Baby steps toward gun sanity

As I previously wrote, gun owners have exactly the nation they want: one in which they're armed and the rest of us aren't.

So, do I want to disarm them?

No.

I want them to justify their guns — the really outrageous ones.

Why can't we ask someone, "Why do you need a semiautomatic rifle with a massive magazine?"

Okay, we can ask, and we do. The response is always either "hunting", "self-defense", or "fun". I'm no gun owner but it seems to me that if you're hunting for game, a semiautomatic weapon renders the target unfit for consumption, defeating the point of the exercise. I have a hard time imagining a rifle being a better self-defense weapon than a handgun in the close quarters where "self-defense' would be a concern. As for "fun", well, society doesn't have to permit all forms of fun. Shooting up heroin and shooting up a shopping mall each strikes some people as "fun" but we prohibit both anyway.

Why can't we require anyone who wants such a weapon to have a damned good reason for having it?

Why can't we bar anyone under, say, age 25 from buying or owning such a weapon? We don't allow anyone under that age to represent us in Congress. We should show at least as much care and good judgment when it comes to firearms ownership as we do when it comes to picking our representatives. (Actually, given some of the clowns in Congress, we need to show a lot more care and good judgment when it comes to firearms.)

What's so threatening about restricting ownership of and access to semiautomatic rifles and large magazines?

Next you'll come for the rest of our guns. The slippery slope, or mission creep, or whatever you call the phenomenon is a risk. However, I don't see a public appetite to go beyond semiautomatic rifles and large magazines right now. We are a long way from the possibility, much less the likelihood, of going further.

Unless, that is, the pro-gun lobby remains obdurate.

The longer pro-gun advocates resist any step to tighten our absurdly loose regulations, the more likely it is the rest of us will consider really drastic steps, including banning guns outright. The tree that won't bend will break, and all that.

The Second Amendment won't let you do that, so suck on it. That's true. Given the Supreme Court's reactionary majority that honors bloodless text over bloodied people, that ends the argument. For now.

However, the Second Amendment isn't a commandment from on high. The Constitution is ours. We get to fix it if it's broken — and it is.

Every day that the pro-gun lobby allows nothing to change, more of us embrace altering the Second Amendment.

I don't know what a modified Second Amendment should say. I do have some idea of what it should mean.

Firearms are dangerous tools. Society recognizes they have specific uses. Society can prohibit firearms whose capabilities exceed what's needed for those uses. Society can limit firearms ownership and use.

Reworking the Second Amendment would be drastic. However, I will consider any means to change the status quo.

I do not accept that we must tolerate bloodshed on a scale experienced by no other advanced nation because of unthinking obeisance to a part of the Constitution whose raison d'être is no longer obvious.

Why should we allow indiscriminate private ownership of firearms whose capabilities exceed the requirements for any legitimate use? Why should young people be able to buy such firearms before they can vote or drink?

We shouldn't, and they shouldn't.

Just acting on those two simple principles would represent progress toward sanity, and maybe even toward a less bloody future.