A Plan for Gun Control, The Federal Firearms Administration

The count is 58 people dead and 489 wounded in Las Vegas in a matter of minutes. As with all mass shootings in the US, this sparks a debate that is stifled, then resisted, then argued, and finally ignored with little or no change. I am not here to engage in this debate, but to propose a plan to end this kind of violence in the United States. We are the only stable, western nation on earth that continually suffers from mass shootings so there is clearly a way to solve the problem, we simply have not tried.

            It is important to make several facts clear before the plan is laid out. While the number of guns in the US has increased to about 310 million, the number of people who own guns in the US has decreased to around 22% of adults and about 31% of households. Essentially, those with guns are buying more. It is also important to take a look at any kind of firearm ban that the US in the past and observe the effects. In response to several mass shootings from 1989 to 1993, the federal government passed a ten year assault weapons ban in September of 1994. This is the most recent ban that we have to look at with reliable data on what kind of impact it had on gun violence in the US. The year before the ban was passed there were more than 17,000 homicides with a gun. In 1995 there were about 14,000. The number continued to decline by about 1000 each year and remained steady around 9,000. Fortunately, when the ban expired in 2011 the trends did not increase again. This indicates that there is a measurable impact on the levels of gun violence in the country, when people have less access to guns, there is less violence and loss of life. But this is not enough. There is no acceptable number of gun deaths, no threshold that is worthy of giving up. Every law that we make is based on the lowest common denominator as a society, speeding laws, drug laws, taxation, all start with the worst case scenario in mind and work backwards. Most people could handle themselves on the freeway if there was no speed limit, this is the reason why the vast majority of people do not get into car accidents when they drive. But it is the unfortunate reality of the 1-5% of people that make poor decisions, that dictate what the law is going to be. The same should be the case for guns, most are good but a bad apple spoils the bunch. This does not have to be a complete ban, there is a compromise that I think might work.

            I propose a new branch of the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms called The Federal Firearms Administration. This would be the new way that citizens could use guns. This plan is on a ten year timeline and year one would consist of three parts, data gathering, marketing, and information exposure. The information necessary to take any action with firearms is tremendously difficult. Decades of lobbying by the National Rifle Association and other firms has shut down not only legislation, but funding for gathering any data relating to guns. For one year, the FFA would be granted $1 billion to gather and analyze the information they would need. Together with information flowing into the Administration, there would need to be a steady stream of information flowing out to the citizens and new organizations alike. With an additional $2 billion set aside for marketing, website development, and informational town halls and meeting across the country, the FFA would be able to both educate and prepare the citizens for the next steps of the plan to happen in 12 months.

            If securing the funding, gathering the data, and making it digestible by the public was not difficult enough, now comes the most politically complicated part: getting the guns. This is complicated for a variety of reasons and the most obvious one is the conservative nightmare being realized. The government is coming for your guns, I told you this would happen! This phase stresses the importance of marketing and information in the first year. People need to understand what is happening before it happens. Any action that comes suddenly from a government is going to rattle people and usually cause more trouble than it is worth. This phase would need be entirely voluntary, with citizens coming to AFF offices set up around the country to turn them in. During this three year period the government would commit to buying back the guns for the full retail price that the citizen had paid. As with all our other number in this post, I looked at the high estimates to determine the worst case scenario for the plan. Retail firearm prices float between $300 and $700 with a few going as high as $2000. Sticking with $2K, the US would pay roughly 620 billion dollars to buy back every gun from every citizen in the country.

Now that might seem like a lot of money without thinking about it but this should be put into a greater context. Over three years, citizens will be encouraged to turn in their guns for the government to buy back for their full retail price. Let’s assume that over half of the citizens will turn in their guns, perhaps 60% or roughly 61 million citizens owning about 186 million guns. At $2000 per gun, this would cost about $124,000,000,000 per year. This is minimal in light of another factor: the cost of gun violence to the country. In a well-researched study by Mother Jones, conservative estimates place the cost of this violence at $229,000,000,000. Their team calculates that “Every time a bullet hits somebody, expenses can include emergency services, police investigations, and long-term medical and mental-health care, as well as court and prison costs. About 87 percent of these costs fall on taxpayers.” With the delta between the cost of the buyback and the cost of the violence being $105 billion, it stands that there is a pretty small chance America would not see overall savings to the tax payer and the society as a whole.

As with all government plans, there will always be some hold over citizens who refuse to cooperate for one reason or another. By our earlier estimates, there is about 40% of the gun-owning population left that will refuse to hand over their weapons. The last two years of the seizure will consist of the federal government forcibly taking the remaining 124 million guns from gun owners. There will unfortunately be resistance and even violence during this stage with the argument that unlike all other laws which, when not obeyed are forced upon citizens, this is a right enshrined in the constitution. But like all other laws, the greater good needs to be the first priority. During the final two years of phase 2, citizens will not be able to sell their guns back to the government, this will be known to citizens beforehand and will serve as an incentive to turn them in. Those who refuse until the last minute would not be able to reap the rewards of cooperation.

With the guns off the market and no longer available to the general population to buy and own, phase 3 would begin. This phase would mark the grand opening of FFA centers all across the country. These centers would house guns of all different kinds available to citizens before the creation of the Administration. Essentially these would be firing ranges but much larger, with a wider selection of guns to choose from, and would be completely free to US citizens. The centers would be open 24 hours per day and available to all citizens 18 years and older would only need to show an ID when entering. These would serve the purpose of allowing citizens to fire guns in a safe and responsible environment but would not allow citizens to own or operate guns without supervision. This phase would last for the remaining four years of the plan where citizens would be observed, the model would be adjusted, centers would be moved and opened to meet demand, and economic factors would be adjusted. In the end the purpose would be fulfilled, getting guns out of the hands of citizens to join the rest of the civilized world.

            I have always been a very optimistic person, the very fact that we are here as a nation proved to me that there are more good people than bad. But something like a gun enables the few bad people in our country to do a disproportional amount of bad that is no longer tolerable as a society. The constitution is simply a piece of paper that we all agree to. Throughout our history, it has been amended 17 times and the arguments had always been the same against them, but it was the society that came together to accept and understand that this was for the good of the nation. It seems like the only real reason to keep guns in a society is because those who like them have a disproportionate representation, 68% of citizens do not own guns and that is not to mention “92% saying they wanted expanded background checks, 87% supporting a ban for felons or people with mental health problems and 85% saying they would ban people on federal watchlists from buying guns.” The right to own a gun might be a partisan issue, but what is not a partisan issue is the need to take action. Einstein said we “cannot solve our problems with the same thinking we used when we created them”, it is time that our law makers follow the will of the people and do something different. There are a bunch of great plans out there, this is one more in waiting.

@FitzFile