Pros and Cons of Eight Gun Control Proposals
From Most to Least Politically Feasible.
Idea One - Improve the Bureaucracy That Oversees Background Checks
Benjamin Dierker (2017) wrote an article in The Federalist looking at five easy bureaucratic reforms for improving the National Instant Criminal Background Check System (NICS). He recommended:
Merging databases into a single system,
Cross reference databases across law enforcement agencies
Prosecuting buyers who provide false information while attempting to purchase a gun. This was part of a proposed Grassley-Cruz bill, and according to Cruz, “In 2010, 48,000 felons and fugitives lied and illegally tried to purchase guns. They prosecuted only 44 of them.”
Increase NCIS investigation time. “…approximately 92 percent of background checks are completed in a matter of seconds or minutes for those with no criminal record, if the system finds a match, the transaction is denied or delayed. When a match exists, the FBI has only three days to investigate, after which the seller merely uses his own judgment.”
Allow private sellers to run background checks using NCIS. Currently only registered firearms dealers are required to do so.
If the Right is willing to offer these reforms without asking anything in return, it’s free money for the gun control side.
PBS News Hour ran a poll in 2019 looking at support for gun legislation
Idea Two - Increase Funding For Mental Health
This idea is popular with Righties because the only downside is that it requires more tax dollars being spent, which is much less concerning than laws that prohibit or limit them from purchasing firearms.
I’m having a hard time finding the data, but a lot of these mass shooters were previously known to law enforcement and have been subjected to mental health screenings. The Buffalo, NY shooter from May 2022 was arrested the previous year and subjected to a mental health evaluation, but that didn’t stop him from purchasing a gun, according to Townhall. According to that same article, other shooters were detained and released before going on their rampages:
“the Marjory Stoneman Douglas shooting in 2018, which sparked another wave of anti-gun activism, was also preventable.”
“In Sutherland Springs, Texas, the mass shooting at a Baptist church that left 26 people dead could have been prevented if shooter Devin Patrick Kelley's brutal domestic violence charges and court-martial conviction had been reported to the FBI.”
The Pulse Nightclub shooter was also known to the FBI.
It seems like a lot of these guys get caught in the net before they attack, but somehow they get out of it. I don’t know why that is, but it seems like a good place to begin looking to enact meaningful reforms.
Idea Three - Mandatory Background Checks for all Firearms Sales
Going back to Dierker’s (2017) article, if we could expand NCIS so that it would be easily usable by everyone, then 92% of private and gun show sales could be made in a few minutes, and where the system flags someone, that sale could be rerouted through a licensed firearms dealer who would screen both buyer and seller. This would go well with Dierker’s other recommendation for giving the FBI more time to investigate and prosecute anyone caught lying in their application.
Idea Four - Raise the Age Limit
It’s controversial to say that we can draft 18 year-olds, and send them to fight and die in foreign countries, yet not allow them to own firearms at home. That being said, this article in the Washington Post describes Florida’s law to limit semi-automatic rifle sales to people 21+.
It seems like it would deter some school shootings and would reduce inner city gang violence, and if Florida of all places is open to it, it could be a route worth exploring.
Idea Five - Red Flag Laws
The first three would be pretty easy, but this is where it starts getting divisive because of the potential for abuse. Here's a story about my own sheriff, Justin Smith, in Larimer County prosecuting a woman who filed a false flag report on one of his officers in retaliation for the shooting of her son, which the court ruled was in self-defense.
For this to be accepted by Conservatives, the following issues would have to be addressed:
What if the person who alerts the Red Flag system is lying or being vengeful? What kind of legal penalty should their be for perjury or abuse of the system?
How long can they keep a person’s firearms while the person is investigated?
Under what conditions can that person be kept from their firearms, or purchasing new firearms, indefinitely?
What would the process be for a person who has acted recklessly to show that they have become mentally healthy enough to have their firearms returned?
I personally would argue that the state should have to provide free counsel to anyone who has had their firearms taken under a Red Flag report. Otherwise the process can be the punishment itself for poor gun owners.
So these could be accepted, as long as safeguards were put in place that respected people’s rights and punished fraudulent reporting.
Idea Six - Ban High Capacity Magazines, Ban Semi-Automatic Weapons, and Make Mandatory Buy Back Programs for These Weapons
These ideas won’t be accepted by the Right. Anyone with even basic weapons proficiency can change out a magazine in about a single second. According to this Quora article, it’s hard to know exactly how many guns sold are semi-automatic, but according to this poster,
”Adding all this up, we get to about 85 million semi-auto firearms out of the roughly 162 million total firearms produced since 1986 (52.5%), about half of those produced since the AWB expiration.”
So that’s about half of the guns sold, which matches what I’ve seen when I’ve shopped for firearms.
As for Mandatory Buy Back programs, there’s a lot of people on both sides who think we’re continually inching closer to a Civil War. The phrase I’ve heard in my own Political Science department is ‘Cold Civil War,’ and trying to disarm the Conservative population that doesn’t want to be disarmed is going to open the door to some really dark possibilities.
Idea Seven - Licensing
For smaller firearms this would get a lot of resistance, but there are already licensing requirements already for fully automatic rifles, Carry and Concealed Weapons permits, and hunting licenses.
Making someone get a license for an object they’re constitutionally allowed to have is problematic, but more gun safety training is better.
Some non-coercive ways to encourage gun safety classes would be to offer them in schools, or to reduce sales taxes for gun buyers who agree to take safety courses, or we could conduct research to find other ways to ‘nudge’ gun buyers, especially new gun buyers, into learning how to operate their firearms safely. Licensing classes would also help catch mentally ill or malevolent people who might be acquiring weapons for illicit purposes.
Idea Eight - Allow Teachers to Arm Themselves
To start with, most, but not all, of the people I’ve known in my years in education are not the type of people who feel comfortable owning firearms or having them on their person.
That being said, if teachers do want to arm themselves to protect their students in the event of an attack, we could offer them training and regulate their possession of guns on school grounds (i.e., always on their person or in a gun safe in their classroom).
Perhaps we could even train them as Sheriff’s deputies, with all of the rights and responsibilities that come along with that.
As always, thank you for reading. If you have any other ideas, or better arguments for these ideas, I’m always happy to improve my work through responding to your constructive feedback.
[Note - I’ve had 2 surgeries in the last week and I am on several meds, so I apologize for any typos. I’m doing my best.]