What Should We Do About Gun Violence?
By: Steve Sheffey
Tags: Democrats, NRA, Guns, Republicans

Since 1968, guns have killed more than 1.5 million Americans — more than have been killed in every war in U.S. history. We took Romaine lettuce off the shelves after 16 people were hospitalized. We banned Jarts after one person was injured. Nearly 40,000 people died from gun violence in 2017, and we’ve done nothing but thought and prayed.

We have so many shootings because we have so many guns. Nothing else explains the epidemic of gun violence. That’s why the U.S. is exceptional when it comes to mass shootings.

The obvious answer is to ban this dangerous product, but the NRA has shifted the debate so far from the center that even incredibly common sense measures like banning only assault weapons, background checks, and waiting periods are considered controversial.

I’m told that “Democrats want to take away your guns” won’t play in purple districts. Maybe this will play: “We don’t want to take away your guns, but we’ll have to if you can’t agree to safety measures such as licensing, training, and measures to make the gun inoperable if stolen, much as your phone is inoperable if stolen.”

When opponents of gun safety legislation say of a particular proposal “but that would not have stopped shooter x because he (it’s almost always a he) [would have passed the background check] [used a different type of gun]” the answer should be “okay. Then we’ll just ban all guns unless you can come up with something that would work, and in the meantime, we’ll pass this because it will make things a bit better.”

The default should not be to do the minimum and allow as much gun ownership as possible. The default should be to ban all firearms. Let those who want to own firearms try to persuade us that narrow exceptions to the ban are justified.

But isn’t that unreasonable? No. What’s unreasonable is accepting that thousands of Americans must die every year because we are afraid to regulate guns even as strictly as we regulate cars. We won’t be able to get gun deaths to zero, but the standard of reasonableness should be gun deaths in other Western countries. I’m not against guns. I’m in favor of people remaining alive.

The U.S. suffers 29.7 homicides by firearm per million people. Among advanced countries, Switzerland is next at 7.7. So what is “reasonable” gun control? Whatever it takes to get down to at least 7.7 in the U.S.

That means talking about real solutions, not simply about what is possible today. Of course we should, in the very short-term, push for anything we can get that would save lives. Background checks would be a major step forward; too bad the GOP Senate refuses to even call it for a vote. But without diminishing the importance of background checks or other reforms, we can’t pretend that incremental reforms are nearly enough or pat ourselves on the back for a job well done and say that’s the best we could do and move on.

Bans on smoking in public, mandatory child safety seats, marriage equality, and yes, an African-American president, happened because we changed societal attitudes. We need to make gun ownership culturally unacceptable.

Members of Congress in safe districts should take on the NRA, and members of Congress in other districts should consider whether making the NRA a target (instead of our children) is a winning strategy. It worked for Abner Mikva. And if you don’t think killing animals with guns for sport is a Constitutional right, say so. Don’t be intimidated.

Thoughts and prayers are not enough. As Kirsten Powers wrote, “There is something deeply hypocritical about praying for a problem you are unwilling to resolve.” One approach might be to treat gun violence as a public health problem.

Far more people are killed by handguns than by assault weapons, but banning or further restricting handgun possession is not even on the table. Let’s put it on the table.

What about the Second Amendment? We need a Supreme Court that understands the Constitution the way Justice Stevens understood it:

“The Second Amendment was adopted to protect the right of the people of each of the several States to maintain a well-regulated militia. It was a response to concerns raised during the ratification of the Constitution that the power of Congress to disarm the state militias and create a national standing army posed an intolerable threat to the sovereignty of the several States. Neither the text of the Amendment nor the arguments advanced by its proponents evidenced the slightest interest in limiting any legislature’s authority to regulate private civilian uses of firearms. Specifically, there is no indication that the Framers of the Amendment intended to enshrine the common-law right of self-defense in the Constitution.”

But Stevens was outvoted 5–4. We need to put judges on the bench who would make Stevens’s dissent the majority opinion and reverse the NRA misinterpretation of the Second Amendment. That’s one of many reasons we need a Democratic president and a Democratic Senate.

Many Jewish groups support gun control. For example, the United Synagogue for Conservative Judaism and the Conservative movement’s Rabbinical Assembly called not only for a ban on assault weapons, but for longer purchase times, deeper background checks, coding ammunition for identification, and banning online sales of ammunition. That’s not enough, but it’s a good start.

The Israeli approach is worth considering. In Israel, to own a gun one must have a legitimate reason and one must re-establish that reason every six months. Israel rejects 40% of its gun applications, the highest rejection rate of any country in the world. Only 2.5% of Israel’s population is licensed to carry a gun. In Israel, it is not a right to bear arms, but a privilege. Still not convinced? Read this from Yael Shahar.

This is all about politics. The time to politicize these tragedies is always now, because this is all about politics. The only way to protect ourselves from gun violence is to elect leaders who support legislation that will protect us, and that means electing Democrats. Democrats passed H.R. 8 and H.R. 1112 in February 2019. The Republican Senate refuses to even call it for a vote. Nothing will happen until we have Democratic control of the Senate, the House, and the presidency. In the meantime, thousands of Americans will continue to pay for political cowardice with their lives.

But what about these arguments: Guns don’t kill people, people kill people. If you outlaw guns, only outlaws will have guns. Guns prevent crime. Learn the facts. Then tell your members of Congress that you want a ban on guns and until that is politically feasible you want the strongest gun control bill possible now.

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