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Sen. Dianne Feinstein’s Gun Control Alchemy

We now have a view of the new gun control proposal that some have labeled Feinstein’s Grand Plan. Grand?  Feasible?  Passible?  That remains to be seen.  What is plain is that Feinstein’s proposal illustrates the inadequacy of supply-control policies that attempt a purely public response to an intensely private crisis.

The impulse here is the horror in Connecticut.  The main worry from Connecticut is not that an incomprehensibly mad young man killed with an AR-15.  At one level we all know that virtually any sort of firearm and a variety of other deadly weapons are easy substitutes against the helpless.

But that is a difficult thing to say in this climate and it does not satisfy people who are hurting.  And that hurt is very much a driver here.  The pain from Newtown is intense.  Many people desperately seek something to ease that pain and affirm that our society is not irretrievably off the rails.  For those under the delusion that the state can stop imminent violent threats, Feinstein’s supply-side gun control proposal will have appeal.

Feinstein’s proposal marks a point of profound disagreement. Most gun owners will acknowledge that when seconds count, government is minutes away.  This means that in those critical moments when violence sparks, you are on your own.

Many people resist this fact and its implications.  Supply controls appeal to those people (just get rid of the guns and these crimes would stop). They believe it can moot the need for armed self-defense.  But that is a pipe dream in a country that already has upwards of 300 million guns distributed across at least 40 percent of households.

Much of the political class operates under a kind of moral hazard here.  Their standard coin is the promise of public solutions; even for those private crises where our ancient law of self-defense emphasizes that the state is structurally incompetent.  The state loses its monopoly on legitimate violence in that window of imminence where government cannot act and people must protect themselves.

Many on the left are aligned with a gun control movement that has continuously denied the need, utility and legitimacy of armed self-defense.  This crowd has the floor now and will lead the legislative charge with proposals that are really a diversion.

There is real danger that we will undertake what’s essentially a grand charade—a policy debate grounded on the premise that 10- vs. 30-round magazines make a crucial difference in these attacks. The vitriol suggests Feinstein’s supply-control proposals are a clear and obvious fix against horrors like Sandy Hook. Ultimately, we all really know that’s false.

A serious debate about the risk would involve detailed assessment of fictitious gun-free zones.  This has been raised first by the NRA, so there is a good chance it will be maligned by much of the media. But if we press for substance rather than symbolism, there is some chance that this issue will rise up out of the rancor.

As we go through the dubious enterprise of identifying “bad guns” to ban and “good guns” to approve, someone might actually move past how guns look and consider how they function. Is the AR-15 more deadly against unarmed people than a pump shotgun or a lever-action rifle or the stealthy, quickly re-loadable handgun or, frankly, any other gun?

The core issue here is the exposure of helpless people against a twisted individual with a gun … any gun.  Supply controls are no answer to this problem unless you eliminate virtually all guns. Only when you fully acknowledge that it is impossible to get rid of guns in America (and that the failed attempt would make things worse by sending a hundred million guns into the black market) do you see the substantive emptiness and folly of Feinstein’s plan.

This reveals a crucial sticking point. Some of us genuinely appreciate that it is impossible to ban guns in America.  Others still imagine that we might someday fulfill the supply-control dreams hatched in the 1970’s and actually get rid of guns.

Indeed, if this is not the agenda, then the Feinstein plan is nonsense.  It cannot be true that the senator is saying we want to stop mass shootings using certain semi-automatic rifles, but that shootings using other semi-automatics, pumps, lever actions, revolvers, double barrels or bolt actions are OK.   If your policy tool is supply controls, you must ban those guns as well.

If we find consensus that the supply-control formula is dubious and the bad-gun formula incoherent, we might press forward to the actual tough question that deserves our full attention. What about these episodes of insanity? For adults, the idea that people must protect themselves within the window of imminence is the longstanding reality, as the modern wave of shall-issue concealed-carry laws acknowledges. We must have a conversation about how adults can best protect children.

Sen. Feinstein will get lots of opposition to her proposal: that it is an unconstitutional taking of property; that it irrationally treats semi-automatics more harshly than true machine guns; that it is an unconstitutional application of the taxing power; that it attempts to ban guns in common use in violation of D.C. -vs- Heller; that it attempts to ban the quintessential militia firearm which seems protected, even under a non-deceptive version of Justice Stevens dissent in Heller, and that it will drive the targeted guns into the black market.

The worst thing is that Feinstein’s Grand Plan obscures the core question of how to protect children in the classroom, with tired, oversold ideas that mainly serve to mask the structural state of incompetence that the political elites cannot profitably acknowledge.  Here, Here!  ‘Bout time SOMEONE said it!

A longer version of this article is available at www.libertylawsite.org.