Toughies

Or, Yes We Can, Part 2

Note: This is the second of a two-part essay. You can read the first part here.

I stole the title for this post from a favorite professor who had once hoped to teach a course called Toughies, for which students would read and discuss Tristram Shandy, Ulysses, and a third novel whose title I forget.¹ He never got to teach the course because he died, much too young, of a heart attack.² Even though Toughies never came into being, I still love the idea of people getting together to tackle a tough problem, whether it be an impenetrable, digressive, allusive, thousand-page book, or a scourge afflicting our society.

Last week I wrote about several sea changes that have occurred during my lifetime. Through innovation, individual action, organization, political protest, and cultural change, Americans have solved—or at least improved—many of our problems. But we’re not perfect. Case in point, this photo:

My friend Robert Stephenson took this photo in Yakima, Washington. He has kindly allowed me to use it here.

I hope I am not minimizing the tremendous achievement of LGBTQ people and their allies, who have made our country more accepting and fair, when I say that I find this photo very sad. The rainbow sidewalks are cheery and heartwarming³ and represent real progress, but the photo also shows an entrenched problem that seems if anything to be getting worse. When it comes to intractable, complex, expensive problems like homelessness, we still have a ways to go.⁴

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Whenever someone proposes an idea to alleviate gun violence, naysayers will pipe up with all the ways that the idea will fail. And these critics, frustrating as they may be to those of us who want to make things better, are nonetheless correct: No single solution will solve the whole problem. Gun violence—not only mass shootings and murders but also suicides and accidents—is not a problem like, say, cyanide in Tylenol that can be solved through such simple expedients as tamper-evident packaging. Like homelessness, gun violence is a toughie, with multiple causes. Yes our society is too violent. Yes mental illness is rampant. Yes there are too many absent fathers. Yes kids these days play too many violent videogames. Yes young men are struggling to find their place in a changing world. But also: Yes there are too many guns, and yes it is too easy for enraged, unstable, and evil people to obtain them. It is for the very reason that there are so many causes of gun violence that no single idea will suffice. We need an all-of-the-above approach.

Ten Democratic and ten Republican senators recently reached a bipartisan deal on gun safety. This is an excellent start, not least because the deal includes multiple measures: It will strengthen background checks for people under twenty-one, close the “boyfriend loophole,” provide funding for red-flag laws, and allocate funds for mental health care and enhanced security in schools. In addition to these important steps, we need universal background checks—there is nothing magic about gun shows or the internet that blocks criminals, abusers, and madmen from making purchases.⁵ We ought to do background checks on these buyers too. We also need to start thinking creatively about other ways we can keep guns away from dangerous people. In the rest of this essay I’ll offer some general principles we can use when we’re looking for solutions, as well as specific ideas that would make us safer from gun violence.

We Can Adopt Rules and Practices That Are Effective in Other Contexts

A common refrain from the right is, “We don’t need new gun laws! We just need to enforce the laws we already have.” And you know what? I’ll call their bluff, because I agree with them. What would it mean to truly enforce the gun laws we have? Let me share a story. A couple of weeks ago, on a visit to my family in Minnesota, I stopped in a liquor store to buy my favorite beer, Surly Furious.

Message to anyone who lives in the upper midwest: Try this beer!

When I tried to pay, the cashier carded me. Given that I am old enough to belong to the AARP, carding me is normally a mere chivalrous gesture, but this time the guy was serious. Not only that, he rejected my Swiss driver’s license and my Global Entry card and said only a passport would suffice. I groused to everyone who would listen about what I saw as excessive punctiliousness, until friends informed me that Minnesota has been cracking down on selling alcohol to underage people and has closed a number of liquor stores and confiscated people’s liquor licenses because they were insufficiently rigorous at checking IDs. Imagine if we were this strict with gun sellers!

Or how about this idea I came up with: When you adopt a pet from a shelter, the shelter reserves the right to make unannounced home visits to make sure that you are taking good care of your little sweetie. Wouldn’t it be great to apply this idea to guns? Straw purchases—a person with a clean record purchases a gun for someone who can’t pass a background check—are the source of a large percentage of the guns used in crimes. What if straw purchasers knew that an inspector would show up at their home at some point to demand proof that they still owned the gun and hadn’t given it to a criminal? Or, to make enforcement really simple, inspections could be done over text. Here’s how I imagine it working: At random times after a gun purchase, purchasers would receive a text, to which they would have to respond with a date-stamped photo of themselves with their ID and the gun. This would be no problem for legitimate gun owners, but straw purchasers who can’t prove possession of the gun would face criminal charges (and I’d love to see the owners of gun shops that sell to straw purchasers charged too). It wouldn’t take too many well-publicized criminal convictions before people stop being willing to make straw purchases.

Another great idea many people have proposed is to license gun owners like drivers. Guns, like cars, are useful but potentially dangerous tools, and we have a right to demand that those who wield them are competent and responsible. (A “well-regulated militia” should be, well, regulated.) For example, we could mandate that gun owners pass written and practical tests to obtain a gun license. Licenses wouldn’t be an insurmountable obstacle, but they would at least impose a cooling-off period on a bad guy who wants to shoot up a school or kill his ex-wife or a rival drug dealer. Having recently helped my son obtain a government ID through multiple baffling and frustrating trips to the DMV, I entertain fantasies of requiring gun purchasers to deal with the DMV bureaucracy in order to get the licenses. Talk about a deterrent!

Of course, if you are a mensch like Keanu Reeves, even a trip to the DMV is an opportunity for kindness and connection. You can read about Keanu at the DMV here.

And while we’re at it, let’s give young people’s frontal cortexes a bit more time to develop before we hand them deadly weapons. We have to be at least twenty-one to enjoy our Surly Furious beer, so it seems only reasonable that we be at least twenty-one before we can obtain a gun (with exceptions for hunting and sport shooting). This measure would protect us from at least the very youngest surly furious people.

We Can Adopt Policies That Are Effective in Other Countries

Switzerland has one of the highest rates of gun ownership in the world; however, while the US has about four times the number of guns per capita as Switzerland, it has one hundred times the number of gun murders per capita as Switzerland. How does Switzerland manage to live with so many guns so peaceably? For answers, I recommend this article. The tl;dr is that Switzerland’s background checks are not mere formalities but are extremely thorough (they take several days instead of only a few minutes and include consultations with psychiatrists and local police), and people must undergo them for every gun purchase. In addition, every young man in the country must complete mandatory military service with training on the proper use of weapons. A characteristically Swiss requirement is that gun owners must carry insurance so that if there is an accident with the gun or it is used in a crime, the gun owner must pay for the damage, instead of the victim. In addition, insurance companies are incentivized to ensure that customers store their guns safely, and they will conduct unannounced home-checks to enforce safe storage. This policy solves the problem of children coming upon unsecured guns and shooting themselves or others.

We Can Use Technological Fixes

Last week I wrote about a number of technological fixes that significantly improved problems ranging from poisonings to deaths in car crashes. We can use technology to improve the problem of gun violence too. Most of our phones are protected with our fingerprint and/or a code so that criminals can’t get at our banking apps, passwords, and embarrassing photos. Similarly, smart-gun technology would ensure that only a gun’s rightful owner can shoot it. Smart-gun trigger locks would end accidental shootings by little kids and keep criminals from stealing guns and using them against their owners or in future crimes. Families could also use smart-gun technology to prevent depressed loved ones from shooting themselves—or violent abusers from shooting family members.

In addition, we could use technology to make bullets less accessible. This is a bit fanciful, but what if we packaged bullets not in high-capacity magazines but instead in blister packs, childproof packaging, or those super-annoying plastic clamshells that are the bane of Christmas mornings? People who believe they need a gun to defend themselves surely don’t require easy access to more bullets than the ones currently loaded in their guns. I mean, they’re not going to be fighting Thanos.

The internet is truly a marvel. I googled “image of bullets in a blister pack” and this was the first result.

We can also restrict some technology to those people who have a legitimate use for it. For example, it should be illegal to sell body armor to anyone who is not a police officer or active-duty member of the military.

We Can Take Individual Action to Change the Culture

We can take action as individuals too. When gay people courageously shared their stories with their friends and families, they made it possible for people to let go of their prejudices. They changed the culture. When people stepped up to be designated drivers and confiscated keys from loved ones who were unfit to drive, they changed the culture. When people stopped routinely putting out ashtrays for guests and started complaining about the yucky smell of stale smoke, they changed the culture. We should speak honestly with our friends and families about the burden of our fear when we enter public places and about our despair at the senseless waste of so many beautiful lives.

One final action I urge everyone to take. If you are out in public and you see someone carrying a gun, vote with your feet and leave immediately. Abandon your meal, drop your purchases, and don’t hang around to pay. Remember, you have no idea whether this is one of those fabled “good guys with a gun” or a mass-shooter. (According to this report on the 433 active shooter attacks that occurred in the US from 2000 to 2021, only 12 were stopped by an armed civilian—by a “good guy with a gun.” Of course, all 433 were caused by a bad guy with a gun. I don’t like those odds.) Whenever you walk out of a business because of guns, let the business know, in writing, why you walked out. Spend your money instead in places that prohibit guns on their premises—and, again, let those businesses know, in writing, why you patronize them. Our laws allow private businesses to ban guns on their premises; if enough people walk out over open carry and transfer their loyalty to safer businesses, we will incentivize companies to ban guns to keep their customers. And the open carriers will get the message that they are not appreciated but are in fact anathema.

Or We Can Just Regulate Guns As Though They Were Tacos:

Am I living in a fantasy world? Are these ideas all totally impossible? I don’t think so. (Well, ok, the taco one is.) I think if we get creative and work together, we will see a sea change on guns, like recent sea changes on gay marriage, drunk-driving, and smoking. We can look forward to a future when the brutalized corpses of our fellow Americans and the heartbreak of their devastated families are no longer a daily disgrace. Yes we can.

How about you, readers? What do you think of the ideas here? And do you have any ideas of your own for solving the problem of gun violence? Please share your thoughts in the comments!

The Tidbit

Time to relax! Enjoy and be inspired by the intelligence and competence of these border collies. Perhaps we should delegate solving our gun violence problem to them!

1. I think Infinite Jest would be a perfect addition to this hypothetical course.

2. Frank, wherever you are, I hope you are enjoying some fine Irish whisky and holding court about poetry, basketball, and theater. I’m raising a glass to you.

3. Unfortunately, not everyone’s heart was warmed. Some hateful person has already vandalized the crosswalks.

4. Nellie Bowles, in a powerful article for the Atlantic, draws the distinction between making cosmetic changes and actually doing the hard work to fix a problem: “[We] are careful to use language that centers people’s humanity—you don’t say ‘a homeless person’; you say ‘someone experiencing homelessness’—and yet we live in a city where many of those people die on the sidewalk.”

5. The internet and gun-show loophole makes me think of kids playing tag who yell, “You can’t tag me! I’m on base!” Gun shows and the internet are not “base”; they don’t make would-be purchasers miraculously safe to own guns.