WHAT THE CENTER WANTS AFTER UVALDE
On what can conservatives and liberals agree in the aftermath of the massacre in Texas?
Let’s begin with what Justice Antonin Scalia wrote in the 2008 D.C. v. Heller decision, the case affirming an individual’s right to bear arms: “Nothing in our opinion should be taken to cast doubt on longstanding prohibitions on the possession of firearms by felons and the mentally ill, or laws forbidding the carrying of firearms in sensitive places such as schools and government buildings, or laws imposing conditions and qualifications on the commercial sale of arms.”
So: The right is not absolute, and no serious person believes it is. What, then, should Congress aim to achieve? And rather than bicker about our disagreements, let’s focus instead on those steps on which most people are likely to already agree.
I think a supermajority of voters believe that well-trained, experienced and well-armed officers need to be on the campuses of our 131,000 K-12 public and private schools. Police officers who have called my radio show in the days since Uvalde and Buffalo suggest these should be neither rookies nor aging cops, but men and women working two-year tours after at least five years on the force. The arms held securely in reserve must be able to defeat body armor.
These steps make sense to me. They are also expensive. The incremental cost would be somewhere between $40 billion and $50 billion annually. The federal government spent nearly $7 trillion last year. It could fund this additional expenditure.
There is probably widespread agreement that funding for police at schools should be available only to states that adopt a model statute on “red flag” laws and perhaps regulate gun sales of some types to adults ages 18 to 21. There is supermajority support for new state laws that set age limits for certain classes of weapons and allow for the seizure of a weapon or denial of the right to purchase following a complaint by a parent or a threatened party brought to a court by police for a hearing before seizure or denial. Due process must be protected.
The right to own guns is explicitly in the Constitution. To infringe on that right in any way requires at least a compelling rationale and narrowly tailored terms. A model state statute on which to condition new school protection funding is within reach, but it must also protect any citizen seeking to exercise his or her right to bear arms. A gun eligibility standard can be made constitutionally sound.
The center does exist and can hold, but we cannot continue to absorb these kinds of massacres, do nothing and keep our balance as a nation.
The killers in most of our mass shootings are deeply unbalanced. Heated rhetoric, slanders against gun owners and accusations of evil against people who believe they need to protect themselves and their families are indications of a different sort of disability: the refusal to understand an opposing viewpoint. Ours is a culture in which violence is routine and police are under siege in many places. Until that culture changes and the Constitution with it, voices raised against a citizen’s right to own weapons will go unheard. The minds that are closed to the reality of the Second Amendment are as shuttered as those who refuse to see that the mentally unbalanced ought not be able to buy weapons any more than felons can.
But steps can be taken. Neither gun rights absolutists nor gun confiscation enthusiasts ought to control the conversation anymore. There is a sound center. Let’s begin there. And quickly.