More Gun Talk

This post started out as a Facebook comment to a friend on the subject of our gun rights and whether they are threatened. This is a cleaned up and edited version of that response.

I don't think there is a threat to gun ownership in this country.

The NRA tells us there is; of course they've been doing that since the 70s. And since the 70s guns have been used as a wedge issue and a way to bolster a political brand.

The Heller decision of a few years ago, in which the SCOTUS said that the District of Columbia could not deprive residents of the right to have handguns in their homes also clearly stated that the government (federal, state or local) could establish reasonable boundaries as to what kind of weapons are allowed to the public. The Heller decision was widely praised by gun-rights activists because it pretty well knocked down the previous judicial view that the 2nd Amendment said you had to be in well-organized militia for the 2nd Amendment to pertain to an individual's rights.

So, about some of those weapons. Not so many years ago,  few private citizens had AR-15s. They just were not available outside of police departments. In 1977, at the "revolt in Cincinnati" the NRA was taken over by a guy who wanted to eliminate just about any government restriction on gun ownership. He thought that laws banning ownership of full auto weapons should be abolished for example. At about that same time the NRA abandoned their policy of not accepting funds from gun manufacturers, becoming in essence the lobbying arm for a billions-dollar international business. One of the things the manufacturers and their lobbying arm did was create a new domestic market in guns--by manufacturing variants of the AR-15 and some other semi-automatic weapons that allow a shooter to put as many rounds as the magazine will hold downrange in a very short time.

By the way, we hear a lot about mentally ill people being the problem, not the gun. But I have to tell you, a mentally ill person with a Bushmaster is a lot more dangerous than a mentally ill person with a baseball bat, or knife, or even a bolt action rifle.

The NRA says that before we start making new laws we should enforce the ones we already have. However, they have spent much of the last 30 years neutering our ability to enforce the laws we have on the books. They also argue that one of the more effective laws (background checks) is useless and ought to be tossed. In part they are right; background checks are far from optimal--because the NRA has pushed laws that make it illegal to share background check data. Do you know that the FBI cannot check a suspected terrorist's name against state and BATF data to see if the suspect has purchased a weapon? Thanks NRA, for helping the USA win the war on terrorism.

 What has the Obama Administration done? Not much until a few weeks ago. Now Obama has sent Executive Orders to Executive branch departments telling them to do things that they are required by existing laws to do and, in some cases, clarifying some vagaries in existing laws. In short he is doing what the NRA insists he should do. President Obama's commission--led by Vice President Biden--is also drafting laws that it will submit for Congress's consideration to limit what kind of guns the public can own.

So Congress (and the nation) can have a debate about it. The NRA seems to think that even having the debate is the onset of tyranny.

I want to stress that the administration is doing what SCOTUS in the Heller decision says should happen: the citizens' rights to keep and bear arms should be respected within reasonable limits. I also want to emphasize that if all of the measures that the Obama administration proposes to Congress pass, then we will have the same gun liberties that we enjoyed when Ronald Reagan was President.

With that, I'll go back to my point that I do not believe our rights are in any jeopardy at all. This argument is artificial. It is generated to churn up sales for gun-makers, and drive political wedges at the same time between Americans.