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Dear America: Here’s Your Gun Solution (Updated. Again.)
Here’s some common sense for you. I want gun ownership to be as boring and annoying as car ownership. I want you to go to some Department of Weapons and sit for hours. I want folks who own guns to prove their skill, their mental and physical health, and to be licensed and reviewed over the years just as happens with our driver’s licenses. You earn the privilege to own and drive a vehicle; earn the privilege to own and use a gun.
Quibble with me over semantics if you want to; what is a “right” vs. what is a “privilege.” I’ll be busy with my friends and colleagues trying to prevent more unnecessary deaths.
Gun ownership isn’t some inalienable right granted by God. Remember, the Constitution was written by men coming out of a long and bloody war near the end of the 18th century. It was written for their time.
It also implicitly (and, uh, rather explicitly) included the “right” to own a human being. Check out the provisions on property. They weren’t just talking about the front yard at your great-great-grandaddy’s plantation. As an aside, learn about the 3/5 compromise. July 12, 1787. Philadelphia. History is very interesting if you bother to pay attention before losing your damn mind in a comments section on these here interwebs.