I’m inclined to agree with Jim Wright: The guns are out of the bag (a few hundred million of them), and no amount of “gun bans” or whatnot are going to solve anything.

He proposed some time ago putting the NRA right back in the centre of the issue: Enact the NRA’s own gun safety rules as laws. Failure to follow those rules then gets your guns taken away from you.

1. ALWAYS keep the gun pointed in a safe direction.

2. ALWAYS keep your finger off the trigger until ready to shoot.

3. ALWAYS keep the gun unloaded until ready to use.

His argument is essentially the same as that used by MADD pushing for better drunk drive laws.

Drunk drive laws did not end drunken driving. But over time, they changed the culture where drunken driving was no longer socially acceptable.

Laws can never prevent behaviour, or murder and theft wouldn’t happen though those have been illegal in every society for thousands of years. What laws do is allow you to punish anti-social behaviour.

So if you took the NRA’s own rules and make them law, either the NRA is stuck supporting that or arguing against their own position. They note there are “no exceptions” to their safety rules. Well then, they shouldn’t have a problem with making “no exception” laws to enforce them.

stonekettle.com

As he also notes, as long as there are conservatives screaming “no restrictions on guns” and liberals “ban guns” there will be no compromise at all. As such, the problem will never have a solution.

Perhaps the NRA could be brought back from the wingnuts that took it over. I learned gun safety from the NRA’s own rules, before the NRA went off the rails. Perhaps using their own rules as laws might do something to bring back sanity.