In the finale of my Los Angeles Times on-line debate with Christopher Lockwood, the U.S. editor of The Economist, we each get a magic wand with which to create whatever gun laws we would like. He offers some proposals which, he frankly admits, are politically impossible. Waving my Wand of Sensible Consensus I propose:
1. Don’t disarm people whom the government will not/cannot protect.
2. Good policemen don’t own bad guns. So if a gun ban has a police exemption, its premises are probably flawed, as I show with some examples.
3. Obey the Constitution. If it’s too hard to do that all at once, start with Article I. So “interstate commerce” is not equivalent to “everything,” and so Congress stops exercising the usurped power to regulate/prohibit things like simple intrastate possesion of guns.
4. Recognize that guns can be used for good and for bad. Make sure that gun policies enhance, rather than destroy, the widespread social benefits which flow from guns in the right hands.
It was a great honor to debate Mr. Lockwood, and I hope that our exchanges can help people on all sides of the gun issue approach it with greater understanding.