Ideas on Reducing Gun Violence

Suggested Legislative Considerations for Gun Safety in America

I am hopeful, as I believe most Americans are, that the tragic events of this weekend, where 41 people died and over 50 were injured, will FINALLY be the impetus for Congress and the President to take action to minimize these actions in the future.  Thoughts, prayers, condolences and support for victims are no longer enough.

But action must be developed with respect for the input from both sides of the aisle in Congress.  Both sides respect the rights of law abiding citizens in the 2nd Amendment.  Here is the specific unedited language of that Amendment: “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.”  On some sides of the debate, this language has been interpreted as an absolute right for all citizens to keep and bear arms of all types, without "infringement" by any laws designed to limit gun violence.

But as Justice Scalia wrote in a previous gun control decision,  "like most rights, the right secured by the Second Amendment is not unlimited." It is "not a right to keep and carry any weapon whatsoever in any manner whatsoever and for whatever purpose." (US vs. Heller).  For instance, Scalia said concealment laws were permitted at the time of the Constitution's ratification and should be permitted today.  He also wrote in that decision that “Nothing in our opinion should be taken to cast doubt on longstanding prohibitions on the possession of firearms by felons and the mentally ill … or laws imposing conditions and qualifications on the commercial sale of arms."

Both sides also seem to agree on the need to prevent people with criminal records, mental health issues, with past evidence of violent behavior, or with extremist ideology tendencies involving hate for other groups of Americans, from owning firearms. But this will not be an easy action to implement, even if there is broad agreement to the principle. How we would define and track these issues before a gun purchase or as part of a regular follow up to the gun owner population, will be a challenging process?

Within that construct of the 2nd Amendment and that recent Supreme Court decision by a conservative majority, we should be able to develop laws that would be effective in significantly reducing not only the impact of mass shooting events on the extent of death and injury, we should also be able to minimize the number of these events as well.  These would seem to be goals that should benefit from broad agreement among our citizens as well as our leaders.

What might the components of a COMPREHENSIVE gun safety law include if it were designed to achieve the above goals?  Here are some suggestions for consideration and discussion:

First: High firing speed weapons and high-capacity magazines shouldn’t be broadly available to ordinary citizens.

It is often stated that guns don’t kill people, only people kill people.  But it is equally true that no one armed with a knife or a standard handgun this past weekend would have been able to kill and injure nearly 100 people in a matter of a few minutes or seconds.  Even if surrounded by “good guys with guns”, it is going to require some minutes or seconds before a mass shooter can be subdued.  

In El Paso, police subdued the shooter within 6 minutes I believe.  In Dayton, it was reported today that it was only 30 seconds between shots fired and the downing of the shooter by police who were in the area.  The police found 41 shells from the shooter’s weapon, and admitted that might not be all the rounds fired.  That would mean a firing rate of over 1 bullet per second.  It seems inarguable that the number of mass deaths and injuries in a mass shooting attack is a direct result of the type of weapon involved; the greater the number of bullets fired per second, the greater will be the number of deaths and injuries.

The two factors that impact the number of casualties in a few minutes are (1) the firing speed of the weapon, and (2) the number of bullets able to be fired in a single magazine without reloading.  So achieving the goal of limiting the number of deaths and injuries in such events would seem to require preventing weapons with high firing speeds, such as those weapons approaching the speed of 1 round per second, high capacity magazines, and the accumulation of hundreds of rounds of ammunition by ordinary citizens.

Second:  Ensure that every purchase of any firearm involves a comprehensive background check, including the mental health, past violent behaviors, and social media history, in addition to criminal records, before being allowed to purchase a weapon.  

If we agree that people with a criminal record, a mental health issue, a record of past violent behaviors, or subscribing to extremist political beliefs of hatred and intolerance of certain groups of Americans, should not have access to firearms, we have to have a background check process capable of accessing all these aspects of a gun purchaser's records.  People who seek to own guns will need to agree to waive their rights to privacy in these areas, and to have their histories checked before being permitted to purchase or own a gun through any commercial channel, gift, exchange or any other means of obtaining a firearm.

Third:  The purchase of a large number of bullets and/or magazines at one time or in a short period of time, or the accumulation of a large number of bullets, magazines, or  firearms over time should initiate a more direct investigation by authorities.  

When a gun owner looks to purchase or accumulate hundreds of rounds of ammunition, dozens of magazines, and/or a large collection of firearms, at one time or over time, this should initiate a further direct investigation of that individual’s current status.  This review would include an in-person interview and a check on how and why the larger than normal numbers of these items are being collected.

Fourth:  Gun owners should agree to have on-going reviews of their backgrounds to continue to have the right to own a gun.  Will a one time, lifetime check on backgrounds be sufficient?  

It would seem that anyone owning a gun from a past purchase will also need to undergo such a background check of their on going records. A criminal act, a mental health issue, a violent behavior incident or exhibiting an extremist belief could happen in the days, weeks, months or years after a gun purchase.  So gun owners will have to agree to those on going checks, perhaps annually, to retain their ability to own guns.  

In the 2nd Amendment, in the 21st century in America, what might the definition of “well regulated” requirements for citizens to have their rights to gun ownership not “infringed” mean?  Might “well regulated” in the 21st century reasonably require mental health checks, no violent behavior records, no “red flag” social media posts, no association with extremists ideologies, and agreement of gun owners to have these areas reviewed each year to renew their rights to continue no “infringed” rights to own guns?

The approach described above is hoped to represent a balanced, objective approach to the issue of preventing gun-related violence.  It starts with 2 clear goals, both minimizing death and injuries in mass shooting events, and in seeking to prevent them from occurring.  It then suggests actions designed to directly accomplish the 2 goals that reflect respect for the 2nd Amendment rights of law abiding citizens, while also respecting the rights of all citizens to the qualities of life in America that are stated as the Purpose for the Constitution.  

In the Preamble, our Founders stated clearly what goals the Constitution, including all the Amendments, are designed to provide for all citizens:  “…, to establish Justice, insure domestic Tranquility, provide for the common defence, promote the general Welfare, and secure the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity …”.  It could be honestly asked, is the level of gun violence in America over the past two decades consistent with having achieved any of those goals in the our quality of national life?  Are 250 mass shootings so far this year and multiple school shootings consistent with “domestic tranquility, general welfare, or securing liberty for ourselves and our children?"  If not, we have to ask why our leaders who took an Oath of Office to Support and Defend the Constitution, do not seem capable of taking the necessary actions to do so.

I’m sure this approach and these ideas are not perfect solutions.  I hope they stimulate our leaders and my fellow citizens to consider a similar objective, non-partisan approach, starting with specific goals that would clearly reduce the violence, and then suggest solutions on actions to achieve these solutions.

Service and Sacrifice: Thoughts from Independence Day 2019

Service and Sacrifice:  Thoughts from Independence Day, Memorial Day and D-Day Anniversary

As we look forward to celebrating the 243^rd anniversary of the signing of the Declaration of Independence this week, I have been thinking of the sacrifice so many citizens in our history have made for the rest of us in their service to the country.  There is no political divisiveness in those military units; there is only the shared commitment to service and willingness to sacrifice one’s own comforts or even life to protect our country’s freedoms and liberties.  

This celebration comes on the heels of a very important 10 days in the history of our country during May 30-June 6:  the 10 day period between Memorial Day and the D-Day Anniversary.  These two very special days, along with our celebration of our Declaration of Independence, should remind us of the ultimate sacrifices so many Americans have made to secure the future of our nation and that of many other nations in the world. 

On each Memorial Day, we recall the service and the sacrifices of all servicemen and women who died in combat during all the wars since World War I.  And on D-Day this year, we marked the 75^th Anniversary of the sacrifices of 2,500 mostly young Americans who died taking the beaches of Normandy to begin the liberation of France and the balance of Europe, and preserve freedom in the 20^th century.

There are 25 American cemeteries in 10 countries in Europe with the graves of 130,000 men killed in action during the two world wars. There are also an estimated 124,000 missing and believed to have been killed in action. What other nation on earth has lost tens of thousands of citizens fighting on foreign soil for the freedom of another country?  Americans did not die in an effort to conquer another country, or to ask “what’s in this for us?”  They fought to free the citizens of other nations from tyranny … citizens they never met, who mostly speak languages they couldn’t understand.

It is often said about the American system of government, based on our Constitution and Declaration of Independence, that it is the best system of government invented by man to govern themselves.  But I believe the memorials we celebrate on these two holidays each year should remind us that the preservation of that government has always required the service and sacrifices of its citizens; from the Revolutionary War, to the Civil War, to two World Wars, to the Cold War, and to the wars against terrorism.  

As we express our admiration and gratitude to those Americans who served the cause of protecting our country and our democracy at the sacrifice of their own lives, I’d like to challenge us to bring our thoughts to the present.  That same kind of commitment to our country and our democracy is evidenced each day by the men and women who volunteer to serve in our Armed Forces today.  Nearly every one of us will make the small effort to express a well-deserved and sincerely felt “thank you for your service” when we encounter active duty or veteran service men and women. 

But how do we feel about our political leaders, particularly Congressional leaders?  Do we view them with the same level of admiration and gratitude?  Apparently not at all.  National surveys indicate that while the military has an approval rating over the past decade between 72% and 82%, the approval rating for Congress has been between 7% and 13%.  Might it be that most citizens do not see Congress committed to serving our country and our democracy as a whole?  Or that most citizens don’t see Congress members in general willing to make the smallest personal sacrifice to solve many of the problems facing our country today?

I would ask you to consider that Congress as an institution today no longer seems to govern the way citizens expect to be governed in the representative democracy passed down to us by our Founders in the Constitution.  Over the past several decades, members from both parties seem to focus more on serving their own careers, their donors, their party’s base and special interest groups, than on serving the nation. 

In our representative democracy, don’t citizens have a right to expect that their elected officials who take the Oath of Office will serve the needs and concerns of all their constituents, including those citizens who didn’t vote for them as well as those who did, and those who are not in their party’s base as well as those who are?  Today, it seems that there is hardly an elected official who would make any degree of personal or political sacrifice to place service to country over themselves, their positions of power, or their party; even though the sacrifice required to do so pales in comparison to the sacrifices so many ordinary Americans have made and are still making today during times of war.

How has this situation with so many Congressional and Administration leaders from both parties developed under our extraordinary Constitution?  Aren’t there protections in the Constitution citizens can rely upon?  The short answer is “no”.  Our Constitution is not a document that defines HOW elected officials should operate to serve the people in a representative democracy, or WHAT actions they should follow in governing.  Defining such processes or actions would have been a difficult goal to achieve among the drafters, none of whom had ever seen or lived in a representative democracy. 

So the Constitution our Founders wrote and passed on to us essentially defines the “structure” of our government, and the powers given to each independent Branch – providing us with the critical system of “checks and balances” between the Branches.  However, the Constitution does not define the “operational rules” of how elected officials should govern.  These rules were left to the elected officials themselves to define over time.  Our Founders believed that if the elected officials did not act to serve the people, the people would use their votes to remove those from office who acted to serve themselves, their party, or special interest groups, or who acted corruptly. 

It is understandable that our Founders could not possibly foresee the rise in the influence of incumbency, of money, of donors, or of partisanship, and the dangers to our representative democracy that these influences now represent.   But some of our most prominent Founders did warn the country against one of the greatest dangers they foresaw early in our history.  See how relevant these warnings seem today:

John Adams wrote on October 2, 1789, just  6 months after our current Constitution was ratified, and 5 months after taking office as our first Vice President:

 “There is nothing which I dread so much as a division of the republic into two great parties, each arranged under its leader, and concerting measures in opposition to each other. This, in my humble apprehension, is to be dreaded as the greatest political evil under our Constitution.”

George Washington  echoed this apprehension in his Farewell Address on September 19, 1796:

“However [political parties] may now and then answer popular ends, they are likely in the course of time and things, to become potent engines, by which cunning, ambitious, and unprincipled men will be enabled to subvert the power of the people and to usurp for themselves the reins of government, destroying afterwards the very engines which have lifted them to unjust dominion.”

Does it seem that these fears of the potential risks of partisanship to our representative government as expressed by our first two Presidents in the early years of republic, may be coming true today?  Over the past several decades, we have seen officials in both parties when in the majority fail to develop policies that serve the entire country versus their own base or donors.  In election years, the candidates compete in proposing new policy ideas that appeal largely to their party’s base.  But no candidate talks about policy ideas that might serve the major needs of most of the country, by taking into account the needs and concerns of citizens in both parties.

As an example, the Affordable Care Act, or ACA, was passed by a one party marjority, as was the 2017 Tax Cut law.  Neither has been a particularly effective policy for the country overall.  They have resulted in great benefits for the party’s base they were designed to help, but provided minimal benefits, or even created new burdens, for major parts of the country outside of their base.  This is not how a representative democracy, focused on serving the country, the nation overall, should act … it is more aptly how a one-party dictatorship might act.  And under today’s rampant partisanship, that is perhaps a more apt description of where our current leaders have taken our government today.

Perhaps after 238 years, it is time to consider a “Renewal” of our Constitution; not to change the purpose or structure established 238 years ago, but to update the Constitution by adding some specific rules to define HOW our elected officials should govern.  This “Renewal” would ensure elected officials more directly serve the people than serve their own careers and interests, the interests of their donors, their partisan bases, and special interest groups, by defining new “rules” for how Congress should operate and govern within the Constitution itself.

The purpose of these new operational “rules” would be to require elected officials to focus on serving the country, and ALL their constituents, even when it might require some personal and political sacrifices.  The goal of these rules would be to attract elected officials who seek office primarily out of a sense of duty, obligation and service to the country, not as a career to enrich themselves; and to free elected officials from the undue influences of needing to please their base voters, donors and special interest groups in their desires to sustain a career in office.

Today, this partisan focus on governing has led to an incredible urgency in each party to win, and created an unhealthy fear of losing.  This is true for both the candidates seeking to sustain their careers and power in the institutions, and the citizen members of each party, who fear not having their needs and concerns reflected in future policies if their party loses.  This “winner take all” approach to majority power governing has led to a “win at all costs” approach to elections. Thus, we have seen party loyalty and identity supersede loyalty and identity to the country overall or even to the Constitution and rule of law. 

As evidence of this change, we have seen partisan “gerrymandering” of Congressional districts be executed by both parties, whichever is in control of the process, to protect their own candidates and majorities at the expense of the basic principle of “fair” elections reflecting the true will of citizens. This results in having representatives picking their voters instead of the voters picking their representatives.  Elected officials from those areas do not come to Congress with the goal of serving all their constituents, or the country overall, by compromising or collaborating with officials representing different constituencies.  As a result, the country either gets no policies to address the country’s major needs at all, or we get only the approach designed by and for a single party majority.

Elected officials in both parties have also made rules for the lawmaking process that benefit themselves and their parties and to ensure their own re-elections, at the expense of following the Constitution.  As a recent example, when there is a vacancy on the Supreme Court, Article 2 Section 2 of the Constitution states that the President “shall appoint with the advice and consent of the Senate …” a replacement candidate.   Is there any part of this language that indicates the Senate Majority Leader can block a Supreme Court appointment by a President at any time by themself alone?  There’s no exclusion in the Constitution that says “only in a non-election year”, or “only if the Senate Majority Leader agrees”. 

Under our Constitution, there’s only one way to express the “advice and consent of the Senate”, of the whole Senate, and that is to have the whole Senate vote, up or down, on the nomination.  But in 2016, the Republican Senate Majority Leader, which is not even an office defined in the Constitution but an office created and given powerful controls over the governing process by elected officials for their own benefit, essentially violated this Constitutional requirement, by deciding on his own that there would not be a vote on a Presidential nominee from the other party, by refusing to hold a vote of the full Senate.

In this case, why didn’t Democrats charge a Constitutional violation?  Why didn’t they go to the people with the outrage that one party had just ignored their Constitutional duty?  Why didn’t they go the Supreme Court and ask that the Senate be required to discharge their Constitutional obligations?  There were two reasons, both driven by political and not Constitutional considerations.  First, Democrats were very confident that Hillary Clinton would win the upcoming election and be in position to appoint the next Supreme Court justice, so they saw this only as an inconvenient delay.  Second, Democrats themselves had proposed their own “rule” on when the Senate should consider a new Supreme Court justice appointment in an election year (known as the “Biden” rule), and they didn’t want to lose that precedent of choosing not to follow the Constitution when politically inconvenient for them.  They were as equally motivated by political and not Constitutional considerations as Republicans.

This is just one example of why it may well be time to consider a “Renewal” to our Constitution … not to change the eternal principles or structures enshrined in that wondrous document, but to add an element that is missing to better protect our democratic republic.  Instead of leaving the making of rules of how Congress should operate to the Congressional members themselves, perhaps it is time for “We the People” to define the rules … how we require Congress to govern in a representative democracy.  Don’t these officials work to serve the people, instead of the people working to serve them?  This “Renewal” would incorporate some clear operational rules within the Constitution that would limit or prevent future elected officials from acting on the basis of building a personal career by favoring donors, special interests and partisan political considerations instead of serving the country. 

What would the specific operational rules that would be part of this “Constitutional Renewal”?  And how could these operational rules be added to the Constitution to ensure that the “People’s Rules” can not be overridden, changed or ignored by Congress, or negated by an increasingly partisan Supreme Court?  There are a list of ideas that have been presented in a course I created entitled “How to Get Congress To Serve the Nation”.  They have been shared with over 250 citizens in 4 Ohio counties in 3 university Lifelong Learning and Learning in Retirement programs. Those ideas will be the subject of future blog posts, so if you are interested, please continue to follow and share this blog with your networks.

But in the meantime, please consider how important to our country’s future are the final words from the Declaration of Independence from the days well before we were a country:

“And for the support of this Declaration, with a firm reliance on the protection of divine Providence, we mutually pledge to each other our Lives, our Fortunes and our sacred Honor.”

To me, this indicates that our Founding Fathers believed that the survival of our Independence just declared would depend on the strength of our Interdependence.  I believe that is still true today … and perhaps it is even more true for this time than for the time it was written, 243 years ago this week.

I hope you all have a safe and meaningful Fourth of July celebration!