Here's what can be done, and what will make a difference, about guns.

The single most important policy to advocate for, in my opinion, is licensing and registration for handguns.

Sure, banning handguns and/or semi-automatics, if it were possible, would drastically decrease gun violence, but politically there is no way. Besides, although I am not a big "gun rights" advocate, I think that there are legitimate objections to an outright handgun ban. I think that intelligent progressives can disagree about whether a handgun ban is good policy -- in the same way that intelligent progressives can disagree about whether UK-style single payer healthcare would work well in the US -- but in the end, this is politically out of the question in the forseeable future.

There is a lot of talk about banning assault weapons, or limiting magazine capacities, and while these may be good ideas, they are not going to have the same effect as handgun registration. First, most gun crimes are committed with handguns, not assault-style rifles. Second, most victims are shot with the first few rounds in a magazine. So if we really want to put a dent in gun violence, we need to reduce the access to handguns by people who are going to misuse them.

And right now, it is far too easy for just about anyone to get a handgun. If you can pass a background check, you can go to a gun store. If not, you can buy one from a private seller. Since handguns aren't registered, it's easy for them to pass from the legal civilian market to the hands of criminals. The laws against straw purchases are difficult to enforce. And, the ease with which a gun can be purchased encourages irresponsible gun ownership. If, instead, handgun owners had to go through a licensing process similar to what is required to get a concealed carry permit, and all handguns were registered in a national registry, things would be very different. It won't eliminate gun violence, but it would certainly reduce it.


On the political side, registering handguns actually polls very well, and even with the current right-wing SCOTUS, there are no constitutional problems. It wouldn't pass congress right now, but that is in part because the Democrats have spent zero political capital on it. If there were a push for this, I think it could succeed, though maybe not immediately. And one reason for this is that it is very difficult to make any rational arguments against it. The standard NRA response to registration of guns is that "registration is just a first step towards confiscation", which appeals to the Glenn Beck crowd but sounds completely loony and paranoid to most people of sound mind, including most gun owners.