9/10ths

In another dangerous moment, I had some more thoughts.



Probably the most common attempt at an analogous argument I've heard used in the gun control debates is the "well, you have to have a license to drive a car" bit.  Especially in regards to registration and that sort of thing.
I don't like that for a couple of reasons.

First and foremost, driving a car is not a Constitutionally guaranteed right.
So there's that. Any regulation on car driving/ownership is not in violation of your personal liberties as enumerated in the Bill of Rights.

Second, it alters the nature of the issue at hand in a bit of a deceptive way.
It's a clever ploy, but it's still an incorrect framing of the problem.
I'll explain.

The case: gun crime is a problem. It claims lives, and needs to be reduced somehow. Interestingly enough, making it illegal to shoot someone for no reason hasn't really decreased gun violence that much.

Now consider the case of a drunk driver.
Drunk driving is a problem. It claims many lives, and needs to be reduced somehow. Of course, it's already pretty thoroughly illegal.

Further, consider an addict.
Drug abuse is a problem. It claims a lot of lives and ruins a lot more, and needs to be reduced somehow. Again, already illegal.

Now neither of those follow-up cases address or even relate to a Constitutional right...but they both have resulted in arguments leading to legislation that largely forgets the point.
The point, and the thing these three situations have in common, is the difference between possession and action.

Take cars, for instance. You have to be licensed to operate a vehicle, not to own one.
Drunk driving is a problem, but to my knowledge no one has suggested restricting the sales of vehicles as a potential solution...because it's patent nonsense.

Move on to drugs. Having drugs doesn't mean you're using drugs, and certainly not that you're abusing them. That being said, possession has been criminalized in a lot of cases. I suppose because some of these drugs are harmful to the individual taking them...of course that's done nothing to prevent the sale of cigarettes.

Sidenote: criminalizing the possession of certain kinds of drugs makes just about as much sense as criminalizing the possession of certain kinds of firearms. That was my original thought.

And we're back. So where has that criminalization gotten us?
Drug-related crime and deaths continue to climb, prisons are overpopulated with non-violent offenders, and police are forced to devote time and resources that could be used elsewhere (say in the protection of citizens) to handle criminals who aren't actually -doing- anything at all that harms anyone else.
In fact, in countries that have decriminalized drug possession, drug-related crime and deaths have fallen as a result almost across the board.

Here we drive the parallel home. The problem with gun crime is not the ownership of guns.
People owning guns does not cause them to go on shooting sprees. If everyone in the country owned a gun, I strongly doubt any actual increase in gun violence beyond that associated with slightly easier access.
The problem with gun crime is action, and that's quite hard to legislate against because, as it turns out, people who have already chosen to break the law don't really care what the law has to say about how they break it.

There is something to be said for making it harder for criminals to obtain guns - the thing is, you can't effectively do that without making it harder for law abiding citizens to own them as well, because possession in itself cannot be treated as a crime unless you're ignoring about 50 years of data that such a treatment doesn't help. 

Moreover, making assault rifles or high-capacity magazines illegal is no different from making marijuana illegal but not cigarettes or alcohol. It also suffers from a similar form of lunacy as an attempt to restrict the ownership of Chevrolet vehicles because more of them are involved in drunk driving incidents than other makes. (Note: That's an example, not a real statistic.)

Possession is not the cause of crime. People are.
I'm tired of this prevailing idea to hold inanimate objects and marginally harmful substances accountable for individuals' actions. Can we actually blame the person, for a change? Recklessness and irresponsibility are, far and away, a greater threat to everyone, and it's high time we quit trying to justify them within shit arguments about how restricting access to tools related to crime can reduce criminal desires.

Just a thought.

- C