A position on gun control


The Aurora, CO movie theater shooting is only the latest event keeping the gun control debate on the front burner, but in fact it is something I have been thinking about for a long time, and have finally arrived at something I hope resembles a coherent position.

If you believe that ensuring public safety legitimately falls within the purview of government, then it is reasonable for the government to regulate, restrict and even ban certain types of weapons such as assault rifles. Now, this is a big if. Everyone should decide for themselves whether they believe that there is such a thing as public safety, and whether it is government's proper role to ensure it. But if you do, then it follows that it is also proper to restrict or ban certain forms of weapons. However, the Second amendment guarantees the individual's freedom to bear arms, and as currently interpreted by the Supreme Court, that freedom is absolute. Therefore, restricting or banning any form of weapon today would result in violation of constitutional law, and therefore we must not do it.

The problem is that the Supreme Court blew it when interpreting the Second amendment. Its text reads: “A well regulated Militia, being necessary for the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed.” But the Supreme Court basically threw out the entire Militia clause – a grave mistake. There is a good reason why the Founding Fathers put the militia business in. In the early days of the republic, the army was small, weak and ragtag, with no formal reserves. Communication and industrial infrastructure was non-existent. The fledgling Federal government had no way to mobilize the army quickly in an event of an attack, and had to rely on the citizenry to be ready at a moment's notice to go into battle. With their own guns. Hence “...militia being necessary for the security of a free state...”

Today this is not the case. Even the most strident originalist has to acknowledge that some evolution in how we interpret the Constitution is inevitable for simple reasons of history and scientific progress (cars? internet? nuclear weapons?). Second amendment is a perfect example of where such evolution has to take place. Assault weapons are an instrument of war and should be treated as such. They are no different than an F-16 jet fighter or an Abrams M-1 tank. You don't show up at your local dealer's lot and drive off in one of those. The same should hold for an AK-47.

What about the argument that “if guns are outlawed, only outlaws will have guns?” I do find this argument compelling, but in the case of assault rifles and other high-powered weapons, treating them as instruments of war would go a long way towards addressing it. The government – specifically, the military – would have a great degree of control over their manufacture and distribution (and, indeed, specification), making them much more difficult to obtain illegally. Yes, I have just advocated increasing the amount of government control over something. But this should not be controversial. If you believe that a state can legitimately raise and maintain an army, answerable to a civilian, more or less democratically elected government, then most aspects of that army's operation will naturally fall within government's control.

There is a law enforcement side to this, too. Once assault weapons are fully militarized, penalties for their illegal possession and use should be very severe. If you steal a fighter jet (or smuggle in one bought overseas) and use it to attack people, that's a big deal. Far bigger than stealing a car and running over a pedestrian with it (as bad as that is). The same should hold for an AK-47.

So how to move forward? I believe the Second amendment should be repealed. Impossible? Today, it is. But it may not always be. Think about the Nineteenth amendment. Today, it strikes us as a ludicrous abrogation of the government's responsibility to protect individual rights. At the time, however, the social and economic impact of drinking was so immense, that a confluence of political and social forces enabled the amendment to pass. Yes, I realize that the Nineteenth amendment was woefully ineffective. See enforcement, above. It is also true that overall levels of drinking did decline during Prohibition, and have never gone back to pre-Prohibition levels after repeal. And besides, there is a qualitative difference between the desire to buy a bottle of gin and mix a round of martinis and the desire to buy and use an assault rifle, to say nothing of the relative number of people affected. My point is that as assault weapons proliferate and the shootings along the lines of the Aurora, CO movie theater, become more frequent and more deadly, political will will eventually obtain to repeal, or at least significantly reinterpret the Second amendment. It will take years, decades even, and thousands of people will have to die, but one day it may not seem as unrealistic as it does today.

Katherine Boo

Katherine Boo's Behind the Beautiful Forevers: Life, Death and Hope in a Mumbai Undercity has been well covered elsewhere, so I will not attempt a full review here.  Suffice it to say that I cannot recommend it enough.  One of the remarkable things about the book is that it would be unreadable if it weren't for Boo's perfectly dispassionate, detached, documentary style.  A drop of emotion, and the events described in the book would be overwhelming even to the most atrophied heart.  What really sent me for a loop, though, is that more than once while reading I thought that perhaps there are places and times when a government does have a legitimate role that goes beyond merely ensuring that individual rights are not infringed upon as I usually like to maintain, and that role might reasonably be – can I really be thinking this? – to enforce a one-child policy.  Would China be where it is today if they never had such a policy, or never enforced it?  Would that be a good thing?  And for whom?