Surprise surprise, a little bit of unorthodoxy
I’m pretty much a knee-jerk liberal/progressive when it comes to most things, with the sole exception of gun control. Even though I’m aware that there is a fairly good chance the framers intended the 2nd Amendment to be a collective right, I’m inclined to side with tradition and support an individual right to gun ownership.
Which means that I’m in the – somewhat odd – position of supporting my Republican Attorney General, Bob McDonnell:
In a press release today, Virginia Attorney General Bob McDonnell announced that Virginia will join Texas and other states in a friend of court brief supporting individual liberty and and the right of the people to keep and bear arms. The United States Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia ruled recently in Heller v. District of Columbia that the Second amendment provides an individual right to keep and bear arms and that as a result the District of Columbia’s near total ban on possession of arms by private citizens was unconstitutional.
I recognize that the District has a large amount of violent crime, a significant portion of which involves firearms. Even still, I’m wary of massive restrictions on the right to gun ownership. To some degree, the oft-stated maxim “if guns are outlawed only outlaws will own guns” isn’t totally wrong. A reduction in the number of guns doesn’t necessarily correspond with a decrease in violent crime. England for example has extremely stringent gun laws, but a very high rate of violent crime; the perpetrators just don’t use guns.
I am though willing toy with banning general ownership of handguns but allowing rifles and shotguns (like Canada, which has a high rate of gun ownership but low levels of “gun crime). You could lift some restrictions on buying rifles and shotguns, but place far more in the purchase of handguns: a separate license, heavier taxation, and making potential owners go through more rigorous background checks It keeps with the spirit of our tradition – rifles and shotguns are used by farmers, hunters and general enthusiasts – while keeping the dangerous weapons off the street.
It’s probably not politically feasible though, and fewer handguns doesn’t change the rather violent culture we have here in the United States. So yeah. What do you cats think?
I tend to find the gun debate not incredibly interesting. I guess that’s also a break with orthodoxy, since if I was in charge, I wouldn’t care enough to take away anyone’s guns.
However, the outlaws slogan has always struck me as weird, despite its literal truth. First, you’re sometimes going to get a way to identify and charge some of those outlaws when you wouldn’t be able to otherwise. That does assume you don’t think a reasonable response to gun control laws is for otherwise law-abiding citizens to buy black market weapons.
Second, I don’t like the division of people into two types: those prone to commit crimes and those who aren’t. Having guns around might help avoid some confrontations, but it’s also going to make those that do happen a lot more destructive. I think gun advocates sometimes get lulled into viewpoint that the parties to any confrontation are either good citizens, or hardened criminals. If you adopt that kind of thinking, it seems a bit crazy to take the gun from the law-abiding citizen. But if there are more gradations, that’s not so obvious.