In the wake of the Aurora shootings, I have been thinking about, as many of us are, the right to keep and bear arms. I am lucky enough to have passionate people on both sides of the issue, and because of my personal history of growing up in a hunting family in Texas, I don’t want the nullification of the Second Amendment. It is an important one, but we need to have good and many conversations about it. My frustration with gun rights advocates comes not from their desire to protect this piece of the constitution but from their belief (conscious or not) that this right is somehow categorically different from other rights. Somehow superior to other rights. They are misguided.
All rights have limits. In the abstract, they don’t, but name me three people that live in the abstract (then check to see if they have an arsenal in their basement). Freedom of speech is famously curtailed by the rule of “you can’t yell ‘fire’ in a crowded movie theater.” Freedom of religion bumps up against the separation of church and state or is limited by the state itself (think about anti-polygamy laws and the FLDS). The freedom of the press is limited by invocations of executive privilege. Right of assembly often now requires bureaucratic paperwork to be legal. We as a society limit our rights in order to have them. We give a little away in order to have the core and important parts of those rights.
Why should the right to keep and bear arms be different? Why should the acquisition of guns and ammo be completely unfettered? Is there anything fundamentally different about this right that requires us not to limit it in any way?
No. I have been going back and forth with my brother about this issue (round of applause to him for this), touching on several aspects of it. The fear of gun owners and gun advocates seems to be the slippery slope. If you allow for a little bit of gun control, the government will take a mile. You will end up with an empty right to bear arms. Aside from the intellectual fear, there seems to be a very visceral reaction to gun legislation or even the idea of talking about gun control. In my life, a comparable reaction would be about curtailing reproductive rights; a reaction I unfortunately have been experiencing quite a bit in the last five years. While I don’t feel the same way about gun rights, I can understand that reaction. Just like for reproductive rights, there are places where we should be able to find some working ground to pass legislation that reflects our values as Americans.
One of the places I think we can discuss is background checks and registration of weapon purchases. Background checks can help to identify people that probably should not be in possession of a deadly weapon. It is of course never going to identify every person, but imperfection really isn’t an argument against it. Registration of weapons keeps us informed of who owns what and where those gun should be. It helps police know if where they are headed is highly armed. It is an indication of responsible gun ownership. As has been said to liberals and progressives many, many times, if you aren’t hiding something, then what are you worried about?
Another place we should be looking at is education. We require people to pass a test in order to drive a car. I think we should require something similar of gun owners/users. It makes sense to me to make this class as universal as possible in order to instill a respect through knowledge of weapons. As I mentioned above, I grew up in a hunting family. I’m actually a pro-hunting vegetarian, because I think if you are going to eat meat then you should be as involved in the process as possible. I’ve shot a rifle. We had guns in the house. My parents took the time with us to make sure that we understood the power of these weapons and that we respected it. Small things like: never point a gun at a person even if you know for sure that it is unloaded, never be around a gun without an adult present, and we do not kill animals for fun. Having an educated gun owning class can only increase good gun ownership.
Finally, ammunition should be regulated. Six thousand rounds of ammunition should be difficult and/or time-consuming to acquire. If we can control how much ammunition it is legal to buy over a given time, then people that are planning atrocities like Aurora will at the very least be forced to plan better in order to amass what they need, which could potentially give law enforcement time to notice that this person is a red flag. Even if we allow people to buy as many guns that they want of every type available, if you control the ammunition, you effectively control the use of the weapon. People can hunt, but they can’t raze a street.
Ultimately, the purpose of gun legislation and control is to promote the responsible exercise of this right, not to strip every gun owner of their weapons. Background checks, registration of weapons, education about weapons and regulation of ammunition purchases will not stop you from using your gun. It won’t even stop you from using your gun against the government. It will declare your intent to be an upstanding citizen in the exercise of your right to keep and bear arms.
creating carrie 
Good write up Carrie. I think if this country is going to get anywhere we need more people who are willing to see both sides of the coin. The thing that I am most disappointed in is the general lack of education most people seem to have about guns in general. It seems like nearly 95% of the “Gun control” supporters think that most of these mass shootings (at at least when they hear the word ‘assault rifle’) that people are walking in with fully automatic weapons and just laying waste to groves of people in a Ratatatatata kind of way. Which isnt true. Now the prospect of that is scary. “Look how many bullets that gun shoots” so people have a knee jerk reaction and because of that our government passes knee jerk legislation. The fact that they regulated “assault” style weapons is a joke. The truth is inside a building, against unarmed people, a 15 round glock is just as dangerous as a 30 round AR15. People just get so obsessed over the word assault rifle which is just another semi automatic weapon out there. They start blaming the guns and the ammo, when we really need to blame ourselves.
It seems like now there are three times of gun owners in this country. There are the responsible law abiding gun owners who go through background checks and buy their gun legally. There are the criminal law breaking gun owners who obtain their weapon illegally, and the crazy gun owner that hasn’t been identified yet. I think if our administration is truly sincere about preventing further mass killings they need to look at ways to identify and stop mentally disturbed people from getting their hands on weapons. Because even with these new laws. Someone could still easily buy a revolver, a box of 50 rounds, walk into a school and still commit monstrous acts. In short im simply saying these new laws do not actually do anything but appease the knee jerk reaction this country has towards tragedies. Which is unfortunate.
All in all though. I think things should be looked at and unfortunately this country has become split down the middle when it comes to any kind of progressive change to a law. Even your views are now considered flip flopping in the eyes of this extreme two party government. There is no more compromise.
Anyways thank you for the good write up. For some reason I can’t post political stuff on facebook so when i saw you blog I figured I would chime in. Hopefully when this all calms down we will have sensible gun laws that really make a difference and that we can all live with.
Thanks, Ike. Yeah, I’ve been really disheartened by the lack of real conversation. I think we are starting in the wrong place. The first question (in my mind) is about what responsible gun ownership looks like. How can we legislate when we cannot answer that question, at least generally?