This post originally appeared on March 3, 2018.
The United States has minimal requirements for buying a gun. Although some cities restrict gun ownership, guns are readily available in most states and at gun shows and on the Internet. A purchaser might buy a gun in less than an hour.
Other countries have established high barriers to gun ownership. It is possible to buy a gun but not easy.
Japan
1. Join a hunting or shooting club.
2. Take a firearm class and pass a written exam, which is held up to three times a year.
3. Get a doctor’s note saying you are mentally fit and do not have a history of drug abuse.
4. Apply for a permit to take firing training, which may take up to a month.
5. Describe in a police interview why you need a gun.
6. Pass a review of your criminal history, gun possession record, employment, involvement with organized crime groups, personal debt and relationships with friends, family and neighbors.
7. Apply for a gunpowder permit.
8. Take a one-day training class and pass a firing test.
9. Obtain a certificate from a gun dealer describing the gun you want.
10. Buy a gun safe and an ammunition locker that meet safety regulations.
11. Allow the police to inspect your gun storage.
12. Pass an additional background review.
13. Buy a gun.
Japan has the lowest rate of gun homicides in the world.
Australia
After the Port Arthur Massacre in 1996, where a man methodically killed 35 random people and injured many more at a popular tourist site, Australia made it more difficult to get a gun. Gun ownership is a privilege, not a right.
1. Join and regularly attend a hunting or shooting club, or document that you’re a collector.
2. Complete a course on firearm safety and operation, and pass a written test and practical assessment.
3. Arrange firearm storage that meets safety regulations.
4. Pass a review that considers criminal history, domestic violence, restraining orders and arrest history. Authorities may also interview your family and community members.
5. Apply for a permit to acquire a specific type of weapon.
6. Wait at least 28 days.
7. Buy the specific type of gun you received a permit for.
The article in the New York Times describes the gun laws in 13 other countries.
Those who mistakenly claim that the Second Amendment protects their unlimited right to buy any kind of gun ignore the fact that Congress banned assault weapons from 1994-2004. Before the ban was passed, it was endorsed by former Presidents Ronald Reagan, Gerald Ford, and Jimmy Carter.
Diane Ravitch's blog 
Guns are for cowards.
Not everyone who owns a firearm is a coward. Some people own firearms for sporting use, and target shooting.
Does anyone own an assault weapon for sporting purposes?
The question answers itself. Firearms are a tool. You use the appropriate tool for the task. An AR-15 is not the appropriate tool for target shooting. Like using a wrench to pound a nail. A hammer is the appropriate choice.
A 12-gauge shotgun, is the right choice for skeet/trap shooting.
For paper targets, a rifle with a scope is appropriate.
In competitive target shooting, even a special ammunition called “match” is used, which will punch a clean hole in the paper target, instead of tearing it like a traditional “ball” bullet.
The point I was trying to make, is that not everyone who owns a firearm is a coward. There are legitimate reasons why individuals own and use firearms.
William Everyone knows that there are legitimate reasons to own a gun. Do you really not understand what the problem is? CBK
@Catherine: Not everyone knows that there are legitimate reasons to own firearms. “LetThemLearn” stated that “Guns are for cowards”[sic]
I dispute this.
There is definitely a problem. And I understand it. I am enough of a realist to know that there is no one easy solution. The problem of mass shootings must solved with an “holistic” approach, including better mental health services, identification of potential shooters, “red flags” in the social media, comprehensive background checks, etc.
“For every complex problem there is an answer that is clear, simple, and wrong” – H.L. Mencken
William Part of the “straw-man” politics on the right is to say, like “democrats want NO BORDERS,” they say democrats also want NO GUNS AT ALL. That’s the thoughtless, overly-simplified, extreme-reactionary response that I think HLM was talking about. From either direction, we cannot define the whole by the extremes that exist at both ends without dooming the whole democratic project. CBK
I couldn’t agree with you more. In Japan, where guns are arguably the hardest to come by, a very small number of those labelled “anti-social” thugs(i.e.,Yakuza mobsters) are owning the handguns. Another case may be when an unknown hunter in rural areas happens to be a potential gunman by using a hunting rifle against his neighbors, passers-by, and/or acquaintances.
A recent gun-related incident was that a coward 21-year-old man snatched a .38 caliber by physically assaulting a cop with his martial arts skills from his previous experience as a self defense force. He was on search warrant for a couple of days hiding in the forests until he got arrested. Luckily, there were no gun shots and no one got hurt.
Gun Control in the Wild West: https://www.smithsonianmag.com/history/gun-control-old-west-180968013/
A fascinating article, Yvonne! Thanks for sharing it!
Actual history has a way of dispelling our myths of what we think it is or should be.
letting the nra members not control the nra is subversion of democracy. It is not completely different from privatization of what is supposedly public schools. Not as directly violent, but the principle is the same.
Gun ownership has the same deregulated theme as private charter schools and vouchers in this country. When government refuses to regulate, it is the regular citizens that pay the price for the failure of government to intervene.
The requirement that guns and ammo be kept in a safe is an important one. I would like to see this taken one step further: The safes should be wired, “smart safes” that can be opened only in one of two ways:
Calling the local police department to explain the purpose for opening it (e.g., to put in newly purchased ammo, to retrieve guns for going to a shooting range or to go hunting)
Using an emergency unlock that automatically notifies the police, via the net, that there is an emergency underway at the location
Bob,
You are assuming that the gun owner wants the gun for legitimate reasons but many of the crazies think they need to defend themselves against the police and Army.
Yes, unfortunately, you are right. But the smart safe would provide some protection against these nutcases–the many, many right-wing militia members in the US who combine, weirdly, ultra-nationalism with hatred of the U.S. government and who think, bizarrely, that their pea shooters would be enough for them to make some sort of heroic stance against a government armed with predator drones, drone tanks, laser cannons, railguns, taser shockwave weapons, microwave weapons, and on and on and on.
Just heard a news conference on the El Paso, TX, massacre that the shooter bought his gun legally and that under TX law, he was allowed to carry it openly! Yes, I am damn well shocked even though we have been through this drill too many times to count.
Mass shooting is California, Texas, Ohio, and Illinois this week. But that’s just the beginning of it. Here, a list of shootings in the U.S. IN THE LAST 72 HOURS. It’s a long, long, long list, spread out over many pages: https://www.gunviolencearchive.org/last-72-hours?page=1
cx: Mass shootings in, ofc
Diane It occurred to me that the relatively random shootings is how democracy does what a fascist like Putin does when he murders his opponents:
Democracy: Inordinate exercise of power (from below upwards) /\ (before it dies)
Fascist State: Inordinate exercise of power (from above downwards) \/
CBK,
One kind of murder is targeted to silence dissidents, journalists, critics. The other is random. Obama was President during Sandy Hook. No one blamed him. No one should. Trump gets the blame for inciting young white men to kill and rightly so.
Diane I don’t think the general reference to directions of power conflicts with your comments about our specific situation. In that situation, Trump is still dealing with a 200+ year-old democracy. He wants to hold power like Putin, but cannot (yet); and so, instead of ordering it directly from above (so to speak) as Putin does, he is indirect in his consistent deformation of persons from afar who, with his finger on the pulse of deep-set cultural problems, he can at least hope they will do his bidding for him, apparently on their one. He can and probably will disavow it. Watch how he disavows, half-heartedly in some cases, any connection with anyone who has been caught in their corruption. CBK
The Don, Cheeto (“Little Fingers”) Trumpbalone, is a low-IQ individual with little knowledge, but he has one skill that is common among mobsters like him–knowing how to position his overt operations just within the limits of the law, how to get others to do the dirty work, how to dress himself in plausible deniability. He honed this skill in many years of doing business with crooks connected to the construction rackets in New York and New Jersey, in many years of stiffing contractors, in many years of financing his operations with payment in cash from Russian oligarchs. It’s now habitual with him. It was the same with Gotti. He was far from bright or capable, but he had this low cunning. Here we are. The return of the Teflon Don. But eventually, with these crooks, it catches up them.
I’ve been thinking about this a lot today and will now express what I’ve kept inside for years. It will sound callous and barbarous. I want these massacres to happen every day, especially in those communities that vote for NRA candidates (which, unfortunately do not include El Paso or Dayton). I want this to become a daily occurrence, I want to see NRA-supporting people be the victims. I want to see police brutality hit affluent white communities every day. I want to see this hit schools. This is the only way things will change. It’s got to hit home with everyone. We need to have a never-ceasing wave of violence every day. These sporadic massacres are not changing a goddamn thing.
Callous and barbarous, yes, because a product of vengeful feeling, not even thinking. The horror does move us all. Gun availability may or may not be the cause. The risk in gun control, in spite of Bob’s argument, is that an administration will be elected that wants to take away individual rights and freedoms. An unarmed populace would have to submit. An armed populace, i.e. militia, could fight back. Given the current rhetoric of the left, it seems like a possible scenario. They say Trump wants to do that. I don’t believe that at all.
You are a typical willfully ignorant idiot who would pervert what the framers of the Constitution intended for your own cynical, selfish desires. You have absolutely no understanding of what the framers intended when they used the term militia. Article 1, Section 8 reads: “To provide for calling forth the Militia to execute the Laws of the Union, suppress Insurrections and repel Invasions;” which means that militias are intended to protect the nation and its federal government. Nowhere—NOWHERE—is it stated or implied that citizens must have the means to “fight back” against the constitutionally approved government. NOWHERE. For confirmation of this, read the next sentence: “To provide for organizing, arming, and disciplining, the Militia, and for governing such Part of them as may be employed in the Service of the United States, reserving to the States respectively, the Appointment of the Officers, and the Authority of training the Militia according to the discipline prescribed by Congress;” NOWHERE is there any provision to allow for militias to overthrow the government. It specifically reads that militias “may be employed in the Service of the United States” not against it. NOWHERE in the Constitution is there a provision that individuals can take the law into their own hands to express political violence. NOWHERE.
The second amendment reads, “A well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed.” The right of of the people to keep and bear Arms is intended to serve the security of a free State. Not the nonsense you spew.
The perversion of the second amendment and the intent of the Constitution has been perverted and bought by the radicalized version of the NRA that has lived since the leadership of Harlon Carter and his acolytes. It has absolutely nothing to do with the intent of the founders’ vision of militias or the right to bear arms in service of the republic.
To hell with you and anyone who buys into your twisted view of the Constitution and American history. The sooner the better.
“The risk in gun control, in spite of Bob’s argument, is that an administration will be elected that wants to take away individual rights and freedoms. An unarmed populace would have to submit. An armed populace, i.e. militia, could fight back.”
You are such a f***ing idiot! The whole point of the American experiment is, in self-government, reason would negate the need of violence to create a more perfect union. The use of force was only intended to protect the republic from foreign invasion, never to pit brother against brother (or sister against sister). Federalist No. 29 makes this explicitly clear.
Here is the passage that has been bastardized by people like you: “In order to cast an odium upon the power of calling forth the militia to execute the laws of the Union, it has been remarked that there is nowhere any provision in the proposed Constitution for calling out the POSSE COMITATUS, to assist the magistrate in the execution of his duty, whence it has been inferred, that military force was intended to be his only auxiliary. There is a striking incoherence in the objections which have appeared, and sometimes even from the same quarter, not much calculated to inspire a very favorable opinion of the sincerity or fair dealing of their authors. The same persons who tell us in one breath, that the powers of the federal government will be despotic and unlimited, inform us in the next, that it has not authority sufficient even to call out the POSSE COMITATUS. The latter, fortunately, is as much short of the truth as the former exceeds it. It would be as absurd to doubt, that a right to pass all laws NECESSARY AND PROPER to execute its declared powers, would include that of requiring the assistance of the citizens to the officers who may be intrusted with the execution of those laws, as it would be to believe, that a right to enact laws necessary and proper for the imposition and collection of taxes would involve that of varying the rules of descent and of the alienation of landed property, or of abolishing the trial by jury in cases relating to it. It being therefore evident that the supposition of a want of power to require the aid of the POSSE COMITATUS is entirely destitute of color, it will follow, that the conclusion which has been drawn from it, in its application to the authority of the federal government over the militia, is as uncandid as it is illogical. What reason could there be to infer, that force was intended to be the sole instrument of authority, merely because there is a power to make use of it when necessary? What shall we think of the motives which could induce men of sense to reason in this manner? How shall we prevent a conflict between charity and judgment?”
Read it. And read the concluding sentences again: “It being therefore evident that the supposition of a want of power to require the aid of the POSSE COMITATUS is entirely destitute of color, it will follow, that the conclusion which has been drawn from it, in its application to the authority of the federal government over the militia, is as uncandid as it is illogical. What reason could there be to infer, that force was intended to be the sole instrument of authority, merely because there is a power to make use of it when necessary? What shall we think of the motives which could induce men of sense to reason in this manner? How shall we prevent a conflict between charity and judgment?”
GregB Thank you for recalling here these exact, eloquent, and well-reasoned statements. CBK
An armed populace could never fight back against a tyrant who controlled the military. The ones with the guns would be on the side of the tyrant and would be woefully underarmed to stop a trained military.
GregB and Diane
From Wikipedia: “The Posse Comitatus Act is a United States federal law signed on June 18, 1878, by President Rutherford B. Hayes. The purpose of the act – in concert with the Insurrection Act of 1807 – is to limit the powers of the federal government in using federal military personnel to enforce domestic policies within the United States.”
Trump thinks he is beyond the law, however, and so, if he remains, that Act will ALSO become moot. CBK
Is anyone else having their comments blocked?
Here’s a link I tried to post on the El Paso piece but it got blocked:
https://www.commondreams.org/views/2019/08/05/we-have-studied-every-mass-shooting-1966-heres-what-weve-learned-about-shooters
Okay, maybe that piece maxed out its comment space. Here’s my comment:
Here’s a comprehensive bit of research on the personality profiles of shooters:
(see above)
As if other countries did not have the same spectrum of personalities. The difference that makes a difference in the US is simply our gun laws, their interpretation, and enforcement, things which have changed radically just recently.