If We Can’t Regulate Guns, Let’s Regulate People
Saying you're a "responsible gun owner" is nice. Proving it is better.
This week’s post is by Contributor Timothy Wood.
If you live in the US, you’ve probably heard the saying, “Guns don’t kill people; people kill people.” It even has its own Wikipedia article. You may not agree with that phrase, and feel free to vent in the comment section, but let’s face the facts: we’re not getting anything done about gun violence anyway. Maybe, though, we can roll with something even gun folks can get behind. It involves lots of fun time at the shooting range, and you get a neat souvenir at the end. If guns don’t kill people, but people kill people, then we should require the people with the guns to have training on what a gun is.
We can get this out of the way right up front. I’m not some peacenik hippie. I’m a gun owner. I live in rural Appalachia. If America is ever invaded, this is where you want to be. We’re more heavily armed than the Taliban. It’s a lot like Oakland in a way: you regularly hear shots in the distance and nobody except the outsiders are remotely alarmed. Even out here, before I went hunting as a kid, I was required by law to take a hunter safety course and demonstrate a minimum level of proficiency in safely operating the weapon. Let that sink in for a spell. Before we’ll let you go off in the middle of an uninhabited zillion-acre forest on the side of a mountain somewhere, we need to make sure you know what you’re doing.
Until recently in my state of Kentucky, if you wanted to carry a concealed deadly weapon (CCW or CCDW), you had to take a training course to (say it with me now) demonstrate a minimum level of proficiency in safely operating the weapon. I took it. So did my wife. Even more, my dad is a licensed instructor. Kentucky changed that law in 2019 so that everyone can carry statewide, and the people who were most opposed weren’t Subaru-driving hipsters with three-paragraph Starbucks orders; it was the police.
Part of the reason may be that the police know how firearms work, and don’t relish having to clean up the messes created by those who don’t. Pro tip: if you’re shooting from the hip like Indiana Jones or holding your gun tilted above your head like a gangster, then you’re doing it wrong, unless you’re an expert marksman doing it on purpose. People who are familiar with firearms know that it’s not Call of Duty. If you can’t answer the question of how you breathe when you shoot, then you’re wrong. If you can’t answer in detail what was behind your target when you pulled the trigger, then you’re very wrong.
In the military there is an important saying: get off my fucking range. This is tactically employed when someone — who, remember, already has extensive training — is being so careless that they have to be put in time-out like a small child. That’s because having extensive training is still no guarantee that you won’t behave like an idiot, but having no training whatsoever increases your odds.
The proposal here is fairly simple. Make the CCW course the minimum standard to buy a gun. If it sweetens the deal, I’m willing to throw the NRA a bone and use their own standards. You get the basics of the law, you demonstrate that you can disassemble the weapon and operate it in a controlled environment within a reasonable level of awareness and safety, then you can get a gun.
You ain’t John Wick, and your fantasies of shooting someone else’s gun out of their hands or doing a backflip while you reload are just that. That isn’t the expectation. The standard we need is that, at a bare minimum, with all the time in the world, calm and collected, you can shoot at a stationary piece of paper, hit it, and not shoot yourself or someone else. If you can’t, then put the gun down, and go buy some mace if you’re worried about self-defense, because in a situation where your blood is up and your hands are shaking, you’re just as likely to shoot yourself or some bystander as you are to shoot the bad guy.
If you pass the course and pass a background check, you get a license, just like we currently issue CCW licenses in many states. If it becomes clear later in life that you are unsafe to have a firearm, you have your license revoked. If you give someone a firearm, the onus is on you to verify that they are properly licensed, just like if you hand a 14-year-old the keys to your car. If you want to buy a gun, you show your license. If you don’t have one, or you forgot it at home, then go get it.
This isn’t purely hypothetical. Maryland did this in 2013, and when the part of the regulations requiring that applicants demonstrate a reason for having a gun was struck down in court, who do you think was most disappointed? In case you’re suspecting a pattern here, the Baltimore Police Commissioner issued a statement saying quite pointedly, “This decision makes it harder for us to do our jobs.” He’s right. When Connecticut enacted their licensing standards, they saw homicides and suicides drop by around a third. When Missouri repealed theirs, they saw homicides jump by almost half, and suicides by almost a quarter.
“Shall not be infringed!” comes the cry from the balcony. Shut the fuck up. You can’t buy a grenade launcher. You generally can’t be in legal possession of a firearm if you’ve been in a whole range of trouble. Private businesses and public buildings can forbid firearms. “Shall not be infringed” is a slogan1 — not an argument connected to reality. Slogans make bad public policy. This is a debate about degrees. Go protest about your right to carry a pistol into the courthouse, or own anti-tank weapons, and I’ll start to believe your sincerity and conviction. And I mean in the streets, not on Facebook. We already limit the right to bear arms. It’s not a question of whether to regulate guns in order to ensure public safety, but how much they should be regulated.
We’ve had more mass shootings than days in 2023. The sickening convenience of US gun violence as a writing subject is that even if it’s not in the headlines when you begin writing, it will be by the time you publish, as we see from the latest school massacre in Nashville. Firearms are the leading cause of death for children in the US. Having a firearm means that the most likely person to get shot is your partner or yourself. Clearly, we’re doing something wrong, because I’ve taken the classes, and I’ve taught a few, and I’m pretty sure Rule Number One is don’t shoot kids, your spouse, or yourself. Clearly, we’re doing something wrong.
I know we all have our ideals. They’re nice. They’re important. They’re a Magnetic North that our compass can point to. But at the same time, the compass only points one direction. It doesn’t guide you around the mountain or find the ford in the river. It tells you where you want to end up, and not how to get there. Navigating the ethical terrain of real life requires nuance — and yes, compromise. I live in a state where there are more barrels of bourbon than there are people. In the US, we have more guns than people. Way fucking more. That’s a touch out of proportion.
When my daughter was born, my wife said I was in “Army mode.” I was. I knew all the fire escapes, and which one was closest. Stairs to the left, up to the NICU, back to get Mom. Wheelchair at the nurse station. Carry it down three floors. Wheel us out. I was mentally prepared for The Walking Dead. I really don’t want to think like that when I send kiddo to school. As a gun owner, as a service member, for goodness’ sake, this can’t be the best we can do.
Let’s get honest and uncomfortable for a moment. I went through a bad patch once many years ago. I took every gun I had and gave them to my dad. I told him I didn’t want to talk about it. Take them and keep them for a while. He knew what it meant. I know he knew what it meant. Look after yours. You know what I mean. They’re yours. Blood. Creed. Clan. Caste. Next-door neighbor. Coworker. Friend.
That’s a heavy admission to drop here, and I’m half scared to say it in public. It makes my heart drop into my asshole. My wife told me not to publish it. But we need our own “Me Too.” If you happen to be in the military, we’re about four times better at killing ourselves than the people who are supposed to be trying to kill us. Something like 30,000 service members have eaten the wrong end of a boom stick since the 9/11 attacks. That’s almost one Vietnam War. Where’s their memorial? Where are their names etched into stone, where a child runs their fingers across the letters that symbolize someone they would have loved if they had the chance? Their memorial is indifference, inaction, and indignant intransigence.
If you are a gun owner, you should have the loudest voice on gun control, because you should know the stakes here — and it isn’t just public shootings that make the nightly news. It’s a lot of people who don’t respect the weapon and don’t respect themselves, because too often the only thing it takes to buy a weapon is a checkbook and a pulse, and that’s completely batshit.
I sit on my front porch, because that’s where I can be alone with my thoughts. I’m watching the morning sun melt away the Appalachian spring frost, and the songbirds wage a turf war over who gets priority at the feeder. The woodpecker always wins — he’s twice as big as all the others. In my hand I hold a Smith & Wesson revolver. It’s stubby and sturdy. If a pistol had sex with a pug and a rottweiler, this would be their baby. Completely unrelated to writing this piece, a friend came over and told me to keep it for a while. She knows what that means. She knows I know what that means.
Even if you’re a hardcore NRA-lovin’, shit kickin’, patch wearnin’, awnry motherfucker, let’s have some real talk. Even if you can rationalize mass shootings with all the thoughts and prayers at your disposal, we’re shooting ourselves more than anyone else. Maybe it’s time for people with guns to have an honest discussion about guns.
See also: “The Asymmetry of the US Gun Debate”
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Yes, the slogan is lifted from the US Constitution, in which it is preceded by explicit reference to a “well-regulated militia.”
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