It's my world. I make the rules.
(Okay, my wife was visiting a friend in a different part of the state yesterday and today, so the house is all mine. Well, mine and Sammy's. But power went to my head.)
A concept I'll return to periodically in this blog - if I was the unilateral authority, what would I change? These will generally be political, societal, etc.... Things that are polarizing in nature. Things that I rarely comment much on in the benign world of Facebook..... And, as they tend to be things that people usually hold strong feelings for, things that may ultimately cost me some friendships. Hopefully that won't be the case, but I'm realistic.
I've bitten my tongue on a subject that I feel very strongly about. Most people don't have any idea how I really feel, even though it's a subject that comes up from time to time. So I'll just be blunt.
I hate guns.
And inexplicably tied into that, I hate the "right to bear arms" movement that is borne out of verbatim reading of a document that was written in the 1700's, rather than an understanding of the intent of the document.
Back when the Constitutional right to bear arms was created, the world was a different place. There weren't 50 states - the very state I live in wouldn't be admitted to the union until 60 years later. The biggest danger wasn't from colonists - it was from Indians encroaching on newly-claimed land. Guns were different too - they were single-fire, slow-loading muskets or rifles. The primary point of being allowed to bear arms was simple - it was to provide defense against Indians or other marauders who might try to take over home and property.
Did the writers of the Constitution (specifically, the Second Amendment) project forward how technology would change firearms, to the point of being automatic or semi-automatic weapons, and/or small enough to inconspicuously carry around on a daily basis (which has led to "right to carry" laws)? Certainly not - why would they?
Yet while the world has evolved, and technology has moved on and transformed every part of our lives, people cling to literal wording from 226 years ago to justify behaviors that the rest of the world must look at and scratch their head.
So in my world, I'm going to return to the "spirit" of the Constitution..... i.e. the intent. Here's the changes coming in my kingdom.
Right-to-carry...... gone. If you're found in public (i.e. anywhere off your property) carrying a firearm, you're seeing the inside of a jail cell for a year on your first offense. Second offense - make it 5 years. Third offense? Sorry, 3 strikes and you're out. And all of those are assuming that you don't actually brandish or discharge the gun - doing those would make it infinitely worse. For those thinking that right-to-carry deters crime (or "more guns, less crime") - read this, because it doesn't. If anything, it increases some crimes, though that's uncertain. But it doesn't appear to reduce crime in any way.
Home defense..... that's what the intent was, so I'll offer a little leniency here. In my kingdom, for every trained and certified adult (yes - trained and certified), one single-loading firearm may be kept in the household, in an approved gun safe or locker. That's it. You and your wife have both been trained and certified, and have the right storage? Okay, you can have two single-loading firearms. Carry them off your property? See the paragraph above. Have more than one per adult? See the paragraph above, the same things apply.
Okay, we've got a problem here - how do we get rid of all the guns that are already out there, and would effectively become illegal? I mean, we Americans are really well-stocked - per Wikipedia, there's about 0.9 guns per U.S. residents. There's only 2 countries that have per capita numbers even half of that, and with all due apologies to them, I'm not sure you would consider Serbia and Yemen to be among the most stable, progressive societies. Face it, we have a fascination with guns. If the numbers are right, there's somewhere around 300 million guns in the country..... So how many of them would become illegal, and how would we get them off the street?
Gun ownership is estimated to be 20-30% overall for the country. (Shocker..... it's higher in the South. Hmmm.....) So if there are somewhere around 200 million adults, and 25% want to have a (single) gun, we only "need" 50 million guns..... so how will we get rid of the other 250 million that are out there?
Simple. Sort of simple, I mean. The government buys them. Give people incentive to turn them in. And by that, I mean real money.
I'll admit that I don't know what guns cost. But whatever the fair value is, that's what my government pays. Handguns have a price, rifles have a price, semi-automatics and automatic guns have a price. Bring them to your local "firearm recovery drop-off" location, and we'll hand you a check. It's that easy. And with my proclamation today, you have 90 days to turn in all of your excess guns..... starting June 16th, my simple rules surrounding right-to-carry and guns for home defense go into effect.
And the money for this? It comes from a few places. Honestly, law enforcement becomes easier, and doesn't need to have their arsenals, so a small piece of the money comes from there. But most of it we're going to get from taxes - and most of it being corporate. The corporate tax structure is all screwed up, particularly the way some companies structure their entities and take advantage of loopholes. (Note: I'm actually not referring to Apple, which was the single-largest corporate tax-payer in the U.S. last year, and has basically adopted a strategy of "tax us where we make the profit, we will keep the remaining money there rather than being taxed a second time by moving the money back to the U.S.". There are other companies which use far more non-sensical structures to avoid taxes.) There's a lot of money that could be recovered by fixing corporate tax structures, and I'm putting some of it here.
But I digress. Or really, just went too much into the "how", rather than the "what". Because it's the "what" that matters.
So in my regime (Chuck's Own World, or COW), y'all have 90 days to bring your guns in.
Welcome to COW. I know I'll feel safer. Will you?
Oh, and back in the real world - if you ask me to go shooting with you at the range, I'll probably have something better to do. Sorry..... it's just not my thing.