Yeah, I wish we would stop pushing for assault weapons bans and instead push for a similar sort of safety and usage training, psychological and temperament screening, waiting period, and background checks that a police officer might go through before they are presented with a gun and a badge (that may even be an opportunity to re-think the sort of training we give our police!).
It would be costly, but that sort of licensing, even if done rather clumsily, would make it far more difficult for the wrong people to acquire weapons, while staying in line with the 2nd amendment and preserving gun ownership by law abiding citizens.
Oddly, the NRA seems more even more opposed to licensing than they are on restricting magazine capacity. Maybe they agree that it would be [too] effective!
The problem I have with the whole background checks philosophy is that it sounds like a good thing, but most of the mass shootings we're all familiar with were committed by people who would have passed the background check anyways, or who stole the weapons from someone else, which means the whole exercise was pointless (i.e. didn't meaningfully increase safety from baseline, i.e. security theater)
"Psychological and temperament screening" is a tremendously subjective thing (psych is a pretty soft science on the best of days), and not something I'm comfortable with hanging a constitutional right off of.
It needs to be strictly objective criterion, along the lines of if X then Y.
Now being able to demonstrate safety, I would be 100% cool with, because then we're licensing people, not weapons, and doesn't carry the possible abuse factor of firearms registries. The FCC example given upthread is a great model. You go to a safety class, demonstrate that you know how to operate a gun safely based on objective criteria, and you get a card or a paper or something that entitles you to buy whatever. You have to re-up it every 10 years or so.
Hell, let the NRA run it and charge a token fee. Would give them an actual meaningful place in the discourse instead of the "government's coming for your guns!" scare tactics that they play every few years.
>In September 2012, Rodger visited a shooting range to train himself in firing handguns.[12] In November 2012, he purchased his first handgun, a Glock 34 pistol, in Goleta, after doing research on handguns and judging the Glock 34 to be "an efficient and highly accurate weapon", as documented in his manifesto.[16]
>The Glock 9mm pistol used in the shooting was legally purchased by Vargas in 2010 from a local gun shop, and he had a concealed carry permit for it.[8][18][3]
>On May 22, 2012, Holmes purchased a Glock 22 pistol at a Gander Mountain shop in Aurora. Six days later, on May 28, he bought a Remington 870 Express Tactical shotgun at a Bass Pro Shops in Denver.[64]
> Following an incident later in 2007 involving his stepfather, a restraining order was filed against him, barring him from possessing firearms. The order lasted a year and had expired at the time of the shooting.
(Seems to imply the guns were his? Can't see in article)
> Items found on Wong's body included a hunting knife, in the waistband of his pants;[13] a bag of ammunition, which was tied around his neck;[27] and two semi-automatic pistols (a .45-caliber Beretta Px4 Storm and a 9mm Beretta 92FS Vertec Inox, matching the serial numbers on his New York State pistol license)
So of these 7 rampage shootings, 5 were done by people who used their own gun, one is implied (possibly not?).
Furthermore, some of these had past known mental health issues: Elliot Rodger, Scott Evans Dekraai had a restraining order filed against him, Jared Lee Loughner was told to get his mental health evaluated if he wanted to return to university (later diagnosed as paranoid schizophrenic), Eduardo Sencion was diagnosed with paranoid schizophrenia a few decades before the shooting, James Eagan Holmes was seeing several psychologists of which one tried to warn his campus police, the others have unknown motives.
Unless you have a foolproof method of determining criminal behavior a-priori OR you're fromthe department of pre-crime, how exactly do you expect this to work in practice?
I think many people have a fundamental misunderstanding of the enumerated rights of the amended Constitution. I don't need permission to exercise any of those rights and they AREN'T granted by the government, only recognized by it.
I don't need a First Amendment license. Why would I need a Second Amendment license?
> Unless you have a foolproof method of determining criminal behavior a-priori
I don't need one, and never claimed to have one. A method does not need to be foolproof in order to be effective.
The existing procedure for screening police officers, though it has some flaws, works remarkably well overall. Thus, I suspect that a similar procedure, applied to average citizens, would also be effective.
> I don't need a First Amendment license. Why would I need a Second Amendment license?
When your free speech impacts others in your community, you often do. For example, amateur radio licensing is required to broadcast your free speech, and you may need permission from a zoning board to make a large religious display in your yard. Here is Scalia from DC v. Heller, a landmark case in the right to bare arms:
> nothing in our opinion should be taken to cast doubt on longstanding prohibitions on the possession of firearms by felons and the mentally ill, or laws forbidding the carrying of firearms in sensitive places such as schools and government buildings, or laws imposing conditions and qualifications on the commercial sale of arms
It seems to me that a reasonable condition and qualification for the purchase of a weapon is to be of a stable mind, and have the proven ability to operate it safely and accurately.
The license would not restrict any law abiding citizen from going through the qualification process, and the cost would be subsidized, so how exactly are your rights being infringed?
Your understanding of basic civil liberties is so fundamentally flawed that I can't even understand how you arrived at those conclusions.
> The existing procedure for screening police officers, though it has some flaws, works remarkably well overall.
I don't have a constitutional right to be a police officer. I would also argue with your characterization of "works remarkably well overall". You're making an assertion with no supporting facts but since we're going to play that game. There are close to 300 MILLION legally owned firearms in the United States today. Contrary to popular belief, we do not have a rampant gun violence problem with legally owned firearms. So I'd argue that the existing regime works pretty damn well for civilian ownership.
Now compare that record with the record of accidental police shootings (not unarmed suspect shot; think...I didn't hit the right person or/shot killed a person even given my training) and let me know which looks worse to you.
> When your free speech impacts others in your community, you often do.
NO. YOU DON'T. That's PRECISELY the point. The impact of my speech on my community is EXPRESSLY protected by the Bill of Rights. Political speech is given the HIGHEST level of protection. That's why racists can march down main street and call for all minorities to be expelled from the USA. It's why someone can picket a legal business and complain about its actions.
> The license would not restrict any law abiding citizen from going through the qualification process, and the cost would be subsidized, so how exactly are your rights being infringed?
Would you like an example of how this infringes rights?
The radio license has more to do with not misusing finite resources (only so many radio spectrum frequencies/amplitudes available, etiquette has to be followed on HAM/amateur radio because other people are using it too, and you can't just start a radio station without having a channel reserved for your use that doesn't overlap or disrupt someone else), than free speech, else you'd need a license to run a podcast/blog.
This is code for "we need a reason to ban anyone we don't like without that pesky requirement of convincing a court".
Example 1 of this is Alabama's concealed handgun license scheme, which up until recently was may-issue (the state is permitted to give a license, but not required). In practice, that meant that if you were white, you always got one. If you were black, not so much.
Or David Cameron's recent gem: 'For too long, we have been a passively tolerant society, saying to our citizens: as long as you obey the law, we will leave you alone.'
They tried that in a few places, it usually just translated to "black people can't own guns" or discrimination based on the screener's impression of that person. "Screening for temperament" is akin to literacy or other such tests before voting.
Anyone can lie/spin a form test, similar to the customs form you get when you fly into the country, everything else is subjective and grounds for a discrimination law suit.
>> Oddly, the NRA seems more even more opposed to licensing than they are on restricting magazine capacity.
That's probably because licensing creates a list of who has them. They're afraid such a list will make it easy to take them away at a later date.
BTW, I kind of regret bringing up such a hot topic as an example rather than thinking harder for examples. Now I recall the attempt by media companies to get DRM into every A2D converter to plug the "analog hole" - that's technically impossible and it never went anywhere, but it's another example of the thinking.
It would be costly, but that sort of licensing, even if done rather clumsily, would make it far more difficult for the wrong people to acquire weapons, while staying in line with the 2nd amendment and preserving gun ownership by law abiding citizens.
Oddly, the NRA seems more even more opposed to licensing than they are on restricting magazine capacity. Maybe they agree that it would be [too] effective!