After every horrendous massacre in the United States and abroad, there is anguish and anger over guns. The violence creates yet another media opportunity to demand the wholesale prohibition of gun sales and ownership and—at the extreme—an outcry for confiscation of firearms. In addition, there is the inevitable response by gun owners and especially by the National Rifle Association to defend gun possession and use by virtually everyone except outright criminals under the argument that the Second Amendment to the Constitution makes gun ownership a right of Americans. In my opinion both responses are spurious because they are largely driven by politics and money. Both the left and the right benefit with each new outrage: The Democrats get to make their stand known to their constituency and thus collect money for elections. The Republicans get the same money and political upsurge, and the NRA brings in another fifty or so million dollars from its panicky pleas to its members for money to safeguard their gun ownership rights. Jabin Botsford, The Washington Post, October 9, 2013 put it succinctly: “There’s a kind of usual order of national business–a grim ritual that’s been established for the hours and days after a mass shooting. After the final death and injury toll are established, an elected official or candidate–usually a Democrat–will call for stricter gun control. Then, another elected official or contender for public office–usually a Republican–will object to efforts to politicize the tragedy. Victims and their family members step forward to tell their harrowing stories and weigh in on one of the two sides mentioned above. Then, it all just goes away until the next mass shooting.”
For purposes of clarification, I am a political middle-of-the-roader independent with almost equal disdain for both of the major parties and their candidates. I am a member of the NRA, a gun owner, and a hunter; and I agree with the right of ownership of guns by private individuals for self-defense and recreational activities including target shooting and hunting. Furthermore, because I hold the opinion that the people in the NRA fold are—in the vast majority—law abiding, thoroughly decent, and well meaning, and well versed in the safe and sane use of firearms, I agree with the NRA that it would be a good idea to have well armed and well vetted citizen volunteers in place to guard our schools, sports events, and any activity where people gather.
On the other hand, I disagree strongly with the NRA over the organization’s stances that almost any weapon should be legal for law-abiding citizens, that it is a good thing that the 1968 gun laws they engineered allow registration of guns only by manufacturers and licensed distributers while allowing private individuals to buy and sell personal weapons largely unfettered which has left open the free-wheeling sales of very dangerous weaponry to very dangerous people, even convicted felons, in the open market provided by flea markets. According to Michael Corcoran, Ph.D., Mental Health Checks When Purchasing a Gun, Source, Mother Jones, “You don’t need to submit to a background check to buy a gun, of course. Currently, Americans can buy firearms through ‘private sales’ in more than 40 states without undergoing any type of screening at all. The law requires background checks only for guns sold by federally licensed firearm dealers (FFLs), allowing those not ‘engaged in the business’ of dealing firearms to do so without conducting background checks or maintaining any records of sale. How do we know who is ‘engaged in the business’? We don’t (the IRS isn’t looking at anyone’s tax returns to find out), at least until guns start turning up at crime scenes and an investigation is opened by law enforcement. One study estimated that private sales account for 40% of all gun sales in the United States.”
Even law enforcement departments take advantage of that loophole. And the NRA was also successful in getting the law administrated by the separate states—an arena where the NRA is able to work its magic to prevent real change in the gun culture of the United States.
The Gun Control Act of 1968 reauthorized and deepened the FDR-era gun control laws. It added a minimum age for gun buyers, required guns to have serial numbers and expanded people barred from owning guns from felons to include the mentally ill and drug addicts. Only federally licensed dealers and collectors could ship guns over state lines. People buying certain kinds of bullets had to show I.D. But the most stringent proposals—a national registry of all guns (which some states had in colonial times) and mandatory licenses for all gun carriers—were not in it. The NRA blocked these measures, because, in the opinion of the NRA that while part of the law “appears unduly restrictive, the measure as a whole appears to be one that the sportsmen of America can live with.”
Finally, I take great exception to the actions of the NRA to facilitate the ownership of guns by mentally ill persons. Oh, yes, I am well aware of the NRA’s lip service to the concept that the mentally ill should not have guns; but then they (the NRA) go about quietly undermining the implementation of the laws with the result that mentally ill people have access to guns. That results in killing sprees by deranged individuals on an all too frequent basis.
I recognize that the killings by the mentally ill are not nearly as frequent as those by religiously or ideologically inspired extremists in the name of their various brands of bigotry. Any set of blogposts I might write would fall on deaf ears should I try to tackle the totality of the American gun issues. So, in this set of blogposts, I will endeavor to make the case for changing the mindset of America to protect us at least from dangerous mentally ill persons.