Arguments between pro- and anti-gun folks often end up at the "guns don't kill people, people kill people" chestnut. Once the argument gets to this, the car analogy is usually close to follow (warning: radically simplified argument):
Pro: Car accidents kill more people than guns every year. If it's all about saving lives, should we ban cars?
Anti: No, but maybe guns should take a cue from cars. To drive a car you need a license which must be periodically updated, and insurance; when you buy a car, even a used one, you have to register the car with the government in some form. Why not have these safeguards for guns?
I want to explore this so let's ignore the fact that there's no constitutional right to have a car. If there was such a right, though, it would probably be expressed as the right to a horse, or carriage, because even though the founders could not have possibly imagined the internal combustion engine, lithium-ion batteries, or hydrogen fuel cells, they'd have recognized the right to personal autonomy through private transportation. That's neither here nor there, however. The failure of the car analogy ("let's regulate guns like cars"), in my mind, is the fact that all of these safeguards in the car realm are due to the fact that the motorist wishes to operate his vehicle on public roads. The license, the tests, the mandatory insurance, the registration - it can easily be argued that this whole framework is in place because when I operate my motor vehicle - a multi-ton assemblage of metal and plastic capable of great speed - I am doing so alongside thousands of others. I am also doing so at, statistically, a significant risk of at least damaging my vehicle, or someone else's. The government has an interest in making sure I'm capable of doing this safely and that there is recourse (money for the injured party, taking my car away) if I do something stupid.
Imagine an auto racing hobbyist. His cars are fast, able to go from 0-60 in under 7 seconds and capable of an incredible top speed that you couldn't even hope to reach on a public highway with a production car. Most of the time his cars sit in his garage where he works on and tunes them. Every so often he'll get them trailered and take them to a private raceway where he drives them around the track, testing out the things he's done in the garage and making more adjustments. Maybe sometimes he'll compete against fellow racing hobbyists. His cars never touch a public road. Can you articulate a reason that these cars should be subject to the same regulatory framework as the car I drive to work? Indeed, if he limits all the driving he does in his life to taking his race cars around the track, should he even be required by law to obtain a driver's license? Given the time he puts into his cars, it would probably be prudent for him to insure them, but should he be legally obligated to insure them? Should he have to enter into the entire public road regulatory framework on the off chance that someone breaks into his garage, steals his car, and commits vehicular homicide with it, or crashes it into an occupied building?
Let's take the analogy in the opposite direction. Imagine that the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration has promulgated some new automobile regulations. The first is a mandatory speed governor on all automobiles that makes no changes to the engine but causes the car to top out at 75 mph - after all, does anyone really "need" to go faster than that? There is also a new category of automobiles for regulatory purposes: let's call them "muscle cars." Any car with an engine displacement over 3 liters is a muscle car. A car is also a muscle car if it has at least two of the following features (one in New York): a spoiler, a hood or roof scoop, a large-diameter exhaust pipe, wheels over a certain diameter, or tinted windows. Owners of muscle cars are required to take certain steps to secure their muscle cars, such as disengaging the battery when the car is not in use. High-octane fuel is limited to 20 gallons per month and you need to show an ID when you buy it, so the transaction can be recorded. Depending on your locality you may need to obtain special permission from your regional NHTSA office to purchase a muscle car.
How do you feel about this?
The car analogy, while not perfect, fits better when you limit the discussion to CCW. A person who carries concealed is walking around in public with a loaded firearm on their person. He is not the racing hobbyist, he is the person driving his car to work every day - of course that driver should have to prove his ability to safely operate the vehicle in public. I realize that this can be viewed as an argument for 1.) more stringent CCW testing and other requirements and 2.) ending the "constitutional carry" policies in places like Vermont (where, essentially, the 2nd amendment is all the justification one needs for carrying concealed). If we're going to use car analogies, though, CCW at any rate seems a marginally better place for them than guns as a whole.
Or perhaps we should quit with the analogies altogether - guns are unique things and you're always going to find something about them that doesn't fit into a framework established for something else.
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