Itzhak Perlman’s violin performance in Schindler’s List musically captures something poignant and rarely appreciated about the Holocaust. It waxes and wanes in this sorrow-filled longing for what might have been for so many lives. It expresses not just the sadness of suffering but also the even more acute sadness of happiness snuffed-out. These people could have had weddings, children, friends, quiet moments, and simple pleasures. All of those joys were stolen. Worse than stolen, they were annihilated.
I thought about those annihilated moments of happiness Tuesday night as I was reading to my three-year old daughter. I thought about the children murdered in Uvalde. I cannot imagine the pain their parents are going through. Beyond that great unimaginable, there is the void before those parents. They won’t get to read to their kids ever again. There won’t be soccer practice. There won’t be weddings. There won’t be the laughing together. Those happiness’s have been annihilated.
This is not to make a direct comparison between the Holocaust and American gun violence (such a direct comparison would be erroneous and inappropriate in numerous ways), but it is to point out that that the immediate pain of mass murder is only the start of the loss.
A second aspect of Schindler’s List is worth introspecting about too: it’s lesson is that no act of humanity is wasted. Even if it feels microscopic in comparison to the suffering, violence, and cruelty around it, it is still something precious and still something that matters. It is the lesson that there is always the possibility that acts of humanity can offer some kind of worthwhile response to reckless nihilism.
There is perhaps no policy area in which it is harder to forge a libertarian-progressive synthesis than guns, but that is what I aim to do here. My hope is that, with enough humanity, with enough commitment to empathy, I can make a case here for sensible gun reforms that may prevent future happiness annihilations.
Empathy for the Responsible Gun Owner and for the Gun Skeptics
The starting point for today’s gun laws is the 2008 Heller v. D.C. Supreme Court decision which held that the Second Amendment means that personal gun ownership within one’s home for self-defense, even unconnected to militia, is a constitutional right. The Heller decision also said that this right is not unbounded. This is broadly in line with American views on guns. Depending on how the question is asked, between 36 and 52 of respondents want stricter gun laws, less than one in five support a ban on handguns, and more than 40 percent have a gun in their home. The takeaway from this for progressives should be clear- no meaningful gun reforms can happen without at least some buy-in from moderates, libertarians, and conservatives who are more positively disposed toward guns.
Beyond just that political reality, progressives would do well to consider why it is that people want to own a gun in the first place. The great fear of gun rights supporters is that a situation might arise in which they or their families are threatened and, without a gun, they will be powerless to protect themselves or their family. That’s not crazy. Personal protection is one of the main reasons why many libertarians and conservatives genuinely believe that gun ownership makes them and their families safer.
Additionally, many Americans have a lot of familiarity with guns and with basic gun safety. Hunting and gun culture are deeply embedded in large parts of American society, particularly in rural areas. I grew up in Alabama, was given a rifle for my 10th birthday, and shot an M-16 in the Army. I’m not a “gun guy” but I understand them. The idea that guns are these menacing, barbaric things is simply alien to how they see them, and so of course, to these kinds of people, “gun control” sounds like a bunch of pearl-clutching city slickers trying to boss them around. Urban progressives may not want to have to listen to these kinds of people, but they do have to; any set of reform measures that are opposed by gun-owners will get zero support from Senate Republicans.
Even if they somehow could pass sweeping gun control with little to no buy-in from libertarians and conservatives, these new measures would necessitate a major expansion of police powers and of the carceral state. For a whole range of obvious reasons, progressives should not want to do that.
If progressives need to be more willing to consider gun-owners’ point of view, gun rights advocates -including some progressives- need to stop treating every potential gun policy reform as the first step to tyranny. Few, if any, constitutional rights are totally unbounded. Freedom of speech does not cover fraud for example. Some reasonable limitations are gun ownership are appropriate. Just as it is not crazy for some Americans to want to own a gun, it is not at all crazy for other Americans to want to be able to eat in a Chipotle without some yahoo walking in with an AR-15. It is also perfectly reasonable for progressives to associate easy availability of assault rifles to mass shootings. Just as gun rights supporters would feel less safe if they were prohibited from owning a gun, gun skeptics feel less safe with today’s very lax rules around who can purchase a firearm, particularly given just how deadly some firearms today are.
The Policy Sweet Spot
Rather than a fight between two different cultural visions, it actually makes more sense to think about this issue in terms of balancing the rights of responsible gun owners with the desire to prevent mass shootings and search for the policies that are the best at striking that balance. So the questions to ask are:
A) which policies could have plausibly prevented Uvalde and other recent mass shootings?
B) which policies would not interfere with responsible gun ownership?
C) which policies could or would garner a broad base of political support, including from gun owners?
D) which policies would avoid substantially expanding police powers and the carceral state?
If a gun reform policy or suite of policies can get the answers right on those questions, that’s the sweet spot in terms of forging a libertarian-progressive synthesis on guns. To my mind, there are four such policies: Red flag laws, raising the purchase age to 21, insurance requirements, and universal background checks.
Red Flag Laws
If a person’s behavior suggests that they are a danger to themselves or others (expressing thoughts of suicide or violent revenge fantasies for example), with a red flag law, a family member, teacher, counselor, therapist, etc. can go to a court to get an order that allows the police to seize any weapons in that person’s possession and not allow them to purchase any new weapons for the duration of the order. Red flag laws would require evidence from the petitioner and need other procedural safeguards, but as David French’s recent column on Red Flag Laws points out, well-written Red Flags Laws may have prevented all five of the five deadliest school shootings before this week (Columbine-1999, Virginia Tech- 2007, Sandy Hook- 2012, Roseburg- 2015, and Parkland- 2018). Red Flag Laws would not meaningfully impinge on responsible gun owners but may prevent future horrors. Three recent polls show Red Flag Laws receiving 76%, 81%, and 89% support respectively. Even 86% of gun-owning Republicans support efforts to keep mentally ill people from purchasing firearms.
Raising the Purchase Age to 21
With this kind of measure in place, the Uvalde shooter would not have been able to purchase the guns he used. Most gun owners are above the age of 21 and so this kind of reform would obviously not affect them at all. Just at a conceptual level, it feels old to people that a 20-year old would be considered too irresponsible to buy beer but responsible enough to buy a gun. 83% of respondents support making 21 the minimum age to purchase a gun. In a different poll, this got 68% support.
Insurance Requirements
We require people carry insurance in order to operate motor vehicles, why not for guns? Again, a responsible gun owner would have little to worry about with this. If a person has a clean criminal record, no history of violence, and merely has a handgun or hunting rifle in the home (and has had it for many years with no incident, he or she could presumably get the required insurance for pocket change). Conversely, who in their right mind would insure an AR-15 to a 19-year old with no demonstrated record of gun safety or overall maturity? It is difficult to find polling on insurance requirements, but for a good explanation of their legal aspects and how they might work, this law review article is very good.
Universal Background Checks
Right now, background checks are not required when a sale is made between unlicensed parties and so a buyer who wants to get around a background check can easily do so by making their purchase either online or at a gun show. There is some pretty solid evidence that these measures lower homicide rates. Most mass shooters have purchased their guns legally, so it is hard to know whether universal backgrounds would prevent them. On the other hand, as with the other three policies above, this should present essentially zero burden to responsible gun owners. That is likely why this policy measure receives very wide support, 92% of the overall public, 84% of gun-owning Democrats, and 65% of gun-owning Republicans.
We All Want the Happiness Annihilations to Stop
I think it’s possible for progressives to be humane in how we talk about libertarian gun rights supporters. I also think it’s possible for libertarians, out of a sense of humanity and solidarity with progressive gun control supporters, to accept some limitations on their first principles. Whatever else they may disagree on with regards to gun policy, there is not a single person in either camp who doesn’t want to stop school shootings. There is humanity in all of us.
Once I began thinking about the Itzhak Perlman violin in Schindler’s List the other night, my mind quickly turned to the little girl in a red coat, the only person in color in the whole movie. That little girl is almost exactly the same age as my little girl is now. The girl in the red coat arguably serves a number of allegorical purposes in the film but for me, what the choice of color does there is to remind the audience that these horrors were 100% real, in color, fully human.
If we don’t get this right, if progressives and libertarians and Americans more generally cannot find a walk to talk to each other about guns more effectively, the horrifying consequences won’t be airy or theoretically. They will be entirely human. They won’t be in black-and-white. They’ll be in full color. They won’t be statistics. They’ll be parents who can’t read to their kids anymore.