Rights Come With Responsibilities
Rights come with responsibilities. We have the right to free speech, but we have a responsibility not to abuse that right by causing harm to others. That is why we have defamation, libel, and slander laws. They protect Americans from being maliciously lied about.
Every day, 46 people are killed by guns, and there are 1.5 mass shootings. Last year, 300 children under the age of 12 and 1,400 aged 12-17 were killed by guns. Another 4,500 children were injured. During the entire 20-year Afghanistan war, 2,448 US service members were killed in action.
Every time there is a school shooting, we see the outrage and the thoughts and prayers. We decry the violence caused by political rhetoric and talk about the mental illness that causes people to try and assassinate politicians. But anger, hatred, rhetoric, and division are not unique to America; only gun violence is.
Other nations enacted reforms after a single mass shooting or a rash of violent crimes. Not America. Our Second Amendment, combined with a gun-loving culture supported by organizations that donate millions to politicians every election, ensures we have guns just about everywhere in our society, more guns than we have people.
America has a gun problem. There are not enough guardrails to ensure that citizens use their right to bear arms responsibly. That should be the focus of gun reform.
Despite the phrase “shall not be infringed,” the Second Amendment has limits, as do all of our Constitutional rights. The Supreme Court Justice who helped create the gun problems we have today explicitly said so while overturning handgun bans and deciding that the militia clause no longer applied.
Justice Antonin Scalia wrote that:
“like most rights, the right secured by the second amendment is not unlimited.” and that “[N]othing in our opinion should be taken to cast doubt on longstanding prohibitions on the possession of firearms by felons and the mentally ill, or laws forbidding the carrying of firearms in sensitive places such as schools and government buildings, or laws imposing conditions and qualifications on the commercial sale of arms”
It is fully Constitutional to ban weapons not typically owned by civilians. No one wants people walking around with RPGs and grenades, so we made it illegal to do so. Assault rifles are weapons of war and have been used in the worst mass shootings in America. They can be outlawed, and they should be.
However, the focus purely on assault rifles hasn’t been working. There hasn’t been a federal ban on assault rifles in 20 years, and gun rights advocates have seized on potential bans by spinning it as the government wanting to take your guns. The constant narrative is “Why punish law-abiding, responsible gun owners?”
Of the over 400 million guns in America, only ~20 million are assault rifles, and over 60% of firearm murders are committed with handguns. Banning assault rifles would only be the tip of the iceberg.
What we need is a broader approach to gun reform that is fully constitutional, will drastically reduce gun deaths, and can be seen by both proponents and opponents of gun rights as a focus on responsible gun ownership.
Many ideas that can achieve this are not new and are already widely supported by the public. But there is a critically important law that would tie all of these other measures together and ensure that irresponsible and reckless gun owners are held accountable.
Universal background checks. The processes need to be the same nationwide and for every individual. This must be required for all sales and transfers, even among family members. Want to give a gun to your friend or child? You need to go to a gun store or other approved location and have a background check performed.
Mandatory registration of all firearms.
Guns must be stored in a safe when not in use.
New gun owners must take a safety training course with local police.
Red flag rules are used to prevent individuals going through an unstable period in their lives from hurting themselves or others. Anyone deemed a risk has their gun temporarily removed until their mental state has returned to normal, at which point their firearms are returned.
Mandatory sentencing of an additional five years for any crime committed with a gun and an additional ten years if the crime resulted in a death or severe injury.
Here is the essential law: Anyone who does not follow the above laws is fully culpable for any injuries or crimes committed by their firearms. If a gun is not stored safely and a child gets ahold of it and accidentally injures or kills someone, or if you give a gun to a friend without going through a background check and they use it to rob someone, you will stand trial and, if found guilty, be sentenced as a perpetrator of the crime including the mandatory sentencing mentioned above.
This collection of laws heavily focuses on being responsible with firearms, from buying to storing them to how you get rid of or transfer them. It focuses punishment on those who are irresponsible with their guns, including allowing guns to get into the hands of people who should never have them.
There should be minimal complaints from the people who say responsible gun owners shouldn’t be punished because a responsible gun owner would not violate any of these laws.
We need reform today because far too many people will die tomorrow.
