Thread by @designmom

I'm from a small town in Utah. Hunting was a big deal. We’d get out of school for the annual deer hunt. My best friend (she was also the prom queen) had her own gun cabinet. My brothers got BB guns when they joined Cub Scouts. So while I’m not a gun owner and don’t want to be…

… I’ve always tried to be supportive of gun rights. That has changed. I’ve come to believe a gun ban in the U.S. is inevitable.

You might have some questions:

Q. I'm a responsible gun owner. Why deny the rights of law-abiding gun owners?

A. Saying “I’m a responsible gun owner” is meaningless. It's not credible to claim you are a responsible gun owner unless that term is legally defined and people are required to conform to it.

Q. You want a full gun ban? It could never happen here.

A. Lots of things Americans thought could never happen here, have happened. In the 90's, no one could imagine that gay marriage would be legal nationwide. People predicted it would take several generations! It didn't.

Q. Why would *more* gun laws work?

A. Current gun laws are arguably a charade. Gun laws change as you cross state borders. No background checks are needed to buy from private sellers or gun shows. There is no funding to keep the databases complete.

wired.com/2015/10/americ…

There is no agreed upon standardized process which allows checks to occur. The loopholes completely undermine the gun laws that exist.

lawcenter.giffords.org/gun-laws/polic…

Yes I love the idea of effective nationwide gun laws. I know and love people across the country fighting for them. I follow and support the work of @ShannonWatts and the dedicated @MomsDemand members. My daughter Olive helped organize and lead the @AMarch4OurLives in Oakland.

If gun owners had stepped up and fought for gun safety laws, I’d be fighting with them, and a gun ban would never cross my mind. Instead, many gun advocates continue to fight gun law reform. So we shouldn’t be surprised if making them all illegal becomes a possibility.

Q. If there was a gun ban, only law-abiding citizens would obey. Criminals would hoard guns and ammunition.

A. I agree it will take some time to get the illegal guns out of play. But that is just a question of time. In the meantime, gun deaths will be drastically reduced.

And only a national ban would have an impact in a country like this one, where everyone can travel anywhere.

fivethirtyeight.com/features/gun-l…

Gun owners need to step up and more vigorously support the debate, and the solutions. Gun owners, after all, have the most to lose. Excepting, of course, victims, all the families of those killed, and the communities trampled by gun violence.

Q. Making heroin and meth illegal hasn't worked, why would it work with guns?

A. Guns aren’t addictive and can’t be grown in backyards and fields like drugs. They require high level machining, manufacturing knowledge, and capital. Comparing guns and drugs doesn't work.

We *know* that guns can be eradicated, because it's been done before. Many countries have drastically reduced the amount of guns in the possession of both citizens and criminals, bringing death rates from gun violence to almost nothing.

businessinsider.com/gun-deaths-nea…

It would take strict laws and time. Perhaps 5-10 years. Then we would rarely if ever see these senseless, totally preventable gun deaths. So even though I've always been supportive of gun rights, I would now support a full ban.

Personally, I believe it is actually inevitable.

Q. You talk about simple regulations. Like what? What laws would prevent gun violence?

A. No solution will be perfect, and one idea does not necessarily preclude another. We can try many different things. Here are 10 smart regulations I've seen suggested:

- A true national background check for all gun sales with a fully funded complete database.
- Taking a harder look at who has the ‘right’ to own a gun.

- Defining what responsible gun ownership looks like. Are there mandates there?

- Making gun owners responsible for whatever happens with their gun.

- Making high-capacity weapons illegal.

- Requiring a mandatory 2-month waiting period.

- Requiring firearm insurance.

- Requiring firearm registration.

- A lifetime ban from any gun ownership for domestic violence convictions (with funding to enforce).
- If you are being investigated for any domestic violence crime you lose access to guns until it has been resolved.

Q. Guns are not the problem. Guns don't kill people, people kill people.

A. It is a fantasy to argue that the wide availability of cheaper, faster, more effective high-capacity weapons don't play a big role in the gun problem.

theatlantic.com/business/archi…

Q. But what about a corrupt government? If you remove guns, you remove every protection we have from a corrupt government.

A. Your gun isn't big enough, even combined with all the other ones, to protect yourself from our military.

Rising up against the government, like is proposed by sideline militia groups and white supremacist groups, is an illusion. Of all the really thoughtless arguments against gun law reform, this one is the most ridiculous. It's time we stopped pretending it's a legitimate argument.

Q. Machine guns have been around since before the 1950s — that's proof society is more evil now.

A. You're being insincere if you argue that because machine guns "existed" by the 1950s that their "existence" is the same thing as "cheap and readily available to a mass market."

Every country with humans has anger, hate, evil and crazy people. The reason we have wildly higher gun violence levels is our widespread gun culture and wide availability of guns, including assault weapons. Not because Americans are uniquely evil, angry, hateful or mentally ill.

Decade after decade, society and culture has improved with dramatically less violence.

Except for shootings, which are the direct result of mass marketing the tools for that type of crime.

slides.ourworldindata.org/war-and-violen…

Q. The only way to stop a bad guy with a gun, is a good guy with a gun.

A. Let's stop pretending that things have to remain the way they are and no changes are needed or possible! And that a separate "criminal or insane" class of people commit these terrible crimes in the U.S.

This thing where gun owners say: “Nothing will completely fix the problem, so oh well, we simply have to allow the slaughter of our children, because: 2nd Amendment.” That’s over. We're done listening to gun owners repeat slogans instead of demanding common sense action.

Maybe as a gun owner you can act fast, ditch the NRA, make all gun sales go through a background check, fully fund government agencies to ensure the database is complete, and other obvious things most gun owners support. But I think it may be too late for smaller reforms.

Q. I’d like to see you try to take my guns. You and what army?

A. If a gun ban becomes a law, and you choose not to be a law-abiding citizen, then it would follow you’ll need to face the associated consequences, like any other criminal.

But if you’re picturing a bold stand-off at your doorway, where you defend yourself with a stash of guns, that sounds like a pathetic fantasy.

Social pressure would work well here, similar to how it functioned with smoking bans.

Grandpa says: “I won’t give up my guns.”

Grandkid says: “Grandpa, I don’t want to come to your house because guns are illegal and I’m afraid they’re going to take you to jail. And houses with guns are less safe.”

Suddenly, Grandpa decides he can give up his guns.

Q. The NRA would never let a gun ban happen.

A. The NRA is the worst advocate of gun owners. These kids who see their classmates slaughtered, who do active-shooter drills, are going to grow and push much stronger gun laws than the modest changes the NRA has rejected for years.

And since gun owners and the NRA have no solutions that don't sound idiotic to most citizens (like arming school teachers), then it’s hard to have sympathy for what is coming some day soon, and probably sooner than those in the NRA bubble expect.

npr.org/2018/02/26/588…

Those of us without a horse in the race are pretty fed up with the weak excuses against the most *basic* gun safety regulations. And we are growing in number. And we know one solution that will absolutely reduce gun violence: A complete gun ban.

bbc.com/news/world-us-…

No one was ever coming for your guns.

But that is probably changing now that gun safety opponents have offered up nothing but baloney in the face of dead children.

It's just a question of time before voters — including many gun owners — do come for your guns.

Obviously, I could be wrong. But I predict America will simply remove guns from society like so many other civilized countries have successfully done. And gun owners will have no one to blame but themselves.

It’s too late. You’ve lost your guns. A gun ban is inevitable.