Iâm inclined to agree with Jim Wright: The guns are out of the bag (a few hundred million of them), and no amount of âgun bansâ 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 NRAâs 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 wouldnât 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 NRAâs own rules and make them law, either the NRA is stuck supporting that or arguing against their own position. They note there are âno exceptionsâ to their safety rules. Well then, they shouldnât have a problem with making âno exceptionâ laws to enforce them.
As he also notes, as long as there are conservatives screaming âno restrictions on gunsâ and liberals âban gunsâ 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 NRAâs own rules, before the NRA went off the rails. Perhaps using their own rules as laws might do something to bring back sanity.