I am in favor of a ban on assault weapons and would not be opposed to a law that strictly bans sale or resale of assault weapons and requires registration of all assault weapons already in public possession. We do something like that already with some cultural artifacts or elephant ivory. Will people still sell them on a black market? Yes. Possession of an unregistered assault weapon should be illegal and subject to confiscation and a fine or jail time. Same for illegal sales of assault weapons whether registered or not. There is no excuse for average citizens (not police, military, national guard, etc.) to have access to assault weapons.
Okay, now that we have assault weapons taken care of, what about hand guns? It is a sad fact that there are so many hand guns in public possession that regulation or restriction beyond what we already have in place would be difficult. I think we should have a strict and reliable system for background checks. All hand guns should be registered and owners should have to carry the registration if they carry the weapon. Hand gun owners also should be required to complete a firearms safety class and also have a certificate of completion. Any unregistered hand guns encountered by police should be confiscated and destroyed and possession of an unregistered hand gun should be a criminal offense that would bar that person from gun ownership. There are legitimate reasons to own a hand gun but if you are going to own one you should be required to comply with some basic registration and training requirements. I don't see how these basic requirements would interfere with a citizen's legitimate ownership of a hand gun for protection or for sport. Hand guns are sometimes used in sport shooting competitions. There are also gun collectors who should be allowed to pursue their hobbies as long as they comply with the requirements (assault weapons excluded).
Hunting, protection of livestock, pest or varmint control or target or skeet shooting are legitimate reasons to own a hunting rifle or shotgun. There are thousands of people in this country who rely on hunting for part of their family's food. There is a long tradition of hunting in this country and without some hunting we would be over run with deer or other wild animals. There was a recent hunt in Florida to eradicate Burmese Pythons from the Everglades. Thinning out the deer population is serious business in some areas. If the natural predators don't exist or can't control the population it is common to resort to hunting in some areas.
My own experience with guns is mixed. When I was a kid the neighbor across the street had a minor fender-bender on a local street and jumped out of his car waving a hand gun. He didn't shoot but he was armed and behaving erratically. Not long after this incident he was diagnosed with a brain tumor. He was a sane and generally likable guy. No one knew he owned a gun, not even his wife. His illness is what sent him into an armed rage and if he didn't have the gun it would have been less serious.
I once owned a 20 gauge shotgun. I went through the NRA's hunter safety classes and got my "diploma". I don't recall why I wanted or needed a shotgun. It was a Christmas gift but I recall wanting it and going with my dad to buy it. I enjoyed going skeet shooting with it a few times when I was in Boy Scouts but I don't recall that being the reason why I got it. I went hunting once. Me and another guy my age, maybe 14 or 15, went out hunting in the forest down in southeast Missouri. We were looking for squirrels or rabbits. There were none to be found but we had these fine shotguns and nothing to shoot at -- a bad combination. So we ended up taking a shot at a bird that just happened to be unfortunate enough to be within range. It was a Yellow Billed Cuckoo, also called a Rain Crow. I remember my immediate remorse...it was a beautiful bird and one I had never seen before. It was much prettier alive than dead.
I had other mixed experiences with that shotgun that I won't go into. I finally loaned it to my brother who was living on a farm and needed a shotgun. He eventually moved away from the farm but the shotgun stayed behind. Good riddance as far as I was concerned.
When I was in college I had a friend who was an amateur gunsmith. He made replica guns such as flintlocks or percussion cap muskets for re-enactors or for black powder hunting. I ended up owning an English Belt Pistol, a 44 caliber flintlock replica similar to what was used in the time of the Revolution or the War of 1812. It is a real gun, not a simulated prop or decorative piece. I still own it, although I haven't fired it in thirty years. It is a deadly weapon but I could only get one shot off every two or three minutes. It is sort of a Rube Goldberg process when it is loaded and fired and the noise and smoke serves to give the shooter adequate cover to run away. Back in the day when I would take it out for target shooting I would be nearly deaf for about three days. Hitting a target would be accidental but, since it fires a 44 caliber lead ball, it would do a lot of damage.
Before I moved recently, I lived about 400 yards from an outdoor shooting range. It was a sportsman's club that centered around sport shooing and occasionally archery competitions. They also did some dog training. When we first moved there it took a little while to get used to the shooting but we hardly noticed it after a few weeks. They were close enough that we could hear the shooters call out for a clay pigeon to be released...followed by a blast from a shotgun. We never had any bad experiences...they were good neighbors. Things were fairly calm and predictable until the mid 1990s when we started hearing a lot of automatic weapons being fired. Something seemed to change following the first Gulf War, at least in our neighborhood. The shotguns and target shooting became automatic and semi-automatic rifle fire...sometimes rather early in the morning. They had one night a week where they would have night shooting under lights so on some days it was noisy well into the night. There really was no target shooting value to firing a burst of eight or ten rounds at a target. It seemed like we went from quality to quantity...not much sport left in it.
I was once a member of the NRA...back when I had that shotgun and went for hunter safety classes. The NRA was good at hunter safety and teaching gun owners how to be safe users. Today the NRA is controlled by a rabid faction of gun worshipers. They have some twisted view of the Second Amendment that eclipses all other aspects of the constitution or the rights and responsibilities of citizenship. Will the NRA have to be destroyed to be saved? It has (had) a valid role to play in hunter and gun safety. If we are going to have public gun ownership we need something like the NRA to offer safety classes. The NRA needs to reinvent itself to be a rational organization that supports hunters and sports shooters and advocates real control of assault weapons and handguns...or else it should sit down and shut up.
Even if the NRA manages to pull its head out of its ass, there are plenty of other idiots out there making fools of themselves. So called "Peace Officers" who advocate arming teachers, legislators and other public officials who want to require more guns as a remedy to too many guns already. We have a couple of local sheriffs who announced that they would refuse to enforce any stricter gun laws enacted by executive order or passed by Congress. Sounds like grounds for removal from office to me.
Last but certainly not least -- the crackpots who are convinced that the "guvment" is coming to take their guns away. These people are so stupid that if there was an intelligence test for gun ownership, they would surely fail. But...they do manage to find their way to the front of TV cameras and always have something helpful to say. Helpful because they are so off the wall that they scare the crap out of anyone with half a brain who realizes that these jerks are armed. They are a walking and talking argument for more gun control.
Guns are as American as Apple Pie. The second amendment authorizes regulated militias and citizen gun ownership in association with those militias. This amendment has been misinterpreted to mean that anyone can own whatever assault weapon they want. Well, why not rocket launchers, flame throwers and bazookas? At one time, slavery was as American as Apple Pie and there were people with strong feelings on both sides of the issue but it was eliminated. Women's suffrage was debated for a long time but finally passed. We need a reasoned debate on gun control to finally resolve this issue as well. The Newtown school shootings seem to serve as a catalyst for this debate but I would not be surprised if we lose another few thousand innocent victims before anything gets done.
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