Under my preferred system, you’ll also need a good reason - and “self defence” is not one. Hunting/wildlife management, a job in a security profession, and registered sport shooting are.
In my experience the Americans that are entirely unsympathetic to gun rights, largely are not interested in hearing a serious explanation from the other side, so I have typically learned to simply avoid such discussions most of the time.
Nevertheless, I’ll wade in against my better judgement.
I feel the need first to address the “extremist position”, because in my experience there is a strong desire to make any advocacy for gun rights synonymous with this position.
The extremist position on gun rights, as exemplified by the modern-day (post 1980) NRA and some adherents of its ideologies, holds that there can be no restrictions on firearm use, either licensure, safety requirement, physical gun characteristic requirements et cetera. While they mostly seem willing to be content with the current background check laws, they also oppose any change or expansion of them whatsoever. They typically also support what are called “pre-emption” laws, where State governments in “home rule” states, where cities can typically legislate their own laws fairly robustly, are to be subject to pre-emption on gun laws–i.e. the State can tell the cities “you cannot ban guns.” They also support concepts like forcing businesses to allow people to carry armed on their premises, and some extremists even support prohibiting government facilities from prohibiting guns on site.
I do not support these positions, for a little background I supported the NRA long ago–I dropped that in the 1980s when they went hard political. I opposed the 1994 Assault Weapons Ban and generally voted Republican in most elections up through 2012. I think the loudest voices on guns on the right now dominate the discussion there, and they represent an extremist view that is incompatible with both common sense and our history as a country (a huge number of frontier towns for example had gun regulations, going back 200 years–the idea of the right to own and use a gun being predicated on complete inviolability and immunity to all regulation and restriction is just asinine to me.)
Let’s also address the reality on the ground right now–the gun debate has now become part of the larger left/right “culture war”, this means a significant part of the right simply is no longer willing to discuss, or concede, anything on guns. It’s not because they don’t (in many polls) support certain common sense gun safety laws, it’s because they simply value “owning the libs” as part of their “tribe” far more than they do anything else. For this reason, for the reality that Democrats support greater legislation, much of these people will oppose them, regardless of the merits or messaging.
With that understanding, that virtually nothing can be done outside of the margins, I will at least try to explain the “reasonable gun owner” position.
Gun owners by and large enjoy owning and firing guns, recreationally, in sport, and et cetera. Some gun owners rarely shoot but feel safe having a gun for protection in their home. Some feel safe carrying a gun. I don’t regularly carry but I do participate in shooting sports, hunting, and keep a gun ready in the very, very low percent chance I need to use it for self-defense in my home. I live alone and have no children, so the risk to a loved one from my having the self defense gun out of the safe, is minimal. Its presence certainly means if I was suicidal I would have a higher chance of succeeding at a suicide attempt, but I am not suicidal and I can’t and won’t live my life afraid of what I might do if I someday become suicidal. If I had a history of mental illness, severe depression, suicidal ideation etc then I may evaluate that risk differently.
Many gun owners have a cultural and familial affiliation with guns on top of everything else I just said. It is very common that a gun owner was taught the basics of using a gun by their father, and if their father has passed on it is very common, they own a few guns they inherited from their father. In large swathes of the country, this familial gun culture dates back hundreds of years and is an important part of the social and cultural fabric of the community.
Where I would say a lot of acrimony came from historically (I’m use that term because I am not talking about the present–where most acrimony is intractable political tribalism), is a lot of lawful gun owners who have never committed any crime, were faced with campaigns that talked of “banning” certain types of guns, and saying things like “no one needs x.” That gets people’s hackles up, and it shows a good bit of innate disrespect to the traditions and actual behavior of the huge majority of lawful gun owners.
Now, is it intrinsically wrong to do something that shows disrespect? Not necessarily–but from a “plain old politics” approach, you win very few enemies and change very few minds if you do things that immediately get you seen as an “outsider” antagonistic to their ways.
Most firearm, feature-specific “ban” attempts are incredibly ill-thought out, tend to focus on guns involved in a vanishingly small number of total gun crimes, and that mostly serve to cement the idea that the liberals seeking to impose these bans know nothing about guns or gun crime, and just dislike gunowners and want to take their guns away.
While nothing likely could have been protected from our current era’s political toxicity, going back 30 years, if the “gun restrictionists” had spent a lot more energy focusing on “gun safety” policies, like safety classes and shall-issue licensure, and not going full bore into bans first (which helped feed the larger narrative that all regulations are just attempts to backdoor ban guns) I think things may have progressed in a much better way.
I think if we ever return to an era where we can discuss and decide on political matters in our political system, a focus on ideas like beefed up background checks, safety classes, shall-issue licensure, more regulations aimed at 25 and under gun owners (who commit the disproportionate majority of gun crimes, and we know biologically up until age 25 many people are still developing the parts of their brains that let them make consequences-mindful decisions), would be prudent directions to go in. Foaming at the mouth about banning magazines of a certain size or guns with certain cosmetic features, will likely not do much to actually reduce mass shootings or other types of gun crime, and will keep the topic nice and toxic and part of a broader intractable culture war.
So then let’s say I have a good reason. I still go out and mass shoot.
Where is the flaw in the system?
Somewhere in the mental health or domestic terrorism departments, I’d say.
Is it safe to say you think the murder rate would go down if every gun was removed? Or put another way, someone intent on murder wouldn’t do it if there were no guns? Because a crowd is just as easily mowed down by a car.
Obviously the term mass shooting refers to a single shooter but realistically mass shootings do occur in cities. They just involve more shooters. Which s really worse when you think about it.
I think this is the real issue. Look at the Swiss culture mentioned above compared to the United States. Now look at the media environment in the United States. It’s filled with movies, TV shows, and music that is obsessed with violence.
I could see the change growing up. I was a kid in the 60’s and the level of what I would describe as obscene violence has grown tremendously. I still remember a movie on TV when I was maybe 10 years old where someone takes a hatchet to another person’s head. I think it was some kind of “Cowboys and Indian” movie but it was a significant departure in what was graphically shown up till then. I was both shocked at the intensity of the act and the fact it was on TV.
Today the crime shows are a race to the bottom to see how intensely graphic they can be. And that’s TV. Good God, movies make TV crime shows look like church sermons.
Once you see something you can’t unsee it. If I remember a movie from 50+ years ago as disturbingly violent I can only imagine the damage this stuff does when children and adults are exposed to it on a daily basis. It’s going to affect how society as a whole behaves and I think we’re seeing this now.
When I was in school I carried a knife starting in grade school. In high school I made a foot long knife in shop class and used it as a bookmark while I was making it. I learned to shoot at a class taught at a grade school (after class). High schools had shooting clubs.
That’s inconceivable now given the current social conditions. Things have changed in my lifetime.
‘SeniorBeef’, that was an outstanding essay explaining the issue in an unequivocally objective and articulate manner.
Raises a glass of bourbon on the rocks to Senor Beef and his post.
Certainly Africa today is having its wildlife decimated. My point is that indigenous populations in Europe, Asia, America, and Australia wiped out most of the megafauna upon arrival or shortly thereafter (say, the first climate swing after human attival). In Africa, on the other hand, we see the megafauna get smaller as hominids evolve, but indigineous populations didn’t cause the same widespread near total extinctions that we see elsewhere.
The grasslands full of buffalo isn’t how North America used to look - the buffalo became that common after native Americans killed off the mammoths and camels and horses and so on.
If I were emperor, after doing that, you could have all the long guns you want, but you would have to show a need to own a handgun, and more of a need to carry.
What if you still commit a mass shooting? So what? Most gun deaths are caused by handguns, so I don’t understand the focus on mass shooting, except for “if it bleeds, it leads”.
If we could really, really restrict handgun ownership and carry, it would make it easier for cops to get them off the streets in the neighborhoods that have a constant toll of gun deaths. Shotguns are better for home defense, and shotguns and rifles are better for hunting. Handguns are for killing people and target shooting.
People legally carrying concealed handguns are pretty much the most law abiding group in the country. There are almost never misuses of legal carry - definitely far lower than the rate that police officers commit, both on and off duty. We’ve had millions of concealed carry holders in most states with countless man-hours carried and almost no problems at all. So that’s a weird target for your laws.
But, hey, banning laws affecting people who basically had a perfect record isn’t unprecedented - they felt compelled to ban the manufacture or importation of civilian machine gun ownership despite a perfect 52 year history of never being used in a crime. (You may read about two police officers who committed a crime using machine guns, but they were issued by their department through a different process and that was not banned).
3-4,000 people die each year in the US as a result of distracted driving – the majority of those due to cell phone use.
A similar case could be made: that many/most of us tacitly say, “Meh. I like using my cell phone, and while I’m driving is a particularly convenient time.”
I don’t like it – particularly since I lost an acquaintance to a very new teen driver who was texting and driving – but I do recognize the Faustian bargain that we collectively make, and the number of issues on which we apparently make it.
I think we’re too willing, collectively, to accept too many losses for relatively questionable ‘freedoms’ in this country, but there it is.
Jimmy Carter won no points for saying – during the energy crisis, in the winter – turn your thermostat down and wear a sweater.
Barack Obama won no points for suggesting that we all check our cars’ tire pressures on a regular basis to increase MPG and save money.
We once sacrificed when the nation went to war. Now, I feel like we go to war to avoid having to sacrifice.
[hopefully, not too far afield from the topic at hand]
This, in my opinion, is not an apples-to-apples comparison.
Public mass shootings, like Sandy Hook or Pulse Nightclub or the Las Vegas concert are relatively rare. Yes, they are covered extensively, and there’s tremendous shock value in the immediate aftermath, but the story eventually fades. (And nothing, it seems, ever changes because of any mass shooting or the extensive coverage.)
In 2019, 10,142 people died in drunk-driving crashes. That’s almost 28 people each day. And this sobering statistic certainly needs to be made aware to the public.
But, in 2020, there were 19,384 murders that involved a firearm. That’s almost 53 people each day. This is another statistic that the public needs to know.
This is the comparison that needs to be made: drunk-driving deaths versus firearms-involved homicides.
But imagine a world where the news covered every firearms-involved murder like they covered mass shootings. Would this dramatically increase the number of gun-control advocates?
Both types of deaths are certainly preventable. I wish the media would focus on both of the statistics that I’ve cited here. But it probably won’t ever happen.
Unfortunately, this will likely change. Until fairly recently carrying concealed in basically any state required licensure, which required going through a safety class and other procedural barriers. That unsurprisingly meant many people inclined to criminality just didn’t bother, if you’re already a criminal just get a gun and carry it without the CCW.
However, many States have started to implement “constitutional carry”, which means any adult in the State may carry a concealed handgun at any time with no licensure or regulation. Since this will make it a far more casual thing to be “carrying concealed legally” the crime statistics in terms of crimes being committed by legal gun owners will certainly go up–if for no other reason than many of the people who were already carrying illegally and involved in various criminal enterprises, now are legal carrying assuming they don’t have a disqualifying felony conviction.
How many people have died in Colorado since 1999 due to mass shootings? Columbine, Aurora movie theater, Boulder King Soopers. Am I missing any others? If not, I have 37 people who died.
That’s less than the number of people who die on Colorado highways in 20 days.
I think the media is following rather than leading here, though. I think our national myth is a huge part of this – individual, personalized violence (i.e. the mountain men, the settlers going west, the cowboys, the Minutemen, etc.) is intrinsically tied to our national culture and identity in a way that’s different, IMO, than most other wealthy countries. Of course, violence is in the histories of every country – especially the wealthiest ones – but from my reading and understanding of, say, British culture and national identity, their myths whitewash the personal violence in a way that I don’t think ours does. The mythological definitive Brit isn’t a gunslinger willing, able, and ready to shoot the many bad guys that might cross his path, but the mythological definitive American man is. At least in a way.
To be honest, it might cut down on the death toll a bit. But you are correct- it wouldn’t stop mass shootings.
For example the "mass shooting " in Sacramento was a gang shooting, done by 9mm handguns, and same with the one in Milwaukee (many wounded, no deaths). In the past, that wouldn’t even be reported as a “mass shooting” as they used to reserve that for the “lone crazed gunman who kills strangers at random”.
Good post.
Or cigarettes? over 400,000 Americans die each year, over 40000 of which due to secondhand smoke. So just SHS kills twice as many as guns do.
Cite?
It always does.
Despite what you may think, the goal of the police is not to kill people. 
A police officer hopes to never have to kill a human.
Yes.
Oddly, neither open or constitutional carry seems to do neither of what both side think- there seems to be no significant increase or decrease in violent crime. I thought that was a bit surprising until I read a couple studies (and no, I don’t remember them). My WAG is that certain crimes like rape or armed robbery go down, whilst a crime of passion, like a rage killing, goes up.
Absolutely correct, there’s no amount of mass shootings that will change my mind. Besides that I actually believe in constitutional rights, if there’s a mass shooting every day, all the more reason I need my gun for protection.
I can accommodate that perfectly reasonable request:
The CEO of the NRA gave a full-bore defense of gun rights at the Conservative Political Action Conference on Thursday, calling for weapons in schools in response to a mass shooting in Florida last week.
ETA:
Constitutional carry is still far too new to be making any assumptions about what it does, and correlation doesn’t demonstrate causation in any case. While it dates back to 2003 in Alaska, only a few relatively low population States had it until a spate of States started passing it after 2012, many of those again, smaller rural States. The 75% of the States to currently permit constitutional carry implemented it in just the last 6 years, and all kinds of crime statistics are kind of wonky from 2020 on due to covid, and it can take a decade or more to get any sort of good trend analysis on crime anyway.
Constitutional carry may or may not lower the overall crime rate–my suspicion is it does not meaningfully alter it; but it does undeniably create more legal possessors of concealed guns who would otherwise not be legal possessors of concealed guns, which intrinsically means more legal gun possessors will be found to commit gun crimes in constitutional carry States than in States where you need a permit.
Yes, you are correct, but in a very limited way, both in the types of mass shootings (school shootings) and who.
I was expecting the claim a NRA statement that everyone should go buy guns, which didn;t seem likely.