Licensed Gun Owner

We should need a license to buy a gun.

Let me state my position on gun control: It scares me.  The 2^nd Amendment wasn’t put in place so citizens could hunt, defend their homes against criminals or plink at targets; its intent is to serve as a balance against the federal government’s ability to legislate itself excessive powers.  Don’t paint me as a conspiracy theorist but that seems to be a legitimate concern.

It also scares me for guns to be sold as freely as raw milk…wait, bad example…as freely as supersized drinks…wait, bad example…as freely as the morning-after pill.  There are idiots out there and arming them is as smart as ignoring the threats of an insane, wet-behind-the-ears Asian dictator with the resources of an entire country at his disposal.

For example, recently, in a terribly tragic accident a 5-year-old shot and killed his 2-year-old sister with a loaded rifle his parents left laying around the house.  Leaving a loaded weapon (or unloaded weapon) accessible to a 5-year-old is every bit as intelligent as leaving Draino, kitchen knives or prescription medicine accessible to a five-year-old.  These are people that shouldn’t be trusted to own guns…or raise children.  Maybe we need to require background checks for unprotected sex. 

Back to my original point, citizens have guns as a source of power to ensure the government represents citizens and their interests as opposed to becoming a ruling class, living the high life while their subjects foot the bill.  It’s happened repeated times throughout history and trusting that it couldn’t happen in our country is like trusting that your dog won’t get on the couch while you’re at work.

And, since the reason for an armed citizenry is to keep the government legitimate, it makes no sense for the government to keep track of the very firearms keeping it honest.  This leaves the question: how can we keep criminals, idiots and the mentally unstable from getting guns without infringing on everyone else?  The short answer is, to a great extent we can’t, look at the success we’ve had in keeping illegal drugs out of the hands of those same criminals, idiots and the mentally unstable.

But we do a pretty decent job of keeping minors from buying cigarettes, the vision impaired from driving without glasses and the untrained from driving school buses.  So why not take the same approach?  When you get a driver’s license, if you’ve committed a felony, are nuts or have some other reason to be prohibited from owning a gun your license would have a gun and ammunition purchasing restriction.  It’s anonymous and effective.  Based on that same system my teen sons can’t buy beer but I can…but nobody knows if I have.

Driver’s license gun restrictions (or lack of if you haven’t screwed up you right to keep and bear arms) allows for responsible citizens to buy guns, irresponsible citizens to be stopped and the government to not regulate (or keep a diary of) their regulators.  What happens if a gun seller (business or private) doesn’t honor the restriction?  The same thing that happens if they sell beer to a minor, they get fined and/or go to jail.

This idea, of course, doesn’t address adults without a license, but neither do our alcohol and tobacco laws.  It also doesn’t address the wants of people who have a phobia of guns, nor those that have a phobia of governments.  But for the vast majority of us in the middle, I think we can agree, we should need a license to buy a gun.