Bridging divide between gun bans, gun ownership

Barely had we escaped the news cycle of the Florida mail-bomber than an extremist, anti-Semite in Pittsburgh shot up a synagogue, killing 11 and injuring several police officers in a firefight. The alleged shooter left a trail of his extreme views on social media and hints of acting out. The First Amendment protects such rhetoric, as well as social media’s right to act as a toxic mind pollutant to the American psyche.

But all this has a price when one also has a stockpile of guns or bombs. Perhaps we in the firearms community need to admit that the Second Amendment has two clauses, and the first mandates that “the people” populating the “wellregulated militia” need to be trusted to be pointing guns at legitimate adversaries rather than figments of a warped imagination. How far should we go in the name of preventing senselessly violent individuals from shooting up the nation? That, as usual, is the question.

The accused synagogue shooter left a trail of hate on the internet. Should we monitor the internet and serve people who seem like they are about to go violently off the rails with extreme-risk protective orders? Should owning certain classes of small arms be contingent on something like a human reliability program?

It is clear that as long as anyone can procure a firearm easily, some small but lethal number will go off the rails at other people’s expense. The more lethal the firearm, the more the expense. With politicians, Russian troll farms and social media activists pouring on political gasoline and handing out matches, what can possibly go wrong?

One could discuss a violence triangle as we do a fire triangle. One needs motive, means and a decision to act, i.e., a defective mental circuit breaker, to shoot up whatever one’s imaginary enemy happens to be on a given day. Means plus motive without the mental circuit breaker almost guarantees some “fires” will start. One can try to remove the means, albeit with great difficulty in a nation with a Second Amendment. One can try to eliminate motive, but in an age of toxic social media, gutter politics and tribalism, that, too, is tough. Mental circuit breakers also are in short supply, as I recently noted while watching a disgruntled customer loudly berate a pharmacist’s assistant in a Santa Fe pharmacy.

As Mike Weisser, Ph.D., has said, some hunting rifles and shotguns (and probably some handguns) are rarely implicated in crimes or mass shootings. How about we go lightly on these lower public-risk firearms but examine ownership of those guns that seem to beckon for misuse? Instead, we could raise the standards of ownership for some firearms.

To be qualified for the job that I once held for 15 years in a federal lab, I underwent annual background screening, including a sit-down with a company psychologist, to ensure that the public and fellow workers could trust that I was rock steady to do my job.

Maybe it’s about time we designed a scaled-down version of a “human reliability” process for those who want to own high-capacity pistols, ARs and similar weaponry — the guns that can turn a synagogue into a charnel house in a few short minutes. I wouldn’t make it prohibitive or expensive, just clear and fair to the gun nuts and to the public at large. Such a solution might bridge the gap between those who want gun bans and those who want no restrictions at all.

Khalil J. Spencer is a scientist who works in Los Alamos and lives in Santa Fe.

Maybe it’s about time we designed a scaled-down version of a “human reliability” process for those who want to own high-capacity pistols, ARs and similar weaponry.