Gun control
Someone once said that the real objective of groups urging more gun control isn't the guns, it's the control.

That seems to be the message of, "Should there be stricter gun control? Diane Glass, a left-leaning columnist, writes the commentary this week and Shaunti Feldhahn, a right-leaning columnist, responds." Says Ms. Glass:

Rosie O'Donnell and a host of other vocal liberals fight for stricter gun control. I know you've heard this a time or two, but people kill people. Guns are inanimate objects. For anyone who watched "Bowling for Columbine," the award winning documentary by the uber-liberal Michael Moore, in between the chuckles, one message stood out loud and clear: gun homicides in the U.S. aren't a gun control problem; they're a citizen problem. ... The problem is us.

On which the conservative columnist seems to agree:

I also believe we have seen the need for stricter measures to prevent gun violence. Not all states exercise the gun-control precautions that Georgia does. We should never prohibit the right to bear arms, but it is a reasonable tradeoff to ask everyone to wait a few days and go through a criminal background check before exercising that right. It is a reasonable tradeoff to ask anyone who wants to bear AK-47 or Uzi sub-machine guns to go through a much more stringent system.

Well, anyone who wants to beat an AK-47 or an Uzi already has to go through a much more stringent system of checks and fees whether they live in Georgia on elsewhere; that's federal law. So it's not clear to me what Ms. Feldhahn means.

If the state is to refrain from abridging the right to bear arms, as both columnists say it should, then at what point does fulfilling state-imposed mandates prior to acquisition of a firearm become unconstitutional abridgement? Background check? Waiting period? Mandatory training?

I don't think the answer is easy, but together, the columnists may be foretelling the shape of things to come in the gun-control movement: people control. Load gun dealers and buyers with additional regulations. Just make it harder and more inconvenient to obtain a firearm.

Make that, obtain a firearm legally. For Ms. Glass cogently observes,

The only people who won't be able to get guns will be law-abiding citizens who have no knowledge of underground networks. Those aren't the people committing crimes.

And the people committing crimes aren't the people who will obey even more stringent acquisition laws. They are already obtaining guns illegally; more paperwork won't stop them.

Being retired military, I certainly agree that anyone who possesses a firearm should know how to use it properly. And I agree that anyone seeking a carry permit should first complete a gun-safety course. But I am unable to define exactly where such acquisition regulations become unduly burdensome.

But it does seem to me that Ms. Glass, the purported liberal here, does see at least a glimmer of the light that the way to decrease the deaths and injuries from criminals' use of illegal firearms is to protect the right of the law-abiding to bear legal firearms.

by Donald Sensing, 9/29/2003 03:03:00 PM. Permalink |