Spin Control: Instead of the same old ideas, Congress should rely on an even older one to curb gun violence – the Second Amendment

As the great political minds in Congress fight the same old battles over proposals to prevent mass killings with semiautomatic rifles, it seems like a good time to toss out a new idea or two.

The state has enacted some of the rules being discussed in the other Washington, such as red flag laws, raising the minimum age for possession of certain military-style weapons to at least 21 and banning large-capacity magazines. While some gun safety advocates consider them no-brainers, debate over gun control and gun safety laws in the Legislature over the last decade have shown they aren’t as easy to pass as some people think, even in a deep blue state. Some had to be enacted by ballot initiative, which is not an option nationally.

A complete ban on the AR-15 and similar weapons may be appealing to some, but it’s problematic, considering by one estimate there may be as many as 10 million such firearms already in the United States, even if production stopped tomorrow.

Opponents will always contend such a ban violates the Second Amendment, which makes for a good debate in a Constitutional Law class. But with the current makeup of the U.S. Supreme Court, they seem likely to win that argument where it counts the most.

Maybe the answer to reining in semiautomatic military-style weapons lies in the Second Amendment itself, and its opening phrase “A well-regulated militia, being necessary to the security of a free state …” Rather than try to take those guns away, or keep people from buying them – and thus keep the gun manufacturers and its handmaiden, the NRA, quiet – federal law could just require anyone who wants an AR-15 or one of its many knock-offs to be a certified member of a well-regulated militia.

After all, well-regulated militias do not barricade themselves in elementary school classrooms or gun down people in supermarkets. They do not shoot up church prayer services or places of work, or send a hail of bullets into a crowd attending a Las Vegas concert. The many mass killings can definitely make a person feel less secure.

This requirement wouldn’t necessarily mean joining the National Guard, which has certain physical standards and service commitments many gun owners couldn’t meet. But it could mean the establishment of licensed organizations with certain training standards and requirements that members show proficiency in the safe use and storage of such a weapon. When a person can demonstrate that, they would be entered in a database and issued a chip-embedded membership card they would have to show when buying a semiautomatic military-style rifle or its ammunition.

It would be open only to persons with clean criminal records and no mental health concerns that don’t currently bar them owning a firearm. The militias could also have a simplified version of the “personal reliability program” the military uses to determine whether a person should lose access to nuclear weapons system if they were under certain emotional or family stress.

The advantage of such a card would mean a gun dealer wouldn’t have to do a background check for purchasers. Militias could also provide an “armory” for the voluntary storage of a member’s rifle and ammunition, which could hold the weapons and provide easy access when a member showed up with the card.

It would also flag purchases of large amounts of ammunition that would result in a “what the heck?” call to the member from the head of the militia.

Membership might have to be renewed every few years, like a driver’s license, with the owner proving they haven’t forgotten their training. It would be automatically canceled with a felony conviction and put on hold in the event of a protection order issued by a judge, which would show up when a gun dealer ran a check on the card.

Police wouldn’t go house-to-house in search of people who own an AR-15-style rifle but aren’t a member of a militia. But if they encounter someone with that type of a firearm, they could ask to see the card, and if the person doesn’t have one, issue a 30-day warning to join and get certified or risk surrendering their weapons until they do.

This wouldn’t stop an 18-year-old from buying one or more of these rifles as a birthday present, but it would mean that they would at least have been through some training and screening that might have flagged any mental health or school anger problems indicating they shouldn’t be issued a membership card. While it’s true that a rejected person could just go to the next county or across the state line to shop for another militia organization until finding one that would issue a card, that process could at least delay someone like the shooters in Buffalo or Uvalde from going from gun owner to mass murderer in short order.

As for the millions of semiautomatic military-style rifles already in the hands of Americans, the federal government might establish a buy-back program linked to efforts to help Ukraine defend itself against Russia. Owners who turned in their AR-15-style weapons and high-capacity magazines could get a check from the big pot of money approved for military aid to Ukraine, a letter of thanks from President Volodymyr Zelenskyy and a lapel pin with the American and Ukrainian flags. The federal government could crate up the rifles, complete with any bump stocks that would convert them to automatic weapons, and put them on the next C-17 bound for a runway close to the Ukrainian border.

The weapons could get a chance to be used for the purpose closer to that for which they were designed. Even if only a fraction of the nation’s AR-15-style rifles were turned in, it could go a long way in arming civilians left in Kyiv and Odessa against invaders, so it would be what the politicians like to call a win-win.

Admittedly, these are suggestions that aren’t perfect, and some readers are probably reaching for pen and paper or their keyboard to tell me how stupid they are. But after trying and failing at the same-old, same-old, isn’t it time Congress started kicking around something new?