Reduce the Number of Guns in the United States

America currently has more guns than people. To truly reduce gun violence, restricting the manufacturing and purchase of new firearms is not enough. We must significantly reduce the number of firearms on our streets and in our houses. Doing so will keep people with bad intentions from getting guns already in circulation (likely on the black market) and thus significantly reduce the gun violence. It would also lower suicide rates—as individuals facing personal crisis won’t be able to impulsively use a gun to end their lives—and accidental shootings that take place as a result of America’s deep immersion in gun culture.

The Compact has a three-pronged approach to achieving this goal: (1) prohibit the sale to civilians of semiautomatic weapons and high-capacity magazines designed for the armed forces; (2) provide incentives for people to give up their existing firearms; and (3) make guns significantly harder to get.

Let’s start with the easy part. No one needs assault weapons with ten (or thirty or a hundred) rounds in a single magazine for hunting. No one needs them for target practice. No one needs them to protect their family. No one. These are designed to enable the military to cause death and destruction on a horrific scale.

While a bullet from a regular handgun lacerates an organ, a round from an AR-15-style weapon shreds it, often proving fatal. The bullets are small, but they leave the muzzle three times faster than a handgun bullet and, as a result, cause far more damage. As one trauma surgeon put it, the damage from an AR-15 “looks like a grenade went off” in the human body; by comparison, the damage from a 9mm handgun “looks like a bad knife cut.” If a bullet from an AR-15 hits the liver, “the liver looks like a jello mold that’s been dropped on the floor,” a trauma surgeon told Wired. As it makes its way out of the body, it can leave an exit wound that’s the size of an orange.

A quick note on the AR-15: a company called ArmaLite, Inc., developed the weapon in 1956 and it is seen as the civilian version of the U.S. military’s M-16 combat rifle. “AR” stands for “ArmaLite Rifle,” not “assault rifle” as many people may think. The weapon is a semiautomatic that requires the shooter to pull the trigger for every shot. A large capacity magazine allows an individual to fire many rounds quickly and efficiently without reloading, often leaving destruction in its path.

A review of mass shootings concluded that “incidents where assault weapons or large capacity ammunition magazines were used resulted in 135 percent more people shot and 57 percent more killed, compared to other mass shootings.”¹ A more recent study published in JAMA: The Journal of the American Medical Association similarly found that in an active-shooter incident, a shooter with a semiautomatic rifle—a larger category of guns than what we typically consider to be “assault weapons”—“may be able to hurt and kill about twice the number of people compared to if they had a non-semiautomatic rifle or a handgun.”

In 1994, Congress passed a law that made it unlawful for a person to “manufacture, transfer, or possess” a semiautomatic assault weapon and outlawed the transfer and possession of any new large-capacity ammunition magazines. The measure expired in 2004. During the ten years that it was in effect, manufacturers skirted its provisions by removing banned features and making small modifications to existing weapons. They also boosted production of assault weapons before the ban, thus keeping them in circulation while the ban was in effect.

Learning from these mistakes, a new assault weapons ban must: (1) include a one-feature test (meaning that any one of several features would classify the gun as a prohibited assault weapon); (2) prohibit the possession, distribution, importation, transportation, manufacture, and sale of assault weapons; and (3) grandfather pre-ban weapons but require their registration and prohibit their sale and transfer. The most recent proposed federal legislation would ban weapons that are semiautomatic, capable of accepting detachable magazines, or have any one design feature, like a folding stock or pistol grip, that would classify it as an assault weapon. We can also design a better law by learning from the states. As of 2018, seven states (California, Connecticut, Hawaii, Maryland, Massachusetts, New Jersey, and New York) and Washington, DC, have banned assault weapons. Each state offers useful instruction for a federal ban.

Assault weapons have killed a lot of people in mass shootings. But the truth is, handguns are actually killing far more people. According to a new database by the Department of Homeland Security, the United States has experienced more than 1,300 school shootings since 1970 and in 68 percent of these shootings the assailant used a handgun. Assault weapons are also rarely used in low-body-count homicides and almost never in suicides. In 2016, murderers used handguns nineteen times more than rifles, and handguns killed nine times as many people as rifles and shotguns combined. Almost 90 percent of the firearms used to kill 33,000 Americans in 2013 were handguns.² To save lives, we must make handguns far less accessible. This component of the Compact requires three separate elements.

First, we need a federally funded voluntary gun buyback program in which an individual can turn in a gun and get money for it—a version of what the Australians accomplished, which I discuss later. Until now, gun buybacks have shown limited efficacy in the cities and towns where they’ve been tried. Owners simply turned in guns and used the cash to buy new ones. This is mostly because the supply of firearms is endless and funding for buybacks is limited.

Second, to make this policy work, those who don’t voluntarily sell back their guns must be required to obtain a firearms license and register their weapons. People would have to disclose what firearms and ammunition they own, report lost or stolen guns, and undergo realistic inspection and verification. They could sell a firearm only to a licensed individual, and the sale would have to be registered with law enforcement.

The goal here is not to force criminals to do the right thing; they won’t. It is to make sure that responsible gun owners, who make up a much higher proportion of the population than professional criminals, are held responsible for their guns. Moreover, firearm registration creates a comprehensive record and lets law enforcement easily trace firearms found at crime scenes to the last legal sale. The policy would also give gun owners an incentive to make sure their guns don’t fall into the wrong hands. With registration, it will be traced back to them, after all.

Whenever I bring up the prospect of firearm registration, conservatives push back by claiming that the policy is an unconstitutional abridgment of their Second Amendment rights. “I wouldn’t require the press to register their printing presses or obtain a special license to publish,” they claim. First of all, words don’t kill, at least not directly. Secondly, our rights are not absolute; they come with responsibilities. Even in the context of the First Amendment, those who seek to hold public mass demonstrations must obtain a special license from their city or town and complete documents that are akin to registration. People who seek to change the laws by ballot initiative have to register with the government. Third, the government already compels firearm registration—for certain kinds of guns. Individuals are required to register machine guns and meet other requirements, like fingerprinting, to legally own them. Perhaps that is part of the reason we never hear about machine guns being used in shootings. Yes, the most dedicated of criminals may go to great lengths to commit their crimes, but most are deterred by obstacles that serve as deterrents. That’s how all laws work to keep public order and gun regulations are no exception.

The third element of a workable gun-reduction program would be voluntary relinquishment. This could operate outside of a federally funded buyback system and might provide greater flexibility. Instead of sales and paperwork, individuals could simply turn in guns they don’t want to a local law enforcement authority. Such a program would be particularly useful for individuals who may inherit large firearm collections from family members or relatives who have passed and are looking for something to do with them.

Believe it or not, no mechanism currently exists for people to turn in their guns. If your gun collector father passes away and you don’t want his firearms, the best you could do is sell them. If you’re in a crisis situation that’s putting you or others at risk, you may just want to get the gun out of there. Today there are few (if any) legally viable options for you to rid yourself of that burden. Voluntary relinquishment would allow people to turn in their guns, no questions asked.