Solving Gun Violence – Without a Time Machine

I totally understand the calls for new gun control legislation.  What is happening is horrific.  The problem is that most of the proposals involve a time machine.  Let me explain.  Too many of the calls for gun control assume we can go back in time and get rid of the Second Amendment (which would involve going back to the early 1790s).  Or that we can, at least, go back to before the Heller decision in 2008, and get the Supreme Court to issue a different decision in that case (which might require going back before 2008 and getting at least a couple different justices on the Supreme Court). 

Many of them also assume we can go back to a time when we did not have upwards of 400 million guns in the United States. 

Maybe it is appalling that we have so many guns in the United States or that we have a constitution with provisions about guns that other countries don’t have.  Maybe it would be nice if we didn’t have these things, but we do.  And, therefore, we need solutions that accept the reality we have.  

So far, most of the proposals I have seen (or that the media has reported) assume away one or more of these facts; i.e., they assume a time machine . Which means the solutions may sound good, but they won’t work.  People may wish this wasn’t so.  But it is, and if we are going to deal with the issue of gun violence, we have to address the world as it is, not the world as we wish it was.