Palatable gun control
Last night I watched some of the House of Representatives debate on the gun buyer background check bill. Some of the opposing speakers seemed shrill, but Bradley Byrne from Mobile, Alabama, calmly made some points about the bill. He pointed out that he wouldn’t even be allowed to let a friend borrow a gun to try it out and see if he wanted to buy it or a similar gun without the loan transfer going through someone like a licensed gun dealer. That got me thinking about a common situation, and a way the bill could be amended to be easier to live with for gun owners.
I called the office of Chip Roy, my new Congressman,and offered my suggestion for a way a gun owner could lend a gun in a controlled situation. I imagined a situation in which dad and mom are divorced and have a son. Mom hates guns but dad wants to teach the boy to hunt, and the boy wants to learn. Perhaps dad has a specific gun that he has already started to show the son how to use. It ought to be possible for dad to drop the boy and the gun at a gun range LICENSED to take temporary custody of the gun while the boy is there. Ideally the boy would be getting an instructor's ideas about gun safety, to supplement what dad taught him. It should even be possible for mom to pick up her son, leaving the gun at the gun range in its custody.
In fact, divorced parents sometimes 'hand off' a child when it's the other parent's turn for custody, one dropping the child at a birthday party and the other parent picking him up. If the parents can't see each other without starting to argue, there are child service places where the child can be left for 15 minutes or so, with it arranged that one parent will do the drop off on the hour and the other parent do the pickup at a quarter past the hour. I've even heard of using a police station for hand offs if one parent is scared of the other one. I can't imagine a police station hand off would be a positive experience for the child. But if the hand off were done at the gun range, the child might even look forward to what otherwise would just be a reminder that his parents are divorced.
Teaching a boy to hunt and to handle a gun safely can be a rite of passage for father and son. It's part of our culture in the USA, a country that was born with minutemen carrying their rifles. We who want to reduce deaths from gun violence should do all we can to make any gun regulations not feel like an attack on that culture. Congressmen Bradley Byrne and Chip Roy ought to be able to look forward to teaching their sons and grandsons, and daughters and granddaughters if they’re interested, to hunt safely. Let’s reassure them we don’t want to take that away from them.