A Simple Solution

All this bickering and pussyfooting around over the details of legislation dealing with gun violence is getting us nowhere. It’s been going on since the Reagan years, the Brady Bill and the advent of readily available, assault-style arms.

Sure we can continue to argue back and forth about red-flag laws, assault rifle bans, stricter background checks, magazine size limits, and a hundred other variables. But, we’re just pecking around the periphery like a bunch of garden chickens.

There are, conservatively estimated, about 400 million guns in this country. And only about 320 million people. Using 2021 statistics, there were 130 million households in the U.S. and just 42% of them had a gun in the house. A more recent poll showed that 52% of the population favored stricter gun control. So it would seem the majority should have some influence in solving this issue. But when you poll down to the details of ways to accomplish this, things really get messy.

Because there is no focused consensus on what to do, and because there is so much money being thrown into the argument from the guns-for-profit sector, it’s no wonder our politicians have stood idly by while the slaughter has escalated. They are guilty, in terms of gun control, of what my guru Gil Scott-Heron described as “partial deification of partial accomplishments over partial periods of time.” But the solution is quite simple. We’re about to do it with the thorny abortion issue and we should also be doing it with guns. Throw the matter back to the states to decide. Repeal the 2^nd Amendment.

It’s not like guns are homogenously distributed in the US. According to 2022 World Population Review statistics, the top 10 states by population percentage of gun ownership are places no one truly civilized would want to live anyway. So let all the gun fetishists move there, and let the rest of us live in peace, perhaps banning gun ownership in our states or municipalities entirely, save for assiduously regulated, single-shot hunting rifles.

I recently re-posted a newspaper article I wrote in which I posed this question: If the aliens arrived and told us we had to vote on whether to keep every gun on the planet or have every gun instantly “poofed,” how would you vote? I certainly know how I’d vote. And if a movement were started to repeal the 2^nd amendment, I know I’d try to be first in line to sign the petition.

In my adventurous life I’ve been in a lot of dangerous places. But I’ve never felt as unsafe as I now do just going about my ordinary pursuits in this country. Looks sideways at someone who cuts you off in traffic and you may be staring at a gun. Go shopping in a mall and you may get caught in a crossfire. Or, so sadly, just be a little kid in an elementary school, or, for that matter, any kid, since guns are now the leading cause of death in children.

So senseless! If we can’t get past endless arguing about the intent of a centuries-old amendment that really no longer has any legitimate, relevant context, it’s simply time to get rid of it.

©2022, David B Bucher