* * Freedoms have limits

Following the Newtown, CT tragedy, many people have expressed their view on our gun culture.  Here's mine.

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By any estimation, the Second Amendment is infused with vagueness. It says, verbatim, “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.”

So what exactly are “arms”?

What constitutes a militia, and how should it be regulated?

Do the people have the right to keep and bear arms outside a militia, or if the security of the state isn’t threatened?

Do the people have the right to bear arms for other purposes?

There seem to be only three plausible reasons for private ownership: hunting, protection from the overreach of a tyrannical government, and personal security. Let’s discuss.

Hunting: Nobody needs a weapon of war to shoot animals. As a hunter friend says, “If you don’t hit the deer on the first shot, you sure as heck aren’t going to hit him with the second.” Nobody is calling for the disarmament of hunters, but their weapons can be regulated without infringing on the enjoyment or effectiveness of their activity.

Protection from government overreach: The basis for the founding fathers’ concern was the tyrannical tendencies of King George III. If the King’s army had muskets, the citizens should as well. Today, our military has drones, cruise missiles, Seawolf class submarines, and F-16s. Private citizens have no chance.

  Personal security: Our gun obsession has led to a private arms race that can never be won, giving rise to insane proposals like arming primary school teachers and administrators. Next thing we know, the NRA will be advocating sending our First Graders to school packing heat. Gun owners are statistically more likely to be injured or die from their own guns than from somebody else’s. The “bad guys” aren’t going to give up their guns and ammo, but we can make it harder for them to get them in the future if we start now.

We have spent the last several generations putting weapons of unprecedented lethality in the hands of, well, just about everybody, and the results are horrific carnage and pitiable statistics. Nobody in America should accept the status quo. We must act.

Besides, every right has limits. Our most cherished right, guaranteed by the First Amendment, is to free speech. Yet nobody has the right to enter a crowded room and yell “Fire!” Nobody is allowed to own chemical, biological, or nuclear weapons, so some limits to lethality are reasonable and already accepted.

Citizens may only own and drive a car if they pass a competency test and earn a license, register the car and have it licensed and routinely inspected for safety, and obtain insurance. Why the hassle? Because cars are a potential public safety risk. Imagine if gun ownership required insurance to cover injuries or deaths caused by the gun! I see no infringement of the Second Amendment to require similar obligations and restrictions on gun owners. Any law-abiding gun owner should have no problem with compliance.

We need other solutions, too, including better enforcement of current laws and better mental health screening and treatment, and we need to commit to paying for these things. But not talking about guns to reduce this carnage is like not talking about cigarettes if we’re trying to reduce cancer deaths. We need limits to the lethality of weapons available to citizens. We need waiting periods and limits to purchases of both guns and ammunition. In any ways possible, we need to reduce the guns in our society by making them difficult to own and use.

The other day, a 22-year old man walked into a Charlottesville grocery story carrying a loaded semi-automatic weapon. According to the article about it, “Police restrained the man to ask him questions. They released him after they confirmed he is not a convicted felon, owned the gun legally and it was not concealed. Police say he was cooperative and did not break any laws.” Expletive! I can’t drive to the end of my block without proper licensing – and a seat belt! – because of the public safety risk, and yet it is perfectly legal for a man two weeks out of an asylum to parade in front of WalMart with a loaded AK-47. This is insanity, cruel inexplicable insanity.

The biggest problem with the gun-rights people is they offer no solutions, other than more guns, with the same logic as putting out fires by throwing in matches. The incidence of gun violence in America is pitiable, shameful. None of us should ever rest until it is addressed.