All Things Michael Miles

I swear, I’m both intrigued and repelled by the way our society latches on to contentious issues. It’s just a train wreck.

A Supreme Court challenge to Chicago’s gun control law was announced recently. Most likely titled McDonald v. Chicago, it will attempt to leverage last year’s decision regarding Washington, D.C. Not being a fan of handguns myself, I am not your typical gun control advocate. That said, the thought of abundant, unregulated handguns in our country makes me queasy.

It seems like the Left could learn something from the Right’s tactical plan on abortion rights. The two issues are somewhat similar: both are constitutionally protected, both have vociferous opponents, and it can be effectively argued that banning both would benefit members of society. However, I am a protector of liberty, despite what the Right might say about me, and if having the State make choices about reproduction makes me nervous, then granting them the same power over firearms does, too. The question then becomes, what power does the State have to protect its citizenry?

Below are my suggestions for regulating handguns. With abortion, the Right has been forced to accept that they can be done legally. That hasn’t stopped them from making the procedure so difficult to obtain. These tactics should be directly applied to handgun regulation, and the Left should make the public case that there is no difference between the two.

• Require all handguns sold or imported into the United States to be “fingerprinted” by law enforcement. Ballistic patterns should be recorded in a database and the expense born by gun owners.
• Increase the qualifications necessary to sell or broker firearms, and definitely close the gun show loophole.
• Since the right to bear arms is federally protected, Congress should pass a strict qualification protocol for handgun owners. Successful completion would be requisite for mandatory licensing. The NRA always goes on and on about how safe handguns are in the hands of trained owners; we need to leverage that claim.
• Violations of handgun statutes should be met with criminal and civil penalties. It should be easy for a victim of a handgun crime to attach property.
• Require license renewals on a frequent basis.

I agree with your right to own a handgun, but an ordered society requires responsibility, which comes in the form of competence and deliberation. If you want to own a Walther PPK – which exists for no other reason than to kill a human being – then I think you should attend six weeks of firearms training and pass a stringent test, just like a police candidate would do. I think you should publish the ballistic fingerprint of your weapon as well as pay a significant licensing fee. Otis McDonald made it clear that his shotgun was inadequate for killing neighborhood thugs, thus anchoring his complaint against Chicago. The rest of us also deserve protection against him and others, who are comfortable wielding such power.