Let me start out by saying that I don't believe everyone who owns a gun is either an idiot or a sociopath. Certainly, there are several of my incredibly intelligent friends who are gun owners; hell, one of my best friends even sells guns, much to my horror. To those people who are both intelligent and sane, I offer my humblest apologies.
That having been said, I hereby abandon my concern about whether or not you like what I have to say:
Some people just have no business owning a gun.
It's the truth. Every time there's a mass shooting, which is becoming an all to frequent occurrence in modern America, Liberals bemoan the access people have to semi-automatic assault weapons (with which I partially agree), and Conservatives bemoan the state of our nationals mental health system (with which I wholly agree), but no one actually deals with the real issue - that some people just have no business owning a gun, in the first place.
Let's face it - nothing is going to be done about gun violence until a Republican leader gets shot. Why? Because until a prominent Republican is assassinated, the GOTea just doesn't care about the problem. More accurately, they simply don't care about you.
They don't care about your children, except when they're fetal; they don't care about you, unless you have large sums of money to donate to their campaigns; and, they certainly don't care about you unless you're white. And because they don't care about you, they don't care whether or not you get shot.
That being the case, nothing will ever be done about gun violence, until the victim is one of their own, and that person will have to be prominent. Perhaps Sarah Palin or Paul Ryan. Those are just examples; not suggestions. Really.
But, the suggestion put forth by Republicans that we need to improve our mental health system is a ruse - in reality, they believe no such thing, because that would render several in their base ineligible to purchase a firearm.
The biggest fear (of paranoid people) is that any gun legislation will result in the creation of a nation gun owner registry, and honestly, I don't have a problem with that. And frankly, neither should they.
The GOTea is all about talking about "personal responsibility," but they never seem to be comfortable asking anyone to actually exhibit such behavior. Bankers who destroy the economy? No consequences. Gun owners whose kids get ahold of their guns and shoot people? Never held liable for their negligence. Oil companies who destroy entire environments? Told they're doing a bang up job and let off the hook.
But, according to their pretend-ideology, people should be held accountable, and therefore should be on a registry of gun owners so that, in the event that their weapon is used in an assault, it can be traced back to them, an investigation can be conducted, and, if they are found to be at fault, they can be prevented from owning and operating a firearm from that point forward. That, to me, sounds like personal responsibility.
Unfortunately, that is not likely to occur, because according to gun enthusiasts, registries ultimately lead to confiscation. Someone argued this point to me, today, and referenced Australia, Great Britain, and blah, blah, blah... Because those places are bastions of political bondage, with dissidents being imprisoned and government out of control.
Except that they're not.
When people come to America as immigrants, they speak of the freedom to live, to take the job they want, to get an education without fear of being executed, to travel without restrictions, to start a business, and to have a chance at a better life. They dream of the ability to say whatever they want without fear of being silenced by their government.
So, when Americans reduce the concept of "freedom" down to the metric of whether or not they can own a gun, they are stupid. It's that simple. They're stupid if they believe that gun ownership is the highest measurement of freedom, and that the very presence of a national gun owner registry is a threat to their most essential freedom.
And to that, I say, "So the fuck what?"
The truth that no one wants to say is that some people just have no business owning a gun, and a national gun owner registry could help to keep firearms out of the hands of those who are simply too dangerous, mentally unstable, or just plain stupid to own a gun. It's certainly not going to stop things on the front end, but it will allow us the opportunity to hold gun owners responsible for any damage caused by them or by their property, and if that leads to confiscation of their firearms, they very likely had no business owning guns in the first place.
Does a registry raise Constitutional issues? In my view, no. The Second Amendment protects our right to keep and bear arms; nowhere does it say that those who do keep and bear arms cannot be listed on a national owner registry.
So, if we want to inspire personal responsibility, a national registry a damned good first step. Whether they want to be responsible, or not.
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