likely to die of a gunshot then a vehicle death, illness, or any other accident.?See recent New England journal of Medicine article below.

It is unfathomable to me that our Founding Fathers would have accepted the losses that our more modern fathers (and mothers) are asked to shoulder and yet the right to bear arms is a fundamental part of the American identify.?I hear the arguments from both sides on the issue, but I rarely hear my fellow citizens asking questions that seek to actually bridge the issue. Instead of looking for nuanced solutions we fall into the trenches of a particular viewpoint and then become unwilling or unable to consider other perspectives or even the basic facts of our dynamic.?The only ones who benefit from this "entrenchment" are those that have an economic interest in the status quo. We are collectively better than this and can find a better way.

There are approximately 400,000,000 guns in private hands in America and another 20,000,000 that are sold annually. The vast majority of these are owned legally and managed safely, but even the most ardent 2nd Amendment supporter will acknowledge that a small percentage of these are used for horrific purposes. The challenge is that even 1/100 of 1% is still 40,000 guns used for purposes other than hunting or defense / deterrence. That is a problem we should all want to solve for a safer society not just for our children, but for all of us.?The key question thus comes down to this:?

How do we protect our society as well as our Second Amendment Rights??

The answer to this is we must first acknowledge that as a society we long ago agreed that there are tradeoffs that we accept to almost everything. Automobiles are the easiest example of this as a product that gives us the freedom of movement and the ability to expand freedom of commerce, yet also potentially comes with significant detriments to society in the form of accidents and deaths and the associated costs to all of us to manage those incidents. As a society we have chosen to manage this with a fourfold approach to balancing the risk of injury or death by what is an inherently a dangerous product with the right to own and operate a motor vehicle. A quick summary:

• Manufacturers are encouraged to seek out new safety solutions, while at the same time regulations insure a minimum of protections in all vehicles.?Over the years seatbelts, airbags, crumple zones and more have made vehicles imminently safer to operate at a minimum of impingement on personal freedom.
• Citizens take on responsibility through education, licensing, and training with remedial classes for those who are detected to need such classes.?
• Insurance covers the inevitable costs associated with accidents (and intentional misuse).?
• Government serves as the policing entity of this system and the writer of regulations to consistently improve upon and reduce vehicle fatalities.?At times this even comes with a restriction to our personal liberties that otherwise would have no affect on others, but would raise costs to society should we get in an accident and get hurt. (an example: Wearing a seatbelt is mandatory for drivers in every state except NH, even if you are in the vehicle alone).

Through this mix of public and private responsibilities we have a system that manages vehicular manufacturing, sales, training, use, policing, insurance, etc. with the explicit purpose of both allowing for freedom of movement and for protecting the common good.?We long ago accepted that there will be losses with this system and while we could reduce those losses further (everyone could drive 5MPH for example) we chose to accept this balance of competing freedoms and protections as the best way of managing our shared personal and collective interests.?

This model presents a potential pathway towards a balanced approach that can make real progress towards society’s shared goals of protecting Second Amendment Rights and the safety of our citizens A few thoughts on what this might look like:

What is sold / How it is marketed:?

• Guns have two primary purposes. Hunting and deterrence / defense. We should think about what is sold / available within this framework.

An important note here:?For those who think guns are also about being able to take on a tyrannical government I would suggest that an AR-15 will do little against a modern military. This is not a real argument and we should stop, as a society, accepting it as “legitimate”.?Indeed EVERY state has a law against forming a private militia. If states have already decided that we, as citizens, cannot legally form our own militias then it stands to reason that we have already accepted that citizens will not have the right to possess arms that could take on the government. Click the link below to see what your state says about private militias.

• Advertisements should focus on these issues and marketing, such as the one below, should be banned. The soldier lying on the ground is shooting at other humans. While this is understood for a military, marketing that suggests this is ok in civilian life is just plain wrong. We should learn from tobacco advertising and eliminate ads such as this from our society that seek to encourage turning civilian life into Call of Duty.

Licensing:

• Just as automobile licensing requires testing / competency a similar system should be utilized for weaponry.??
• At younger ages this would require training / education. Anyone else remember those vehicle crash videos we saw in drivers ed? I’m thinking a few “what a bullet does to flesh” videos might make sense. Maybe one for each gun / ammunition type. The goal being to illustrate what a bullet does to ANY type of animal flesh?
• More complex weapons should require advanced training / licensing (think commercial vehicle licenses)?.
• There should likely be age-in periods based on maturity achieved like permits versus licenses etc.?These may restrict certain types of weapons until a more mature age of brain development.
• We should require re-licensing at appropriate time or age intervals.?

Insurance:?

• We should require gun owners to carry insurance. This could / should be priced based on risk factors such as age of owner, experience, and type of weapon. (Auto insurance for an 18 y/o sports car driver will inevitably be more expensive than for a Subaru driving housewife).?
• Lapse in insurance results in a surrender of license and potentially the loss of the weapon.?

Regulatory / Policing?

• Like autos, we should regulate / police the manufacturing, advertising, licensing, and insuring of weapons.?Whatever policies are put in place should apply to ANY weapon sold regardless of whether it was from a manufacturer, a gun show, a store, or a private citizen. (we don't allow you to buy a car "privately" and just ignore licensing and insurance requirements. Why do we allow it here?)
• We can and should regulate where weapons can be present. We don’t allow you to drive your car everywhere, we similarly should recognize certain areas require different standards. Examples:?We should seek to limit weapons in locations where judgement may be impaired (eg bars).?Where the public safety is in the hands of others (mass events, sports, etc.)?Where the presence of weapons is counter to the safe transit of people and goods (airports).
• Violations should result in fines or potentially loss of rights.?

Summary

A final recommendation would be that everyone who is to own a weapon, or honestly be a member of society, should go through mandatory de-escalation training every few years. This used to happen naturally in our schools, but as we have sought to end bullying we have also inadvertently put our children at a disadvantage to understand how to de-escalate situations. Coupled with the rise of Social Media, which pushes bullying into the anonymous sphere of the internet, we as a people are losing our ability to know when it is best to just walk away and not add provocation to an encounter.

None of these solutions will eliminate gun violence, but they will help decrease it. To eliminate the violence entirely we, as a society, would have to agree to give up our 2nd Amendment rights. Collectively we have not historically agreed with that course of action, so we should move onto the next best thing: recognizing that we, as a society, have deemed deaths by personal weapons to be “acceptable losses” and working together to reduce those numbers through a balance of initiatives designed to protect our rights and our safety.?None of us, gun owners or otherwise, should be willing to accept any other outcome as living in a society always comes with trade offs from the personal for the greater good of us all.