We don’t need to ‘ban’ guns. We just need to punish those who carry handguns by automatically applying federal law to anyone caught committing a crime while carrying a deadly weapon. What this means in reality is that anyone caught committing a crime (no matter how big or small) whilst carrying a gun (even if they did not use it in the crime) will automatically go to jail for 10 years. This was trialed in three states over two decades ago.

The outcome? Gun homicide fell by 30% in the first year. They even anonymously interviewed a cocaine dealer from the area, who was quoted in saying that all of the cocaine dealers he knew stopped carrying weapons because 10 years in jail was too costly… if they were caught with cocaine they could get up to 3 years in jail. But if they were caught with cocaine and a gun, they automatically got 10 years. With this one dealer earning over $200k a year selling drugs, 10 years in jail is a loss of $2 million which is just not sound business logic. Hence why he and other dealers stopped carrying. Hence why the gun homicides by criminals was cut so drastically so quickly. How was this kicked off?

By a slight change in state law making all people caught committing crimes while carrying a deadly weapon automatically tried in federal court instead of state court, and guaranteeing them 10 years in jail. Billboards were posted all around the areas, publicising the new application of existing laws. (I wrote a paper on this in Uni.)

So yes, there is a real solution (tried and tested) with a simple application of EXISTING federal gun laws which would focus the government’s anti-gun legislation on criminals, not your law-abiding gun owners (win-win). We could do it now.

Why does the NRA not want this? Because all the NRA cares about is selling guns to anyone and everyone. They care about making money not helping people or protecting homes. They are the face of big business.

If the ‘law-abiding’ gun owners of the US want to continue to exercise their right to bear arms, they should support real-world solutions and force the NRA to back the implementation of tighter federal law punishments for all criminals who commit crimes carrying deadly weapons. It is proven to work.

The world is not black and white (guns for everyone or guns for no one). The world is GREY. (Rules applied to punish criminals, lower gun homicides, and improve our way of life.) … I would like to point out that even if we did implement this law and cut gun homicides by 30% nationally in the first year (which would be great) we wouldn’t actually solve the problem of the massacres in the schools – the majority of which were committed by the children of people who legally own guns (‘law-abiding gun owners’).

That is obviously an issue to resolve in another manner. (Not sure how to solve that problem without limiting / minimising gun ownership across the board.)