Second Amendment, Policing, and Gun Deaths

People kill people, it is true, but guns certainly make killing people easier.

To reduce all gun deaths, we should:

• Amend the Constitution to clarify the Second Amendment, requiring individual training and regular licensing for gun ownership.
• End “Qualified Immunity” and other special legal allowances for local, state, and federal law enforcement officers.
• Reduce the militarization of policing, including an end to the sales and transfers of military weapons and vehicles to police forces.
• Disarm routine patrol officers, who should carry non-lethal (or at least “less lethal”) weapons.
• Sunset many of our laws that criminalize behaviors and choices, from drug possession to sex work.

The ideas aren’t perfect. I’m open to better ideas.

I’ve argued before that the Second Amendment, historically understood, was included in the Bill of Rights because states wanted to maintain active militias. At the time, all able-bodied men were considered potential militia members.

A well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed.

Today, we have more than 300 million residents in the United States. There’s neither a need nor a desire to include all adults in militia training. The notion of a “well regulated militia” including all adult males, much less every adult citizen, defies reason. If we want to return to the original intent of the Second Amendment, we’d ask that gun owners attend militia training, a laughable proposition.

Gun sales, however, are booming. Black citizens are buying firearms in record numbers, as are white women. Clearly, people believe guns offer a form of security, even if the data don’t support that assumption.

No responsible gun owner would lose rights if we required licensing and training. If you cannot pass a background check and training, you should not handle a firearm.

I do not support per-gun licensing fees, taxes on ammunition, or other schemes. But, I would punish unlicensed and untrained gun owners. Gun registration doesn’t seem unreasonable if it is for a fee close to the actual cost of recording the data.

More weapons among the public make the police uneasy. In response to gun violence, the police argue that they must not be “out-gunned” by criminals. Our leaders have given police more and more weapons, only escalating the potential for violence.

Over the last 35 years, we’ve witnessed the militarization of our police. Departments went from having small specialized tactical weapons teams to over-arming every officer. The “Special Weapons and Tactics” went from a rare sight to a commonplace on the evening news. SWAT teams seem pretty busy to the general public. They have tanks, personnel carriers, and other heavy military vehicles. It’s all absurd.

In a time when violent crime had been declining, we were arming as if there was an open war on the streets of America.

When the police abused their powers, including deadly force, politicians and courts granted officers “qualified immunity.” This basically means that a bad choice made to protect the better good might be immune from prosecution. Yes, it’s more complicated, but the basic result is that officers are not held accountable for serious violations of rights, harm caused to citizens, or even the deaths of suspects. As long as an officer could make a “reasonable” claim to be acting in good faith, prosecution has been difficult.

Policing is a response to public fears. Many of those fears defy the data.

I understand we cannot disarm the police. We cannot reduce funding, either, since training and testing are both expensive. We should also allocate more funds to community social services.

Traffic cops are rarely saved by their guns during deadly encounters. Sadly, police rarely have time to react when a driver or occupant is prepared to kill officers. Likewise, when police do use weapons during traffic stops or other “routine” engagements, there was no immediate threat to life.

Some police might object to carrying only Tasers, chemicals, and batons alongside handcuffs. They do not need utility belts rivaling Batman’s gadgets.

As a classical liberal, I do not want more laws, nor do I want a militarized police force in any community. We don’t need more laws. In fact, we need fewer laws and less special protections for police.