Friday, March 29, 2024 -
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‘Better gun laws’ — what are they?

If we neither repeal nor eviscerate the Second Amendment, we may still put forward better guns laws, gathered from multiple sources since the Uvalde school shooting:

• Raise the minimum age for the purchase of any gun to 21 (like the law in Wyoming, one of the country’s most pro-gun states).

• Prosecute the registered owner of an unsafely stored gun that is stolen and then used to commit a crime.

• Require universal background checks to buy a gun and to buy ammunition (“In much of America, there is a more thorough review of people adopting a rescue dog than of those buying assault rifles”; Nicholas Kristof).

• Ban assault rifles (unknown to the founders of the US and unneeded for self-defense).

• Require a license to buy a gun, just like a license is required to operate another potentially lethal instrument — a car.

• Ban gun purchases by people under a domestic violence protection order, by people on a “no-fly” list and by people convicted (even as a misdemeanor) of stalking.

• Require a psychological evaluation paid for by the purchaser of a gun (“If you can afford a gun, you can afford this”; Roy David).

• Publicize and support the work of voluntary gun buy-back programs, such as RAWtools (see “‘Swords into ploughshares’ — literally,” by Chris Leppek, IJN, April 15, 2022).

• Require warning labels on guns, just as on cigarettes.

• Require a one-month waiting period for the purchase of a new gun.

All of these laws would reduce gun violence and, equally important, shift the conversation from one that glorifies weapons to one that regards them with the the intense circumspection they require. Glorifies, you ask? Yes, glorifies. Check the endless simulated murders on Netflix and elsewhere. Guns and murder are glorified in America. The country needs not just a legal shift, but a cultural shift. Better guns laws are a pragmatic start.

Copyright © 2022 by the Intermountain Jewish News




One thought on “‘Better gun laws’ — what are they?

  1. Janna Blanter

    What part of “criminals don’t obey ANY LAWS” is so hard to comprehend? If we only stopped this repeating kabuki dance of “sensible gun laws” and actually address the societal issues which raised monsters like the one in Uvalde or those closer to home in Columbine, Aurora?

    Reply

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