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(Image via Getty)
I’m an equal-opportunity offender. Allow me to offend everyone, by offering a few thoughts (on both sides of the issue) on gun control:
First, shouldn’t we require the microstamping of all gun cartridges nationwide? We should require manufacturers to place a microscopic engraving on cartridge cases identifying the gun from which the cartridge case was expelled. I understand that folks want to possess guns, but I don’t understand why anyone should have the right to fire a gun anonymously. Police should be able to immediately trace a cartridge to a specific gun.
Does anyone disagree in good faith?
(I don’t want to hear that requiring microstamping would increase the price of guns or ammunition. It probably would. The Second Amendment protects the right to bear arms, but it doesn’t impose any price controls.)
Second, those who oppose gun control are missing a trick: Although you hear this argument all the time, the truth is that almost no one ever fires a gun in self-defense. (I know that the pro-gun folks always insist that “a good guy with a gun” could have stopped a crime, and we see occasional anecdotal reports of this having happened once in a blue moon. But the average gun owner will never in his or her life fire a gun in self-defense.)
Some people, however, probably make a “defensive display” of a gun without discharging it. For example, a john is about to assault or rob a prostitute. The pimp enters the room and displays a handgun. The john leaves peacefully; no one is hurt. This defensive display of a gun served a useful purpose, but I’d bet dollars to doughnuts incidents such as this are not reported to the police (and thus are not counted in the statistics).
Or a rancher living in a rural area hears a suspicious noise downstairs. The rancher pulls out his shotgun and chambers a round. The thief hears the round being chambered and quickly leaves the house unharmed. Again, that’s a defensive display of a gun that served a useful purpose and is unlikely to be reported to the police.
The pro-gun people never talk about “defensive displays” of guns, but I suspect that happens far more often than an actual “good guy with a gun” shoots a criminal in the act. I don’t know if “defensive displays” would tip the balance for anyone thinking about gun control, but surely that’s a benefit of gun ownership that any fair person would consider when thinking about the issue.
Third, society has attempted to prohibit many things that people want: Alcohol, during Prohibition; marijuana, until recently; child pornography, through today; and so on. Generally, those bans don’t work; people obtain illegal things that they want.
On the other hand, society does effectively ban many things that at least some people want: Civilians can’t possess grenade launchers (although that would be fun, don’t you think?) or tanks or cruise missiles, or chemical, nuclear, or biological weapons. Those bans work.
If society banned assault rifles (or handguns, if constitutionally permissible), how do we assess where that ban would fall on the spectrum? Would the ban work? And please don’t shout that you know the truth, and the truth is whatever side of the argument you favor. Think about it, and give reasonable people some way to judge the issue.
Fourth, if society bans some category of weapons, then minority groups will pay the price. Look what happened with the war on drugs: Drugs were banned for everyone, but minorities were harassed and arrested disproportionately. Am I wrong to think that the same thing would happen if we banned some category of weapons? Maybe a ban would be worth the cost, but why don’t liberals ever mention this issue?
Finally, suppose 400 anti-gun Democrats bought assault weapons and then openly displayed those assault weapons (assuming this is legal in Texas; I’m really not sure) in a demonstration on the nearest public area to Gov. Greg Abbott’s house. Maybe next Saturday morning would be a good time for that protest. Would Greg Abbott be intimidated? Might he decide that allowing the purchase or open carry of these weapons wasn’t a good idea?
I’m not expressing a point of view here; I rarely do. I’m not a pundit, and I’m not crazy — I still work for a living.
I’m just asking: What do you think? And why are these issues generally overlooked?
Mark Herrmann spent 17 years as a partner at a leading international law firm and is now deputy general counsel at a large international company. He is the author of The Curmudgeon’s Guide to Practicing Law and Drug and Device Product Liability Litigation Strategy (affiliate links). You can reach him by email at inhouse@abovethelaw.com.
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