Focusing on mental health and yellow flag laws is too limited a solution for gun violence. Guns are a problem because they are tools whose designed purpose is to kill. What we should have are procedures for how guns are obtained. Except, the Second Amendment greatly complicates regulating guns.
The Founding Fathers put guns in the Constitution because they believed that armed citizens should have the ability to take down a corrupt government. As they had just done in 1783. Gun fanatics would argue that even though the American military is the best and the most sophisticated in the world, there are so many “patriotic” gun owners that in an armed conflict their numbers could simply overwhelm the might of our military, which is absurd.
I will say the quiet part out loud: The solution is to get rid of the Second Amendment so guns can be regulated the way most other developed countries regulate them. Aside from adjusting laws to address the use of semi-automatic guns because they are too often the choice of mass shooters, no one is going to eliminate guns.
On the subject of guns, the founders got it wrong. Our power to hold our government accountable is in our right to vote, a free press, robust civil debate and to peacefully assemble in protest. We have used those tools countless times.
The founders didn’t know it, but they designed this experiment in democracy too well. And our modern history shows it can work just fine without guns as a constitutional right.
Jo Trafford
Portland
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