Discouraged by the bipartisan proposal, I tried again. WHC
Why are we so easily misled by gun solutions that would make some sense in other countries? But the US, having more guns than people, is special. And so, the bipartisan proposal will take centuries to make a dent on the number of active shooters (no newscast is complete without one). While it is worth taking rapid fire weapons off the market, remember that their problem buyers are people who already have guns and are trading up for making a spectacle, their very own fifteen minutes of fame that inspires copycats.
The proposed measures seem unlikely to reduce the number of active shooter incidents. A useful exercise for any gun proposal is to ask: How long will this fix take to reduce gun deaths by half? Years, decades, centuries, forever? Compare to the time-to-half for an alternative Plan B.
· Plan A gun control intervenes at the point of gun sales. It mostly interferes with trading up to greater firepower when turning angry, suicidal, or terminally harassed (some may call them “crazy”, but psychosis is not one of the major crisis setups). Beware that trying to regulate individuals will just be exploited again for polarizing political recruitment.
· Plan B decreases easy access when the crisis strikes; it focuses on those guns already in US homes. Unlike Plan A, a buyback program also reduces gun access for ordinary murder, solo suicide, and children’s play. Gun buybacks draw down the stockpile by providing a $200 bank-issued gift card that can be used to convert to greenbacks or hand over with the rent. One might need to offer two cash cards for an assault rifle.
With the gift card transaction, no record needs to be kept of the gun seller. One can even avoid having to carry an old rifle down the street to a police station. Imagine a neighborhood merchant, busy making house calls near the end of every month, summoned by phone or text message. To avoid this merchant having to carry around anything worth stealing, suppose that each gift card has a detachable ID tag with a hole big enough to clear the screw shaft.
A long self-tapping screw with a hex head, manufactured in sizes to fit the various calibers, driven by a hex socket on an electric screwdriver, then ruins the barrel beyond repair, instantly reducing the gun’s value to that of scrap metal. The cash card is detached from the affixed tag and handed over.
When the merchant delivers the ruined gun with tag to a “Gun Disposal Center” the next day, the matching gift card is activated once it is verified that the gun is not a look-alike toy. The merchant is paid a $50 commission.
Civic groups might compete with the freelance merchants to raise money for community projects. Most of their volunteers would already be familiar with guns and electric screwdrivers. Centers would need to register them for getting paid, give them some initial supplies, show videos about how to detect toy guns, others on how to assure guns are unloaded, how to select the right self-tapping screw for the barrel’s caliber (start with the largest and stick with the first one to drop in an inch before jamming), and how to hold the gun flat against a hard flat surface while its barrel is then ruined by torquing in the jammed self-tapping screw. Some buyers will carry around a vacuum-footed bench vise to keep the gun from rotating. Still, it is a remarkably small toolkit to carry; cargo pants would suffice.
So, it appears to be easy to reduce easy gun availability over a few years. To buy up half of the four hundred million guns might cost $50b over a few years but some of the commissions would find their way into civic projects.
