My starting outlook was mostly apathetic. I never saw myself as likely to own a gun, and I still don't, but I knew it was a right guaranteed by the Bill of Rights. My opinion could have been accurately summarized as "Constitution good, machine guns bad." A thorough and nuanced opinion if ever there was one. Hopefully I can express something a little better than that now.
As I see this, it's a question with two independent halves:
- Is gun control effective, and if so, what is the tipping point of effectiveness?
- Is gun control constitutional?
Starting with the first question, I set about trying to find the studies and statistics that I just knew would prove that it has been effective. Well... I'm sure data exists, but the best I could find was either out of date (mid 90s) or controversial on its face. What I could find that was consistent is that violent crimes involving guns are significantly more common in the US than in other western nations such as the UK or Germany. Some countries with strict gun control laws have substantially lower gun related crime rates than the US. Opponents to gun control point to other countries, such as Mexico, that have strict gun control laws and rampant gun related crimes. The obvious counter-point would be to argue that we have more in common with the countries that are apparently successful than the ones that aren't.
Another common argument against the studies is that they prove correlation not causation. I don't find that argument particularly compelling myself. I'm not remotely qualified to prove one way or the other even if I had access to all of the data but, that said, it depends on studies consistently ignoring variables that would better explain the data. That would virtually require willful disregard for the ethics related to data analysis.
So, is gun control effective? Maybe. Countries with similar cultural mores have successfully implemented gun control laws without an outbreak of "only the criminals will have guns" violence. That doesn't, necessarily, mean it would work in the US, but I genuinely believe that it would be worth the attempt.
That brings us to question two, the constitutionality of gun control. To quote: "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." It's one of the shortest amendments to the US constitution, and yet, fairly contorted in modern English. The Supreme Court held in 2008 in District of Columbia v. Heller that this right is essentially a right to defend ones' self with firearms and, necessarily, a right to own those firearms. The dissent argued that they were specifically protecting the right to form a militia. Contrary to my normally liberal bent on such questions, I find myself swayed more convincingly by the majority opinion on this case.
So, is gun control constitutional? I have to come down against it. Despite the awkward wording, there's not a lot of ambiguity in the second amendment. Reasoning about the militia aside, "the right of the people to keep and bear arms, shall not be infringed" is pretty straightforward. It leaves me in the difficult position of wanting gun control but believing it to be unconstitutional and I don't think that this should be the end of the discussion.
I would offer a third option. Personally I think the founders simply had no way of conceiving of modern society. The second amendment was written in a time when a well armed civilian militia could reasonably defend itself from an attack. The right to keep and bear arms amounted to the right to form a militia if it ever proved to be necessary. These weren't separate concepts as they stand today, they were intrinsically linked to each other. That said, the concept of tanks (let alone an air force) would have been completely foreign to their frame of reference. Realistically, our modern day armed forces have replaced any need that the founders would have foreseen for a militia.
This leaves me with only one recourse. I believe that the only way to move forward on gun control is through amending the constitution to better reflect modern society. I'm not suggesting that we repeal the second amendment, I'm suggesting that it be replaced with a constitutional protection to keep and bear arms with an eye toward the real and practical uses in our society; hunting, sport, and self-defense. That would be an effective compromise between the legitimate uses for firearms that can and should be constitutionally protected and the public need to be protected from firearms that don't have a legitimate civilian use.
