I think a realistic shooter control proposal should have at least the following characteristics:
- A focus on the who, and not the “what”.
- Genuine compromise: both sides give up some things.
- Simplicity and bright lines. The more complex a system is, the easier it is for bad actors to game it.
- Consensus from both sides that, though they hate some aspects of it, it’s equal to or better than what we have now.
This last bit is particularly important. We can’t hope to solve every scenario and corner case, short of finding a way to eliminate firearms ownership completely. Rather, the ultimate criteria by which we should judge any proposal to reduce gun deaths is: “is this at least equal to or better than what we have now.”
I want to begin with three generalizations about gun owners, and then use them as the basis of a compromise.
Modern gun culture is a gear culture, and its members like hacking and tweaking and modding their firearms. Because they’re this way, they chafe against feature-based firearm restrictions, like the federal restrictions on short-barreled rifles or suppressors, or state-specific restrictions on things like barrels shrouds or vertical fore-grips.
Gun owners also largely see themselves as law-abiders who are clearly never going to do anyone deliberate harm. “Why should I be burdened by these arbitrary feature-based restrictions that are easily circumvented by criminals,” they ask?
Finally, it has been my experience that gun owners of all stripes tend to agree that certain people just shouldn’t have guns: people with violent pasts, people who are embedded in known criminal networks (i.e. gangs, terrorist cells), loners who have nothing to lose, and various other folks who are likely to misuse firearms. The problem is identifying these folks.
I think we can use the first two items above to address the third, by making a basic deal with gun owners that looks something like this: we’ll relax and regularize restrictions on the “what” (which criminals weren’t really abiding by, anyway) in exchange for a more rigorous, peer-based approach to licensing shooters—an approach that no law-abiding gun owner should have any trouble complying with, but that will weed out loners and folks embedded in dysfunctional/violent social networks.
The basic idea is to have gun owners vouch for other gun owners’ fitness to handle and use guns, and to incentivize those people to evaluate each other carefully by forcing them to have skin in the game. In this way, we can build up and maintain networks of licensed shooters whose experience of gun ownership is relatively frictionless—no arbitrary rules about barrel length or whether an item is a “stock” or an “arm brace”, and no extra paperwork or waiting periods—while denying access to firearms to individuals who can’t join such a network and remain a member in good standing.
The basic shooter control framework is that the government licenses “shooter networks”, and shooter networks license individual shooters. (Yep, this is modeled on how the web handles SSL certificates.) I say “shooter” here, because I’m not talking about gun ownership—I’m talking about who can legally touch and handle a firearm.
Under a shooter control regime, the government doesn’t know about or care what kinds of guns you own; it only cares about whether or not you’re a licensed shooter, i.e. you’re licensed to pick up a gun. And under shooter control, your fellow network members care very much that you’re not convicted of a gun crime, because that would put their gun rights at risk.
Here are the basics of how it works:
A shooter network can be any group of five people aged 18 or older who get together for the purpose of forming a network — geography and other factors are irrelevant. These individuals form a network and register that network with a central authority, which tracks who belongs to which network and in general oversees this entire regime. (Note: again, this central authority has no information on what guns you own; it’s solely concerned with shooters, not firearms.)
In order to get a valid shooting license from a network, you must be a member of that network for not less than a year. (Individual networks can extend that time, if they like, in their own bylaws.) Your very first network membership has no waiting period for licensure. If your membership is approved, then licensure is immediate that one time. (This allows brand new shooters, or even folks who are trying to figure out if this is something they want to do, to pick up a gun and begin practicing with it.)
There are two categories of people who can legally handle a firearm: 1) licensed shooters, 2) unlicensed shooters who are under the active, direct supervision of a licensed shooter. Regarding the second category, the minute your training session is over, or you’ve left the gun store counter, and you’re no longer actively being supervised by a licensed shooter, it’s illegal for you to touch a gun.
If you’re caught touching a firearm without a license, it’s a felony. This means that if you lose your license, you don’t have to surrender your firearms — you just can’t touch them without committing a felony. Obviously, there’s no way to know what people are doing inside of their own home, but someone who loses their license effectively loses their right to use a gun in defense of their home or person, and to shoot socially.
If a licensed shooter is convicted of a crime involving a gun, then the network that they were a member of at the time the crime was committed is automatically disbanded, and all of the licenses that network has issued are immediately invalidated. This means that all of the network’s members will need to join a new network and go through a one-year waiting period before they can handle a gun again.
If at any point the number of members in the network drops below 5 for any reason, the network is disbanded and all the licenses it has issued are invalidated.
An individual can belong to only one network at a time, and can belong to no more than four successive shooter networks over the course of his or her lifetime. If you’re on your fourth network and you lose your license (i.e. the network was dissolved, or it voted you out), then you’re done. You can never legally touch a firearm again.
If a shooter is over the age of 18 and is either unlicensed or has a valid licensed that has lapsed more than three years ago (i.e. he or she has had plenty of time to join a new network and get re-licensed), then simple possession (the standard legal definition) of firearms is a felony for that person. (The point here is that if don’t stay on top of your license, then you eventually lose even the right to possess, along with the right to handle/touch a gun.)
A gun can only be transferred to a licensed shooter. So if your license is lapsed, you can sell your guns, but you can’t legally buy a firearm at a gun shop, gun show, or in a private party transaction.
Every licensed shooter is required to register all of his/her guns with the network, by serial number.
There cannot ever be a centralized database (or network of distributed databases, because federated query essentially makes such a thing centralized) of gun registrations that can act as a de facto central gun registry.
Rather, by having all weapons registered locally with a shooter network, if a gun is found at a crime scene and local law enforcement can get some indication of ownership (i.e. a fingerprint match or other indication), they can get a warrant to search a specific shooter network’s registry. So law enforcement can only access specific registries with a warrant. Otherwise, this shooter network registries are totally private and inaccessible to the feds.
(This isn’t nearly as effective for law enforcement as a central registry would be, but it’s way better than nothing, and is markedly better than the status quo.)
To sum up, this scheme means that shooter network members have skin in the game, and are incentivized to police each other. One member could cause the entire network to lose all legal access to firearms for a year and to use up one of their four possible shooter network memberships.
Under the proposed shooter control regime, over time dysfunctional/criminal social networks will either reform themselves or see their access to firearms steadily dry up, as the pool of eligible shooter network members shrinks and more members of that network lose even the right of simple possession. Meanwhile, gun owners in high-functioning networks will be effectively freed from the burden of compliance with red tape and pointless restrictions that weren’t stopping criminals anyway. The network itself has some annual red tape, but the idea here is that if you can’t bother to pay your fees on time then your network isn’t the kind that we want handing out licenses.
Gun owners may not like some of the above. But now we get to the part that they will like. Because shooter control is focused exclusively on the “who” and not at all on the “what”, it doesn’t matter what kind of gun you have, as long as you’re licensed.
The parts of the NFA that apply to suppressors and short-barreled rifles are repealed. Like New Zealand, Germany, and some other European countries, there are no special rules for short-barreled rifles or suppressors.
We’d also want federal pre-emption of all state assault weapon bans, and of any other gun bans that are based on features.
There would be no need for waiting periods, because you wouldn’t be able to buy your first firearm without joining a network, anyway, which would effectively act as a waiting period.
Finally, we can dismantle the broken background check system, because background checks are done at the time of membership application. And the shooter will lose their license for any offense that would get them flagged on a background check, anyway. Indeed, shooter control via shooter networks makes background checks at time of purchase obsolete.
In this section, I’ll cover some corner cases and other details.
Anyone over the age of 18 can belong to a shooter network. Anyone younger can shoot under the supervision of a parent or guardian. Yes, gun control advocates are scandalized by the idea of children handling firearms, even under adult supervision. But under the current gun control regime, minors can shoot when supervised, so this amounts to keeping the status quo.
“Shooter network” is a designation that can be applied to any one of a number of common, pre-existing legal entities, like an LLC, LLP, trust, corporation, or basically any entity with a tax id. To start a shooter network, you form some approved entity, then have that entity registered as a shooter network so that you could begin licensing members.
Networks make their own rules governing all aspects of membership that aren’t otherwise mandated by law. If you want to be super lax about who gets into your network, you can do that if you’re ready to deal with the consequences. Or, you can get as elaborate and restrictive as you like, with regular meetings, qualification requirements, psychiatric evaluations, background checks, fingerprinting, and so on. It’s up to you to structure your network and then deal with the consequences.
A shooter network could be a small family group, where everyone knows each other, can vouch for each other, and is willing to put a year of their gun rights on the line.
A shooter network could even be structured as a for-profit entity, where membership involves fees and a thorough vetting process. network operators who want to run a large, profitable network are incentivized to be as strict as possible about membership standards.
Each network pays an annual tax to the central authority, and that tax is calculated on a per-member basis. This tax goes to fund the government administration of this regime. If at any point you’re in arrears on taxes, your shooter network is dissolved.
All police, active duty military, and other professionals have the same rules as everyone else.
- Police can carry on-shift. But off-shift, the have to have a membership just like everyone else. No special treatment for them unless they’re on shift.
- Active duty military are licensed 24/7, but will want a civilian membership for when they go off active duty, so they don’t have to wait a year.
- Reservists and National Guard are automatically licensed during drill periods, otherwise they need a network membership.
Concealed carry would still be handled on a state-by-state basis. It would be nice to get national reciprocity as part of this, though, if we can swing it. But ultimately I think concealed carry issues have to be orthogonal to the shooter network concept.
The main obstacle to this is on the pro-gun side is that basic idea of licensing shooters is probably going to run afoul of 2A by many interpretations. After all, we don’t license people to speak or to exercise any of their other constitutional rights. (There may be some wiggle room, though, in that ownership of firearms isn’t prohibited to unlicensed shooters; just their use.)
The obstacle on the anti-gun side is that they’re just not going to want to give up “gun control”. They’re going to want to still focus on feature/function-based bans, because it’s so ingrained.