Staff Editorial: Climbing Mount Gun Control

Recently, two conservative leaders, former Vice President Dick Cheney and Indiana Senator Dick Lugar, voiced their willingness to at least look at a reinstatement of the assault weapons ban that expired in 2004 and a limit on the size of gun magazines, like the kind that killed six people in Tucson.

This type of honesty is needed if we’re ever going to get serious about preventing gun tragedies.

When even an avid hunter, NRA member and the only Vice President in history known for shooting a man in the face (and subsequently receiving an apology from the man he shot) is a moderate about a gun issue, it’s probably past time that we, as a society, start to re-examine our national gun culture.

After numerous attacks, including Virginia Tech, Columbine and the most recent attack in Tucson, it’s time that America  re-examines how it looks at guns and gun laws.

Some on the far left certainly would not be opposed to a complete ban on guns, but no one with any position of authority is seriously suggesting this as a national policy. This is not a Second Amendment issue, this is an issue of common sense.

It’s simply common sense that no reasonable law-abiding hunter would need to be able to shoot 30 rounds of ammunition in quick succession without reloading. And no reasonable gun owner using a weapon in self-defense would need to be able to shoot a theoretical assailant 30 times in a row in quick succession without reloading.

If it’s incredibly unlikely — if not impossible — to conceive of a reasonable situation in which law-abiding gun owner would use this type of ammunition, why is it legal to buy it?

Conservatives are perpetually afraid that Democrats might ban guns, whether through an all-out repeal or a slow erosion of gun ownership rights. The fear is so persistent, in fact, that after notorious gun crimes there is frequently a spike in sales of the exact weapon used in the crime. The fear, however, that the government will storm in after a tragedy and snatch up every legal carrier’s stockpile has proven false.

No one with any authority is suggesting that law-abiding gun owners should not be allowed to exercise their Second Amendment rights. What is being suggested are that very reasonable, societally necessary conditions be put in place.

Other rights possessed by Americans have reasonable limits placed upon them, but that hasn’t meant that they’re in danger of being slowly eroded or eliminated. There are some reasonable restrictions on freedom of speech, like not being able to shout “Fire!” in a crowded theater, because the danger of allowing such an action far outweighs the benefit (if there is any) to the person speaking.

This same logic should apply to people roaming around with high-capacity automatic weapons. No regular citizen should need to have a high-capacity automatic weapon, and mentally unstable people should not be allowed to have guns at all.

Gun control is a loaded issue, and conservatives need to resist the urge to oppose any and all gun control in a knee-jerk manner, no matter how reasonable they are. The NRA may benefit from this sort of blanket opposition to gun laws, but America inevitably suffers.