Originally Published May 3, 2013

When the Manchin-Toomey background check bill was defeated in the Senate, two weeks ago, gun-control advocates were upset. They shouldn’t be. If it had passed, it would have merely paid lip service to the memory of those lost at Sandy Hook Elementary, while doing little to actually mitigate gun violence.

The “Loophole” that the bill claimed to close by requiring backgrounds checks for private sales at gun shows and online, far from being a gigantic breach, was really nothing more than a tiny crack: According to a comprehensive survey of 18,000 prison inmates conducted by the Bureau of Justice, less than 1% of criminals actually attain weapons in these ways.[1]

However, those that sent the bill down to defeat don’t have a whole lot to be proud of, either. Their reasons for rejecting the measure – that it was ineffective and would impose too much of a burden on gun sellers – were both misguided and simply wrong. Just because a law probably would not catch that many criminals does not make it a bad one – it still catches criminals. And the NICS (National Instant Criminal Background Check System) backgrounds checks that the bill would have required private sellers to complete are hardly an imposition. According to the FBI, who is jointly responsible for performing the checks and solely responsible for maintaining the database of individuals barred from gun purchases, a person who requests the instant background check via phone or an online system can almost always expect to receive a response within a few minutes and are required by law to receive one within three days. Unfortunately, facts like these have never been worth much in Washington.

Even more unfortunate is that what’s been forgotten in the all too familiar media and political frenzy over “who won” and “who lost” in the wake of the bill’s defeat are the stories and memories of real families and individuals whose lives have been shattered or ended by firearms. Their anguish demands attention.

Now that we are back at square one, the question we must confront is: “Where do we go from here?”

Fortunately, there is an alternative that is both new in terms of the perspective that it would require, yet entirely familiar in terms of the regulatory structure it would implement. Most importantly, this alternative would take into account a simple truth that many advocates of gun control – both Republican and Democrat – seem to ignore: that in order to reduce gun violence, we have to change the nature of our relationship with guns.

Guns In America: Forever In Our Hearts, Easy To Get In Our Hands

America loves guns. We own more than any other nation – between 270 and 310 million of them[2] – and a great many of us count ourselves as owners – almost 35% of households.[3] The founders of our nation enshrined gun ownership within its founding document. Most importantly, we have some of the loosest laws governing the purchase and possession of firearms.

The central law that regulates gun purchases within the United States is the Brady Handgun Violence Prevention Act of 1993, which created the National Instant Criminal Background Check System (NICS). Under this law, the criminal and mental history of anyone seeking to buy a gun from a licensed firearms seller is reviewed before any purchase. Without this federal provision, any individual, regardless of their background, could purchase whatever gun they wish from any retailer in thirty-five states, provided they are at least 18 years of age to buy a rifle or a shotgun or 21 years of age to purchase a handgun or military-style assault rifle.

Some states have implemented their own laws to complement federal law. In Minnesota, for instance those seeking to purchase a handgun or assault rifle must first receive a permit to purchase one. To apply, one only need fill out a form at their local police station that asks for age, address, driver’s license information, and a physical description and then wait for an additional week while a more comprehensive background check is completed. Assuming there is no issue, an individual can then purchase whatever gun they wish – no training or prior experience required. Many counties and cities have also implemented additional regulations.

Lost in the legal shuffle of numerous overlapping laws from an overwhelming number of sources is a sense of sanity. How can we even begin to reform laws that lack any semblance of uniformity? How can we expect our political representatives to do anything, when we don’t understand the laws that we currently have?

In order to restore that missing sense of sanity, we fortunately don’t have to look too far for a solution. That’s because we have, for a very long time, been regulating in a simple, effective, and uniform manner another device that kills more people per year than a gun.[4] And just as millions of Americans turn to this device every day for convenience, we should turn to it now for legislative guidance: the car.

A Common Device Provides a Clear Path Forward

Over 68% of Americans held a driver’s license in 2010 and many more, though they lack one, have a good understanding of what it takes to get one: You have to be a certain age, you have to take a training course during which you learn about safety and practice driving, and you have to pass written and performance-based tests to prove that you’re qualified. Moreover, when someone purchases a vehicle it must be registered to the owner.

Most Americans readily understand and wholeheartedly accept the purpose of these restrictions: If anyone wants to use a device that can put others at risk, then it’s not too much to ask that someone be mature enough to use it, get trained on its use, prove that they’ve been trained, and then register the device so that they can be held responsible for any harm that might be done with it.

We expect these restrictions for a device that has the potential to kill. We should also expect the same restrictions for a device that is designed to kill.

Fortunately, given citizens’, the States’, and the Federal Government’s experience with automobile regulation, its legal framework could be easily applied to firearms. Perhaps like this:

• All adults would be required to have a state-issued Gun License if they wish to purchase, possess or use a firearm beyond the age of 18.
• Citizens can get a license as early as 16; Children can still use firearms privately under adult supervision.
• Knowledge, safety, and handling training would be required before a license would be issued.
• Written and performance based tests would have to be passed before a license would be issued.
• A comprehensive background check to screen out criminals and the mentally ill would be required before a license would be issued.
• Regular re-licensing would be required with or without testing per the States’ discretion.
• If licensed individual commit a crime or their mental status changes, then their gun license would be liable to be suspended or revoked.
• Additional training and testing would be required in order to purchase, possess or use pistols, assault weapons, or other deadlier firearms or certain tactical accessories.
• Upon the initial purchase or transfer of a firearm, it would have to be registered to the owner.
• Any sale or transfer of a firearm to an unlicensed individual would be a crime.

Familiar Framework, New Benefits

If applied in this fashion, this regulatory framework would unlock numerous benefits for both gun-owners and non-owners, alike.

1. Improved Regulatory Clarity: By using an already commonly understood regulatory framework, Americans’ awareness of the law and the consequences of violating it would increase dramatically. Moreover, by establishing a simple legal baseline across all states, it would allow for increased cooperation amongst legislative, advocacy, and law enforcement entities at all levels of society and government.
2. Easily Customizable: With a common regulatory foundation, other states could readily augment the laws with additional statutes that suit the needs of their residents. New York, for instance, could implement stricter training requirements or magazine size restrictions, whereas Texas could add open-carry provisions. The states would still be able to serve as our laboratories of democracy.
3. Reduced Gun Violence: With very few exceptions, the studies of gun-violence have been unequivocal: more gun laws mean fewer gun deaths.[5][6] This new network of laws would help to further reduce fatalities in several ways:
   1. Better Training: Some of the most tragic cases of gun violence occur inside the homes of families with children. If adults were required to receive training on gun storage and handling, fewer toddlers might be maimed or killed after playing with a firearm that was mishandled by their parents. Additionally, if more citizens were trained in proper firearm self-defense techniques, they would be better equipped to protect themselves, thus potentially reducing the number of defenseless crime victims.
   2. Fewer “Bad Guys With Guns”: By criminalizing any transfer of firearms to unlicensed individuals, we directly undermine the way in which the vast majority of criminals attain guns. We could better deter those who might provide guns to criminals and more effectively punish those who do.
4. Greater Law Enforcement Efficacy and Safety: Through the registration of firearms, law enforcement officers would have a ready means of tracking and prosecuting the sources of firearms used in criminal activity. Additionally, cases of domestic homicide with a gun might be more quickly solved once the murder weapon was discovered. Also, with a record of gun registrations on-hand, on-duty officers would be better prepared to approach a potentially dangerous situation with the foreknowledge that a gun might be present.
5. Cost-Effective: Because the regulatory infrastructure would largely already be in place (DMV offices, trained employees, license-making equipment, etc.), implementation of the new laws would be relatively quick and cheap. The already existing private network of qualified firearm trainers and practice ranges could be certified to conduct the required safety and training courses. Once in-place, licensing fees could cover the operational costs of the legislation. Over time, we might reap additional time and monetary savings in our judicial system due to a reduction in gun-related crimes.
6. Stronger Gun-Culture: By establishing reasonable hurdles to gun ownership and ensuring an adequate level of training and experience, we would instantly imbue the act with a greater aura of responsibility and prestige. In fact, this new regulatory framework would do much more than our current set of laws to create the well-armed and well-trained citizenry that gun advocates hope to foster. In so doing, it would honor the 2^nd Amendment by respecting its prefatory statement that has too often been forgotten:

“A well regulated militia being necessary to the security of a free state, the right of the people to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed”

An Unfortunate Fact

Tragically, the great irony of any gun control laws that we might pass, including the ones that I have proposed, is that they would likely do very little to prevent the type of horrific events that motivate their passage. The black swan type crimes that indelibly etch the names of quiet places in our minds – Sandy Hook, Aurora, Tucson, Columbine – were committed by perpetrators that did not respect lives or laws. And so, unless we implement the most draconian of measures that have been proposed by those on the extreme ends of the gun control debate – measures, for instance, that would criminalize the sale or possession of handguns and assault rifles or laws that would mandate the placement of armed guards in all schools and public venues – we will have to find other means to address the ills that drive these individuals to massacre innocent lives.

But, with reasonable laws, we certainly can do something to deter family members from passing guns onto gang members – guns that helped to murder 11,078 people in 2010.[7] With reasonable laws, we certainly can do something to prevent firearms from getting into the hands of the mentally disturbed – 19,392 of who committed suicide with a gun.[8] With reasonable laws, we certainly can do something to encourage greater knowledge of gun safety – knowledge that may have saved some of the 114 children that were unintentionally killed with their parents’ guns.[9] We have the legislative means at our fingertips. Will we use it?

And so, ultimately, we yield ourselves to the devil’s arithmetic: How many minutes of waiting in line will we stomach in order to keep a child alive? How much money would we spend to save someone we will never know? How many bullets in a clip do we really need, if fewer meant mitigating a massacre? With the mathematics of morality, our choices really are that simple.

[1] http://bjs.gov/content/pub/pdf/fuo.pdf

[2] http://www.gunpolicy.org/firearms/region/united-states

[3] http://www.nytimes.com/2013/03/10/us/rate-of-gun-ownership-is-down-survey-shows.html?pagewanted=all&_r=0

[4] http://www.cdc.gov/nchs/fastats/injury.htm

[5] http://www.nydailynews.com/news/national/states-gun-laws-fewest-gun-deaths-study-article-1.1281756

[6] http://www.statemaster.com/graph/cri_mur_wit_fir-death-rate-per-100-000

[7]http://www.cdc.gov/injury/wisqars/pdf/10LCID_Violence_Related_Injury_Deaths_2010-a.pdf

[8] Ibid.

[9] Ibid.

© 2013 P.D. Nym