Yes, we can have sane gun control

FRIDAY, DEC 14, 2012 07:30 PM EST
The NRA might not believe it, but it's possible to have strict regulations without trampling the Second Amendment
BY JOSHUA HOLLAND, ALTERNET

The United States is not the only country to experience the horrors of mass shootings. We are, however, the only society in which a serious discussion of tighter gun controls doesn’t follow incidents like the massacres we’ve seen at a Connecticut elementary school on Friday. In fact, in most countries these kinds of tragedies result in some kind of concrete legislative action.

The reason we can’t have a sane, adult discussion of how to cut down on random gun violence is simple: the NRA has hoodwinked a lot of reasonable gun owners into believing that there’s a debate in this country over banning firearms altogether. We’ll never be able to have a serious discussion about how to cut down on gun violence until that group accepts the actual terms of the debate. And the NRA has a vested interest in making sure they remain obscure because the organization represents gun manufacturers and a small, highly ideological minority of gun-nuts, rather than (typically responsible) gun owners.

And that means that, at least in theory, there is political space for a new kind of gun control advocacy – one that isn’t about whether Americans have a right to bear arms, but instead explicitly advocates safe and responsible gun ownership, a goal the polls tell us most gun owners would embrace.

Th idea that someone wants to grab Americans’ guns couldn’t be further from reality. The truth is that Americans’ right to own firearms has never been more secure at any time in our nation’s history. A series of Supreme Court decisions – notably a 2010 decision that settled, in gun owners’ favor, decades of debate about whether the Second Amendment was an individual right – effectively ended any question of banning firearms ...

http://www.salon.com/2012/12/15/yes_we_can_have_sane_gun_control/singleton/