Wanna Vote? Gotta Tote!

Must-Carry Rules

End Gun Debate

Politicians and citizens looking to end debate on gun control now have a solution. It’s so simple even elected representatives can get it.

Basic Principles: Gun-control in the United States is about who can carry a gun. That has sparked views as diverse as the National Rifle Association and the Brady Campaign. The only thing it hasn’t sparked is a solution.

What Guns Are For: The purpose of guns is to kill something or someone, depending upon need and circumstance. Which was the purpose of crossbows and longbows, swords and spears, atlatyls and antelope thigh-bones. So let’s not get historical or hysterical. And let’s agree that “shooting sports” with artificial targets is like “reading it for the stories” with copies of Playboy.

The Stupid Rules We’ve Tried: Depending upon the state you’re in, it’s okay to carry a gun openly or it’s not; it’s okay to carry a concealed weapon under some circumstances or it’s not. A citizen carrying a weapon can be perfectly legal in Virginia, illegal in the District of Columbia and questionable in Maryland and not even a Member of Congress.

The Solution: The United States must become a Must-Carry nation. Instead of spending countless dollars and hours wondering who may or may not carry weapons, the solution is to require all citizens able to vote to also carry weapons.

Upon reaching 18 years of age, each citizen who registered to vote would be issued a firearm of their choice. Private purchase would be allowed, provided the arms met minimum standards.

The right to vote would be contingent on carrying a firearm, perhaps with firearms training just as we have driver training. Still, Wanna Vote? Gotta Tote! would be a movement whose time has come.

Look at the issues this simplifies:

n Who can carry a weapon? Every citizen eligible to vote must carry a weapon. Only convicted criminals couldn’t vote or legally carry arms. The old slogan “When Guns Are Outlawed, Only Outlaws Will Carry Guns” gets turned on its head.

n Social acceptance grows since carrying a weapon now becomes like carrying a voter registration card. Look for fashion to take a stand, perhaps with delicate .32 specials for the Vogue crowd and traditional .45 Colts for the Ralph Lauren set.

n Job Creation All those pistols, rifles, shotguns, ammo and accessories ain’t gonna support themselves. Thousands of businesses will be hiring.

n Homeland Security Holy Jihad aside, trying to shoot up a restaurant where all 300 patrons are armed has a high potential for grave disappointment over what’s left among the 70 virgins in Paradise.

What’s To Be Done: Contact your elected senators and representatives. Do it slowly and with respect – anyone asleep that long is going to be cranky upon awakening. Show them this column. For those that need it, read it to them without condescension, skipping the big words only when you must. Get them to agree. Wanna Vote? Gotta Tote! is an idea whose time has come.

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Brothers In Arms?

NRA, Brady Group

On Common Ground?

Democracy takes some funny bounces and this week’s fielder’s nightmare finds both the National Rifle Association and the Brady Campaign to Prevent Gun Violence coming off the same bat.

The bat belongs to Senator John Thune, Republican of South Dakota, who has proposed an amendment to the current Defense Authorization Bill that would, in his website’s words, “help in reducing crime by providing reciprocity for the carrying of concealed firearms.”

Explained simply, the amendment would allow someone who met home-state concealed-carry rules to pack heat into another state even if the “host” state’s laws would have denied the permit. A resident of Vermont, which requires no permits to carry or conceal a weapon, could legally bring a weapon into New Jersey, where the rules are very strict.

Some form of concealed carry is legal in every state except Illinois and Wisconsin, and the NRA warmly supports the Thune amendment, saying on a website “Now is the time for Congress to recognize that the right to self-defense does not end at state lines.”

The Brady folks also feel warm about the Thune amendment, just warm heading in the opposite direction. The Brady website says “This legislation, if passed, will endanger public safety and make it more difficult for law enforcement to do their jobs.”

So of the three, who’s making sense?

They all are, because whether they recognize it or not, their stands here implicitly recognize a national issue being mishandled by a hodge-podge of often conflicting state laws.

Senator Thune’s constituents in South Dakota can take satisfaction in seeing their guy earn his pay by spotting something so state-fragmented that it that doesn’t make sense and proposing a national solution. You know, like a United States Senator.

And while both the NRA and the Brady outfits have embraced states rights when convenient, they both have glowed when their views got on the national stage.

The Brady law is a national law, named after James Brady, wounded in the attempted assassination of President Ronald Reagan. Brady and his wife Sarah are the mainsprings of the Brady Campaign, which describes itself as a “national, non-partisan, grassroots organization.”

The NRA would very much like to see D.C. v. Heller applied on a national basis. That’s the recent Supreme Court decision that said the Second Amendment prohibited the federal government and federal entities like the District of Columbia from banning handguns for self-defense.

So Senator Thune, the NRA and the Brady Campaign may be able to find at least this much common ground:

Leaving a national issue like gun rights to state and local regulation produces an unworkable mess. Just as the unworkable mess of state and local voting laws were fixed by the 26^th Amendment to the Constitution’s declaration that everyone could vote at 18, we need to fix the unworkable mess of conflicting state and local gun laws.

How that fix comes and which of the many views it favors are items for down the road. But all the views can unite in saying that road must now be taken, starting at least from that much common ground.

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Customs and Border Protection

Cutting Both Ways

Americans are rightfully concerned about our borders these days – especially the one with Mexico. High-powered drugs come north, high-powered guns go south and illegals go both ways by the millions.

In a Mexican tourist haven like Acapulco, authorities and the bad guys can exchange gunfire and grenade attacks for hours and double-digit body counts, while in the United States, the Deport-Em-All crowd is again rushing to attend anti-immigration rallies – at least just as soon as they pay their housekeepers, nannies and gardeners in cash.

Beyond Mexico, there are other border security concerns. Although the Canadians on our northern border seem pretty well behaved, our several thousand miles of coastline on the east and west are openings for all sorts of mischief and contraband, everything from cigarettes to suitcase nukes.

Clearly the situation should concern the ever-vigilant CBP (Customs and Border Protection), the federal Department of Homeland Security group that, in its own mission-statement words, works to “protect the American Public against terrorists and the instruments of terror.”

Well, it does concern the CBP folks, and they are thinking of cracking down.

On pocket knives.

In a 67-page gush of FedSpeak last month, the CBP folk re-examined the issue of pocket knives that may be opened with one hand, usually by thumbing a stud at the base of the blade. They’re very common – I’ve carried one for years – and many of them are imported.

The reason they are common is that needing to cut something when working around the house, fishing, hunting or camping usually finds you one hand short. Whatever needs cutting goes back to what it was doing while you fumble the blade open.

Because you can open the knife with one hand and the blade locks into place with an audible click, some folks might think these pocket knives, typically with a blade less than four inches long, were forbidden imports under the Switchblade Knife Act of 1958. (Members of Congress in 1958 were all a-twitter after a few teen gang flicks in which switchblades played a role. Besides, it was easier to deal with switchblades than the just-launched Soviet Sputnik 1.)

Previously, the CBP had decided that most of the one-hand-opening knives weren’t switchblades because they had utilitarian purposes, pocket clips and short blades. Besides which, even the CBP could figure out that anyone using a knife with a four-inch blade as a primary weapon is either desperate or suicidal, but in any event not a tremendous threat to the nation’s security.

Of course, that was then and this is now. Determined to protect our shores, the CBP is thinking of banning the import of these knives in case America’s enemies are secretly plotting to whittle down our defenses. Apparently literally. Comments run until June 21.

All of which would be just for laughs if the CPB wasn’t serious and if the times in which we live suggest that the CPB ought to have lots of things – or just about anything – better to do than this sort of foolishness.

A tip of the hat to the National Rifle Association Institute for Legislative Action, which e-mailed me the heads-up on this. You can read all about it, its implications and even find a link to the full text at http://www.nraila.org/Legislation/Federal/Read.aspx?id=4972.

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In Bed With Jimmy Carter

 

 

Politics does indeed make strange bedfellows – I just rolled around in the sheets and found myself in the sack with Jimmy Carter.

 

Carter, our 39^th president, usually does yeoman duty anchoring the rock bottom of the How-Bad-Can-It-Be scale I use to judge politicians. From the speech on July 15, 1979 that critics rightfully dubbed the “national malaise” speech, to hostages in Iran competing for attention with the scheduling of the White House tennis courts, Carter’s leadership style was inaction by reaction.

 

But this time he’s right about something. In an op-ed piece in the April 27 issue of The New York Times, Carter calls for a renewed ban on assault weapons. As Carter explains, he’s a gun owner, a hunter and a strong supporter of the Second Amendment’s right to keep and bear arms – just not assault weapons.

 

We once had a ten-year ban on assault weapons, passed in 1994. It quite correctly recognized that the primary design purpose of weapons like the AK-47, AR-15, Uzi and others wasn’t sport or hunting, unless your sport was hunting  people, especially cops.

 

With a lot of help from the National Rifle Association’s Boom Boom Uber Alles wing, the Bush administration was too busy looking for weapons of mass destruction to worry about weapons of more personal destruction and the assault weapons ban expired in 2004.

 

It’s a ban that needs to be revived and strengthened, but first we have to revive and strengthen the spines of Congress, which typically turn into Jell-O when they hear the rising crescendo of NRA knuckle drags at election time.

 

Congressional spines might be stiffer if NRA members urged their organization to stop taking the silly position that every common-sense regulation of firearms is part of a vast conspiracy to ban all firearms. To start, here’s an urge from one paying NRA member – me, Number 142261256.

 

Otherwise, we’re left defending the position that a Tec-9 automatic pistol with a 32-shot magazine, or a night-scoped semi-automatic rifle with a banana clip and bayonet mount is really for hunting or shooting tin cans.

 

Or maybe the rumor that Bambi and Thumper have started to shoot back is true.

 

Failing that, there’s no good reason not to revive the ban on assault weapons.  Of course, the standard NRA answer is that these laws will only prevent law-abiding citizens from owning assault weapons while criminals, being lawbreakers, will just ignore the ban.

 

And in that, they’re probably right. But if an assault weapons ban can dramatically reduce the legal market and the profits that drive it, production will fall. If production falls, overall availability will fall.

And that’s a good thing – even if Jimmy Carter and Larry Blasko did suggest it.

 

 

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