Gun Laws

I used to sell guns. I know something about gun laws. I have refused to sell guns to people who were intoxicated, who failed back ground checks, or just seemed a little bit weird. I have sold guns to transvetites who feared for their safety, to brand new citizens thankful for freedom, old women who lived alone and were afraid at night, to hunters who traveled the world looking for trophies, and to collectors of specific brand names or designers. I know someting about what the American people think about guns.

Over the last few days I have heard politicians making absolutely crazy statements. I have heard bans proposed for guns that don't exist. I heard the President claim that a 9mm bullet can rip a lung out of a human body. (It is physically impossible) I heard the President say that when the Constitution was written a person couldn't buy a cannon. (In reality, up until the 19th century more cannons were owned by private citizens than by the United States government. Even the Washington Post knows this, and they pointed it out over a year ago but the President keeps lying.) I hard a lawmaker describe a gun that holds a 17 cartridges as having a "high magazine capacity clip" which tells me that the lawmaker has never held a gun or read a gun operator's manual. I've heard politicians call for increased and expanded background checks instead of just enforcing the laws already on the books, such as putting the President's son in prison for lying on his background check form. I heard a congresswoman call for the banning of 9mm pistols, as though they are more deadly than 10mm, .45 calibre, .44 calibre, and .38 calibre pistols. All of this does not mean that I am opposed to changing some laws to reduce the number of murders.

Here are some facts which inform my ideas for changes to the law:

1. According to the U.S. Department of Justice "Seventy percent of violent felons had a prior arrest record, and 57% had at least one prior arrest for a felony. Sixty-seven percent of murderers and 73% of those convicted of robbery or assault had an arrest record."

2. According to the Office of Juvenile Justice and Delinguency Prevention, the young are responsible for most violent and physically dangerous crime.
2a. 28% of vandalism is commited by people under the age of 21. 12% by poeople 21-24.
2b. 26% of arson is committed by people under the age of 21. 8% by people 21-24
2c. 26% of car theft is committed by people under the age of 21. 12% by people 21-24
2d. 24% of murder and non-negligent manslaughter is committed by people under the age of 21. 17% by people 21-24.
2e. 39% of robbery is committed by people under the age of 21. 14% by people 21-24.

3. I have observed that somewhere between 10% and 30% of teenage boys hate school. I do not mean they dislike it. I mean they utterly hate it. It does nothing but tell them that they are failures and treats them like they are in prison or a mental

hospital. School turns these boys into defeatist anti-social malignancies, who have no regard for their neighbors or larger society. I hear these boys talking about illegal car racing, sideshows, getting high, and vandalism. Many of them seem to be attracted to the apparant freedom and power of gangs, whether those gangs are the Nortenos, Crips, or the Aryan Nation one thing they all have in common is that they disregard the "system" the boys experience as oppressive, and, vicariously (none of my students are actually in the gangs) make the boys feel successful.

4. Because they are legally adults 18 year olds can buy any gun offered for sale. Though some States have recently passed laws reguiring people to be 21 before they can buy handguns, those laws are sure to be stuck down by the Supreme Court on 2nd and 14th Amendment grounds.

5. Most Americans who die from guns are suicides.

6. Most mass shootings in schools are committed by boys under the age of 21.

7. If you can trust the sample survey methodology (I am always a little skeptical of statistical extrapolations.), an estimated 4.6 million American children live in a home where at least one gun is kept loaded and unlocked.

8. According to the F.B.I.s Crime Data Explorer in 2020 there were 17,813 homicides. Of those, 662 were committed by people using only their hands and feet as weapons, and only 455 were commited by people using rifles of any kind.

So what changes would I make to our laws if I could?

1. I would do away with compulsory academic education. If kids can't stand sitting behind a desk and doing mind-numbing worksheets and struggling to learn how to do quadratic equations don't force them to. Let them train to be heavy equipment operators, electricians, farriers, or anything else that involves physical labor. The teacher unions will hate it, just like they hate vocational education in highschools now. (Just try being a master machinest and getting a job teaching high school students to be machinists. You have to stop earning money, for at least, three years and go to college to get a degree, then work six months as a student teacher for no pay, then put up with all the educational beaurocracy bullshit. This is why the school I work at has two vacant vocational education teacher position open since September.) This will help get a lot of kids out of the place that feels like prison and into a place where they can grow and achieve, and hopefully, forestall the building of resentment and desperation that results in school shootings.

2. I would ammend the Constitution of the United States to make the age of majority 21. This will free the states to outlaw the purchase of some guns or all guns by people under the age of 21. Merely keeping guns out of the hands of the young will lower the death by gun rate.

3. Require that guns be stored in a safe, even if there are no children in the house. This will keep guns out of the hands of people who do not own them.

4. Because the vast majority of murderers have a history of felony violence convictions and people under 25 make up such a lage percentage of murderers, I would sentence violent criminals to 20 years for the first offense, no matter the age. BUT (this is a big but.) change the way the prison works. Instead of just locking people into giant concrete warehouses like we do now, assign the young men 12 to 25 to prisoner brigades that live in the rough out in the deserts of Arizona or Utah. Work them hard everyday. Subject them to something similar to the harsh military life of the late 18th/early 19th century. After a few years, after the inclination to bad behavior is worked out of them, train them in more skilled jobs, such as forestry, soldiering, and construction. After 20 years, or longer if their sentence is for more than 20 years, they will will be set free, and with a good recommendation, maybe, they can stay in the prisoner brigades as cadre instead of as prisoners. And even those who do not stay in the prisoner brigades and return to freedom will be older than the prime age for committing murder.

6. Boys and girls distract each other and change their behavior to show off for each other which lowers academic performance. Also, boys and girls, on average, have different academic strengths that are displayed in divergent patters of academic success , with boys on the losing end. Therefore, to keep boys from feeling humiliated in front of girls, which is a factor in school mass shootings, I would make all K-12 schools single-sex.

7. Because an armed society is a polite society, follow the example of Kennesaw, Georgia and require every head of household to be armed. Actually, I am joking about this, kind of. It makes me wonder, why is Kennesaw so much safer than Detroit when the gun ownership rate in Kennsaw if much much higher in than in Detroit? I don't think it's because of guns. I think its because of the cultural differences between those places.

8. Though the evidence linking mental illness to violent crime is sketchy the link between mental illness and suicide is well established. Expedite hearings for temporary removal of firearms from people for mental health reasons, that they are a danger to themselves or others. But I would want them represented by a court appointed lawyer if they can't afford their own, and be able to require the government to prove within a reasonable amount of time (48 hours to a week) that they are not okay in the head. I would want that decsion made by a jury, not by judges and psychologists. And I'd require the government to prove again the danger from the person possessing guns every thirty days or return them to the owner.

These changes won't stop all homicides but it might stop a lot of them.