They Make A Better Loophole

     For some time now, both federal inclination and public opinion have been slowly leaning towards creating stricter gun-control laws. (The image in my head is of a stone pillar, which would fall on the heads of criminals were it not for a group of people pulling it back upwards - kicking and screaming. That might just be my inner drama student, though.) Regardless, it looks to me, from statements issuing from DC, that some new and improved legislation will arrive on Congress's doorstep shortly.

     New and improved, but maybe not improved enough.

     This is not a debate about how tightly, or otherwise, firearms should be limited. This isn't a rant for or against the argument that owning firearms saved lives during certain riots of the previous generation. (Although the police should be capable of doing that job. And if they aren't, then send in the army. But I digress.) This is merely an observation that if you're going to bother passing legislation in the first place, you should do it right, so you won't have to do it over. That is to say, make a better law, not a better loophole.

     The full article on the subject can be found here, but the general gist of it is as follows: if you make an organization to own the gun, then they don't have to go through background checks, and moreover can purchase weaponry that is restricted or liable to become so. There are plenty of people who will insist on the necessity of gun trusts, as they're called, and their reasoning can mostly be found at the bottom of page one of the article. Fine. For the third time in this post and the umpteenth on this blog, I'm not here for a fight. I would just like to request background checking on the people from which the gun trusts are formed. This seems a rational way for you to share your firearms without allowing extremely powerful weapons to be potentially sold to criminals. Could be you disagree, though. Fine by me if so, that's your Constitutional right as well. Leave a comment.

Final Exam: Hidden in Plain Sight

     With all the hullabaloo over gun control, people and politicians alike have been mostly overlooking an existing solution. While the two parties rage back and forth over fewer guns! more restrictions! second amendment!, they ignore the fact that there are already laws in place to help. As this NY Times article observed, laws concerning background checks are not being enforced. Less than half of those who falsify a background check are charged with a crime, despite the fact that it's a felony. And people who need to hide something in order to acquire a weapon are "more likely than the average person" to hurt someone with it, meaning that arresting them could seriously reduce firearm violence. So why did it take until last Wednesday for anyone at all in the government to realize this?
     Ostrich-style solution ignoring is far from a new theme in the material we've studied in the last semester. C. P. Cavafy's poem "Waiting for the Barbarians" said it well: "What's going to happen to us without barbarians? / Those people were a kind of solution." Without the barbarians, who are presented previously as the reason that officials aren't doing their jobs, someone will have to find a way to get the government to work. Likewise, Washington has been cowed by the shadows of two competing political philosophies, and as a result nothing has been accomplished.
     Another prominent example is the debate over sweatshops. On one side, you have people demanding better working conditions, and on the other you have people pointing at the bottom line and threatening that such improvements would send prices skyrocketing. Many arrived at a consensus that there was no way to resolve the dispute, and a safe and enjoyable job was "only attainable and realistic to affluent people", as Alana W wrote on her blog. Again, the simple solution was being ignored - a study cited by the New York Times showed that safe working conditions would cost a price increase of "roughly 3%", or fifteen cents on a five-dollar shirt.
     Why would the government neglect the solutions in front of their eyes? Maybe it's because it hasn't always worked out well. The story "Adams" by George Saunders, in which the title is a close anagram of Saddam, is a metaphor for the rationale behind the war in the Middle East. In the story, when a father finds his neighbor standing outside his kids' room in his underwear, he takes the obvious solution: pass out flyers about what the neighbor did, take away anything that could be used as a weapon, and "wonk him". Now, I'm not going to debate the right or wrong of the US's response, but you can't deny that it has resulted in a lot of criticism from a number of places. Perhaps it's understandable that these days, the government doesn't take the first course of action that suggests itself. But then again, perhaps not.
     Consider two analogies from the movie Glory. Firstly, despite the Union Army's need for troops, the 54th Regiment is sidelined. They are used only for parades, just as today the second amendment is paraded around without anyone paying attention to the country's actual needs. Secondly and most powerfully is the case of the quartermaster. He denies the 54th crucial supplies - including guns. He isn't doing anything to keep firearms away from the South when he does this. He only penalizes the Union. Similarly, when background check falsification is not punished, the people who would use their firearms against US citizens are not penalized. They can just go to a private seller, purchase a weapon, and continue unimpeded. While the government should always consider the effects of any action, there is no excuse for failing to utilize and enforce preexisting, pre-thought-out laws.