Guns Again

Yesterday, as I do periodically, I tuned into a right-wing radio station here in Colorado Springs. We have several, plus a liberal talk station from Denver that is hard to receive, as we're about sixty miles from their transmitter.

Colorado conservative Mike Rosen was on, pontificating about the proposed gun control legislation under consideration by the state legislature here. The bill under discussion would require a background check before any transfer of a firearm, even a lender. Rosen was beside himself. "You have to have a background check just to lend your gun to someone else to go hunting, or face a possible prison sentence!" He was in high dudgeon.

It struck me that the way to avoid breaking such a law would be to refuse any requests to borrow a gun. Even if a gun owner did lend a gun, how would the authorities know it unless the borrower committed an illegal act, for example hunting out of season or exceeding bag limits. In that case, it does seem to me that the person who lent the gun does deserve some form of penalty.

Frankly, it's very unlikely that any judge would want to clog up the prison system with someone who merely lent a gun to a fellow citizen. I think the law is intended to curb straw purchases of guns or "loans" which are apt to be permanent.

Not being an attorney, I'll not explore the legal nuances of implied responsibilities here. Suffice to say, any gun owner does bear a moral  responsibility to protect the weapon and keep it away from anyone who  might be dangerous either to himself or the community.

If a gun owner keeps his gun in a locker at home and locks his house when he's away, and someone breaks in, and defeats the locker, and steals the gun to commit crimes, the owner bears little or no moral responsibility for what has happened. On the other hand, if that same gun owner leaves his weapon lying around the house and leaves the house unlocked, and a neighbor child wanders in and takes the gun, there is some moral culpability, even though the child was not invited in, and even though the child's parents are ultimately to blame for not attending to the child. Then suppose the gun owner's own child invited the neighbor kid into the house, and a tragedy followed. Certainly then the gun owner must be held to blame.

If, as happened here in Colorado in 1999, an adult buys guns and ammunition for juveniles, and the juveniles then shoot up a high school and kill a dozen people, that adult (she was eighteen at the time) should be held accountable by law. That's really what the bill under consideration here would provide, in my opinion, and Mr. Rosen should get off his high horse about it.