I have some experience with guns. In the Navy, I qualified with a .45 caliber handgun and a semiautomatic rifle for which I don't remember the designation. As a civilian, I have done target practices with guns. But I never had the desire for owning a gun. There was one occasion during a wilderness adventure when I thought that a gun might be handy. I saw a bear following me during a back country trip in Colorado. But I turned out to not be in danger. I think that it was just observing me. I did get a bigger knife later but the logistics of gun ownership while I was traveling outweighed the potential benefits. In the woods, I got by fine with supplies, fishing and some trapping. So hunting was unnecessary. Also, I never had a predatorial animal get close enough to be a threat. Although I had experienced dangers among humans, I also never felt that any of my experiences with people warranted a gun. But I had experiences which illustrates the dangers with some people owning guns.
Isla Vista, CA has a bike path which runs between the town and the UCSB campus. In the 1980's, the path was not very well lit. I had been living in Isla Vista for some time so I was use to the path. I once was walking along the path and was walking faster than a woman ahead of me. It was simply due to my natural pace. I had not previously encountered anyone on that path who showed signs of concern. Plus there were houses with patios facing the path. As I was about to walk past the woman, she suddenly sprayed mace point blank into my eyes. As painful as that was, I remember thinking how it was fortunately not a gun. Whether or not she would have been as reactionary with a lethal weapon is indeterminate. But this illustrates how people can be too reactionary. In her case, that may have been a one off event. But some people tend to be too emotionally reactive to situations. When I think of this event, I wonder if there ought to be some kind of tests to see if potential gun owners are emotionally stable enough.
I had an acquaintance who had always been nice to me but had a violent pattern when he drank alcohol. I initially did not know this because I was not in the same party circles. I stayed on his boat for a while when I was in between apartments. He would occasionally come by with his face in rather bad shape. These were due to fights which he would get in when he drank too much. He said that he usually doesn't remember much after the fights. When talking about it, he said that he got rid of a gun which he had because he did remember an incident where he was so outraged during a fight that he was on his way to getting the gun and shooting the guy who he had fought. But he changed his mind once he had gotten home. The next day, he got rid of the gun so that he would never be tempted like that again. A web search for "drunken shooting" lists a lot of cases where the drunks did use their guns while drunk. Might it be useful to restrict gun ownership when there is a pattern of violence, regardless of conviction?
A resident at a small apartment complex where I once lived opened her apartment up for a Christmas party. There was one guy who was a cousin or something of one of the residents. He didn't pace his alcohol consumption very well. By the early evening, he was quite drunk. With slurred speech, he began to wax affectionately about his gun collection. He pulled a picture out of his wallet. It was of his home vault of weapons. It showed a mix of handguns, shotguns, regular and assault style rifles. At some point, we realized that he wasn't around. We were concerned that he may have decided to drive. One of the people still at the party knew his car. We looked for it. It was gone. We checked with the neighbor who was related to him. The drunken guy wasn't there and did not answer his phone. It turns out that the guy has driven drunk before but the neighbor forgot about it. The neighbor described him as "not being all there". So the guy is irresponsible with a potentially deadly vehicle and also has an arsenal of weapons. This got me thinking that there could be a legal qualifier relating to drunk driving and gun use.
I was walking on a sidewalk. I looked to see if any cars were coming or going before I crossed an entrance to a strip mall. When I was halfway across, a truck came speeding into the parking lot so close that I had to stop walking and was able to reach out and tap the side of the truck. I was one or two steps from being hit by the truck. The driver stopped, got angrily out of the car and asked why I touched his truck. I told him because he carelessly sped into the parking lot in front of me. He could have easily have turned behind me or waited a moment in the turn lane. He was insistent that I was in the wrong and said that he had something in his car which would teach me a lesson. I didn't want to find out what he had so I ran.
There are a range of people with mental or emotional conditions who should not have access to guns. That is the reality of our situation. No amount of nearly religious interpretation of the second amendment gets around that. There are more qualifications for using vehicles and some work equipment than for guns, which are build with the intend to injure or kill.
There are good reasons why the default position is no for driving until people qualify for a license. And it is good that conditions exist where the license to drive can be revoked. It's unfortunate that it's easier to legally get guns and harder to revoke the "right" to guns than it is with drivers' licenses.
I like what I recently heard about the Japanese laws for gun ownership. People can own guns but the default position is no, as it is for a drivers license. People need to pass tests and other requirements before being licensed to own guns. Then owners need to requalify every few years. There are also restrictions based on a person's history and mental state. So there are people who own guns. But far fewer of the gun owners have issues which may influence bad use of the guns. Gun violence and crimes involving guns are extremely low.
As our population continues to increase and more people live in denser environments, it is logical and reasonable that we look more closely at gun qualifications.
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