I’m sure everyone is tired of hearing about this by now, but the issue of gun related violence and the terror caused by mass (or at least public) shootings is important and as a society we need to have this discussion. Let’s ignore the ridiculous statements coming from the extremes and focus on the kind of real solutions that will actually help reduce the frequency and/or severity of incidences like this.

The Second Amendment protects the right to bear arms:

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.

I’ve heard a lot of people on the left interpret that with a strong emphasis on the militia, however the current interpretation from the Supreme Court is that it protects the individual rights of people to have firearms for legal uses, i.e. self defense.

I have heard the suggestion to amend the Second Amendment, but I don’t like that idea. Nobody has tweaked with the Bill of Rights (aside from the Supreme Court) and I’d be afraid of what else people might try to amend once that seal was opened. Besides, there is no way that it would make it through Congress, let alone the states.

There have been suggestions to start arming teachers, but that is insane. There is already enough of a power imbalance between teachers and students and we don’t need to add a side arm to the mix. There would also be teachers who refuse and if forced to have it at school, wouldn’t carry it on them. With any luck, they would at least keep it secured. As someone who was relentlessly bullied as a kid, I would have not have felt safer if the inept teachers had been armed and I would have felt far less safe if I knew my bullies might be able to gain access to a gun.

There are already a lot of schools that have a full time police or security presence, we should look at what kind of an impact, if any, this has on the amount of violence and/or unauthorized access. At a minimum this could easily provide a deterrent and provide a kind of security placebo to calm the nerves of the people.

Then we have the religious right, such as Mike Huckabee:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bc1k-Zi8w2M

Removing God from schools didn’t make this happen. The madmen that shot the place up did. There is some correlation between religiosity and crime, but it’s the inverse of the way religious people would like to think.

The left points to the lower rates of gun violence in countries like Britain and Australia, while the right counters with “if you take away guns from law abiding citizens, then only criminals will have them.” I’m sorry, but what the War on Drugs has shown is how horrible we are about keeping contraband out of our country and out of the hands of those willing to break the law. So the right is correct that only criminals would have guns, but the left is also right that making it more difficult to get guns would reduce the availability for the kind of nutjobs that shoot up schools and malls as well as keep guns out of the hands of the children of law abiding adults.

Those on the right who point to the Second Amendment having been crafted to allow people to rise up against the government may be correct, but considering the substantial technological advances since the ratification of the Second Amendment,  to maintain that standard of allowing citizens to have access to equal weaponry to the government would mean giving private citizens access to high yield explosives, tanks, chemical, biological, and nuclear weapons. So if we were to keep it to what we have now, high capacity magazines and assault rifles, private citizens couldn’t effectively stand against the US Military. The only way to overthrow the Federal Government would be with the backing of at least part of the military.

When used for self defense, guns work best as a deterrent. The likelihood of a typical individual successfully defending against one armed assailant isn’t great, but it is feasible. However, the odds against multiple assailants are very poor. Since five to ten rounds is all you need against one person, I have a hard time imagining a realistic defensive scenario where any more capacity would be needed. As such, a prohibition on high capacity magazines would seem reasonable and would work under current Supreme Court rulings.

There’s been talk about assault weapon bans that would include banning certain styles of weapons. However, I don’t see the point. Banning automatic weapons and high capacity magazines is one thing, but why prevent collectors from having semi-automatic AK-47s with small magazines?

There’s the issue with how we handle the mentally ill in our country, but with reduced revenue, mental health services have been greatly reduced. There’s no indication that this had any impact on the recent gunmen, but the relationship between mental illness and gun violence should definitely be considered and if found to be a relevant factor in even a moderately disproportionate percentage of cases, then some changes in mental health policy should be considered.

I’ve seen comparisons between cars and guns, about how nobody talks about banning cars to eliminate traffic accidents, but we do require training, testing, and licenses to drive a car. You can also get your license to drive revoked a lot easier than your right to bear arms.

Rather than just trying to find an easy excuse and throw some money or legislation at it, we need to look at as many factors as possible and take as many steeps as are reasonable, keeping people’s liberty in mind, to reduce gun violence of all kinds.