We should need a license to buy a gun.
Let me state my position on gun control: It scares me. The 2nd 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.
