Uvalde, Gun Reform, and Second Amendment Originalists

Tuesday’s senseless murder of 19 children and 2 teachers in Uvalde has left me in a bad mood all week. I think it’s the combination of being so soon after the mass shooting in Buffalo, plus the fact that almost all of the Uvalde victims were children. It’s disgusting, and it’s disgusting that Congressional Republicans won’t do a goddamn thing to fix our nation’s gun problem.

I feel like there have been a lot of threads surrounding the news from Uvalde, and I wanted to bring a few of them together. So let’s talk about what happened at Robb Elementary, what can be done, and — in the depressingly likely chance that nothing changes — what this means going forward.

I want to spend some time talking about what happened on Tuesday because it shows the fault in all of the pro-gun rights arguments. First, Robb Elementary is part of the Uvalde Consolidated Independent School District. UCISD’s spending on “security and monitoring services more than doubled in the past four years,” as reported by The New York Times. This included investing in two-way radios, threat assessment teams at each school, and, in the case of Robb Elementary in particular, fencing to enclose the campus. Moreover, Fox News reported that the district’s police department hosted an “active shooter scenario training” two months ago. One of the objectives in the training guide stated that each officer “will be able to compare/contrast an active shooter event and a hostage or barricade crisis.”

All of which is to say: UCISD was doing everything right. They spent money to make the school as secure as possible. They hired police officers. They trained those police officers. And yet, even under those conditions, Salvador Rolando Ramos found his way in through a propped-open door. This goes to show that no amount of money, no amount of preparation, is going to prevent tragedies like these. If it weren’t the propped-open door there would’ve been some other point of entry.

Next, Ramos made his way to Room 111 or 112, two rooms joined together by a bathroom. He began shooting, which is when the majority of the killings took place. Within a few minutes, three Uvalde Police Department officers showed up and tried to enter the classrooms, but they retreated after two of them were grazed by bullets.

Now, look, I understand that those officers were scared. I would be terrified. I would want to run away, too. But that’s why I didn’t choose to become a police officer. The NRA talking point that “the only thing that stops a bad guy with a gun is a good guy with a gun” doesn’t hold a lot of water if the good guys with guns aren’t willing to stop the bad guy with the gun in the heat of the moment. What’s worse, within half an hour at least 19 law enforcement officers were on the scene, but for some confounding reason they were treating the situation as a barricaded subject rather than an active shooter, even though students from Room 111 and 112 repeatedly called 9-1-1 over the course of 40 minutes. Police had to know students were still alive with the shooter, and yet they didn’t act. I guess the problem, as the NRA would have to concede, was that the local police weren’t good guys — they were just guys with guns.

So, that’s what happened. What can we do to prevent massacres like these in the future? A lot of things. I’ll start with the most radical and make my way down to the least radical.

First, let’s get rid of guns. All of them. According to the 2021 National Firearms Survey, 32% of Americans own guns — that’s somewhere around 81 and a half million people. Couple that with the fact that U.S. civilians own around 393 million firearms (393 million!), and that means each gun owner has an average of 4-5 guns. And that’s just an average — meaning there are definitely people who only have one handgun for protection, while there are also people who definitely have way more than 4-5 guns. Let’s start by confiscating all the guns.

A common rebuttal to this argument is that people will always find a way to get a gun if they want a gun. And that’s true, they will. But let’s at least make it harder for them to do so. And, to be clear, I’m not advocating for police to give up their guns, although that’s a pretty good idea, too. In fact, if civilians weren’t allowed to own guns then I wouldn’t be surprised if the number of cops shooting and killing (predominantly Black) civilians would also go down because police would no longer be scared of getting shot themselves. So let’s get rid of all guns.

But okay, if we can’t do that then let’s limit the type and amount of guns people can own. The Uvalde shooter used an AR-15, the same kind of semi-automatic rifle Kyle Rittenhouse brought with him to Kenosha. It’s the same gun used in the Parkland, FL shooting in 2018, the Las Vegas shooting in 2017, and the Sandy Hook shooting in 2012. It’s a terrifying-looking gun because it has a terrifying amount of power. No civilian needs a gun like this. Let’s get rid of those. Let’s also get rid of shotguns, high-capacity magazines, and any other kind of assault weapon that can cause a lot of carnage very quickly. It’s absurd that weapons like these exist and are so widely available.

Even if we can’t ban all guns, let’s start limiting how many guns you can purchase. No one needs more than one — maybe two — guns. The government isn’t going to come after you, and you shouldn’t be going after the government. There’s no need to own so many guns. But if we’re not even going to do that, then let’s limit the amount of ammunition each person can purchase. In the days before the shooting, Ramos bought over 1,600 bullets. 1,600 bullets! I’d love to see a system where purchases of more than, say, 500 bullets (in a single transaction or over multiple transactions in a short period of time) automatically triggers some kind of investigation.

Speaking of tracking, let’s instate a mandatory gun registry. This will track all gun owners and all the guns they’ve purchased. Let’s also require gun licenses for each and every gun owner. There’s a reason high school students have to take Driver’s Ed before they can operate a car, so why don’t we require a similar regulation for purchasing a gun?

Then there are universal background checks, which should absolutely flag any signs of mental health issues, including but not limited to instances of: bullying, misogyny, cruelty against animals, or other violent outbursts. These people cannot be trusted with a gun.

If we can’t do any of that, how about raising the age at which one can buy a gun from 18 to 21? Guns are arguably more dangerous than alcohol and tobacco. I mean, we have an agency called the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives for fuck’s sake — make it so that the same age restriction applies to all four.

As you’ve probably already gathered, I’m in favor of more regulation. I’m an extreme liberal, so not only do I favor gun control, I also favor a large government. I think that systems, institutions, businesses — pretty much any large organization — work best when they are held accountable for their actions. Oversight is important. It might be slow and bureaucratic, but it ensures the most equitable and just outcome for the most amount of people. There’s no reason why we shouldn’t apply those same regulatory standards to guns.

But I’m also a realist. I know this isn’t going to happen, not with the way our government functions (?) these days. So what does this mean going forward? A few things.

First, it means Republicans value guns over the lives of the American people, be it elementary schoolers, Black families shopping for groceries, or any number of others at work, at church, at school, at home. They are okay with this happening, and they are okay with it continuing to happen. The NRA’s line “the only thing that stops a bad guy with a gun is a good guy with a gun” is so profoundly stupid because it presupposes that the bad guy has a gun. Republicans can work with Democrats to make it harder for “bad guys” to get guns, but instead they offer their prayers (which does fuck-all to solve the problem), completely bullshit alternative solutions (schools having ony one door???), and wait until the current outrage simmers down. Republicans value guns over lives.

Next, it’s important to remember that it was 2008’s D.C v. Heller ruling that basically made it impossible to enact any kind of meaningful gun control in the United States. Antonin Scalia wrote the 5-4 majority opinion. Scalia, an originalist (which you may remember from a few weeks ago is someone who interprets the Constitution based on its original meaning at the time it was written), argued that the Second Amendment’s “militia” should not be confined solely to those in the military but to any person of military age. Prior to the Heller ruling, the Supreme Court did not believe the Second Amendment protected the right for individuals to own guns. This is a very, very recent development passed down by a Court packed with conservative justices. So don’t let anyone try to convince you that by taking away guns or implementing gun control it somehow violates their Constitutional rights. Justice Stevens, who wrote a dissenting opinion, noted that “the people” does not extend beyond the context of state-regulated militias, which is in line with other legal writings at the time. Justice Breyer also wrote a dissent, pointing out that “historical evidence from the time of ratification indicates that colonial laws regulated the storage and use of firearms in the home.” Meaning, there was gun control even at the time.

Finally, if people like Scalia and other originalists want to read the Constitution so literally, then they have to accept that the only guns protected by the Second Amendment are those available at that time. That means muskets, bayonets, and small pistols. They can’t have it both ways — abide by the Constitution at the time it was written, then allow exceptions for modern day weapons.