Recommendations for Gun Control

I got some heat from several people for my last post where I recommended relaxation of concealed carry permits. Karen Duda (Duda – that’s Spanish for doubt, but much more likely a Slavic surname) commented the following:

But allowing everyone to carry a gun does NOT make us safer. Case in point: when Gabrielle Giffords was shot and nine others injured by a nut job who never should have been able to get a gun, there was a young man in the crowd who had his gun, for which he has a legal permit, on him. He did not use it to try to stop the attack. He later said that he was afraid if he pulled out his (legal) gun people would have thought he was the shooter or an accomplice. So the fact that he had a gun did NOTHING to protect anyone that day.

I replied thusly:

Karen, I agree, allowing everyone to carry a gun would not make us safer. And you bring up a very good and important point about the Giffords incident. Not only that but, in a situation like the Giffords one, besides the risk of being mistaken for a homicidal maniac, if a person with a legal permit and gun did decide to shoot at the person who started the shooting -- assuming he knew for sure who started the shooting -- he might risk hitting innocent bystanders by mistake, like those trained and authorized cops did by the Empire State Building in Manhattan some months ago when that nutjob decided to shoot and kill his former boss. You also bring up a very good point about 'accomplices.' Can you imagine the havoc some crazed killers could produce if two or more of them started blasting away in a crowd where everyone had a legally authorized gun? More guns, less crime? If I sound like I'm contradicting myself, I can understand that. But I can explain my position, and I will, in my next post.

Well, I won’t be able to explain my position in detail this time because I want to use this post to get my policy recommendations out before Obama presents Biden’s task force recommendations. Let me say this for now; guns are a double edged sword. In some instances they can do good. They can prevent crimes and even save lives. They can diffuse dangerous situations. Of course in other instances they can do great harm. They can make dangerous people and situations exponentially more dangerous. And the more dangerous and lethal those guns are, the more dangerous and lethal those people and situations become.

The biggest obstacle, that I see, preventing us from achieving the healthiest and safest society we can is the refusal of the most passionate of us, on both sides of the gun issue, to see and acknowledge the reality of guns’ double edged nature. Our emotional biases tend to allow us to see only the side that comforts, supports and reinforces those biases. Acknowledging the other side of the sword is crucial in figuring out the best things to do.

Here are my policy recommendations:

1. Relax concealed carry laws. Ultimately, local governments/authorities are and should be the deciders of if and how to implement these laws but I would strongly recommend that they be relaxed with specific and stringent safeguards in place.

2. Put in place an immediate moratorium on the production and sale of all firearms.

3. Require that all guns in circulation be accounted for and registered by the owners.

4. Confiscate all illegal guns. That’s right, I said ‘confiscate.’ I agree with Wayne LaDouchebag, the executive vice president of the National Rifle Association (who always says how that no good tyrant President of ours – who was twice elected by a majority of the voting public – is responsible for the gun massacres because of his absolute refusal to enforce the laws that are already on the books because he wants things to get so bad that he will then use that as the excuse to take away all guns from everyone except for the blue helmeted UN forces in the black helicopters who will now be in charge of running the US of A.) I think it’s about time the government started enforcing the laws that are already on the books.

5. Here are the ‘well regulated’ parts: Require a license to buy, own and carry a gun that includes a background check, the passing of a training class and the registration for each and every gun and…

6. Redesign all new guns manufactured to strict specifications that limit the trigger speed, caliber/velocity of bullets and magazine size and…

7. Finally, dare I say it; limit all purchases to one gun per person.

Sound crazy Wayne? Well then call me crazy!
Sound farfetched? Naïve? Of course it is. How could we possibly stand up to the ferocious rage of the heavily armed gun nuts who would love nothing better than to finally get to use all of that fire power that they’ve been stockpiling for all of these years? Plus, who the hell is going to listen to me? But if anyone with any influence were to listen to me I could give a series of tactics and a strategy that might actually make these proposals seem much less farfetched.
These would include lessons on how to frame and win the debates with the anti-gun control side.
Removing the credibility of the NRA by pinning the blame for these gun deaths on the NRA’s depraved indifference to the consequences of their efforts to sabotage any and every effort to regulate guns.
 Conceding on concealed carry permits is also a crucial tactic, but not a Machiavellian one. This is the one single argument that the pro-gun people have that would probably save lives if important safeguards are taken.
 One other tactic may be the single best strategy for getting these proposals enacted: present these proposals to the American people to be voted on, yes or no, in a national referendum! If the American people vote yes and the gun nuts want to fight the will of the people, well who are the tyrants now? The gun nuts would have no choice but to overthrow themselves!