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.

I posted this originally on March 2, 2018, after the massacre at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Florida.

Justice John Paul Stevens wrote a series of essays about the Supreme Court and its treatment of important issues like gun control. The Washington Post excerpted one of them here, in 2014.

“Following the massacre of grammar-school children in Newtown, Conn., in December 2012, high-powered weapons have been used to kill innocent victims in more senseless public incidents. Those killings, however, are only a fragment of the total harm caused by the misuse of firearms. Each year, more than 30,000 people die in the United States in firearm-related incidents. Many of those deaths involve handguns.

“The adoption of rules that will lessen the number of those incidents should be a matter of primary concern to both federal and state legislators. Legislatures are in a far better position than judges to assess the wisdom of such rules and to evaluate the costs and benefits that rule changes can be expected to produce. It is those legislators, rather than federal judges, who should make the decisions that will determine what kinds of firearms should be available to private citizens, and when and how they may be used. Constitutional provisions that curtail the legislative power to govern in this area unquestionably do more harm than good.

“The first 10 amendments to the Constitution placed limits on the powers of the new federal government. Concern that a national standing army might pose a threat to the security of the separate states led to the adoption of the Second Amendment, which provides that “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.”

“For more than 200 years following the adoption of that amendment, federal judges uniformly understood that the right protected by that text was limited in two ways: First, it applied only to keeping and bearing arms for military purposes, and second, while it limited the power of the federal government, it did not impose any limit whatsoever on the power of states or local governments to regulate the ownership or use of firearms. Thus, in United States v. Miller, decided in 1939, the court unanimously held that Congress could prohibit the possession of a sawed-off shotgun because that sort of weapon had no reasonable relation to the preservation or efficiency of a “well regulated Militia.”

“When I joined the court in 1975, that holding was generally understood as limiting the scope of the Second Amendment to uses of arms that were related to military activities. During the years when Warren Burger was chief justice, from 1969 to 1986, no judge or justice expressed any doubt about the limited coverage of the amendment, and I cannot recall any judge suggesting that the amendment might place any limit on state authority to do anything.

“Organizations such as the National Rifle Association disagreed with that position and mounted a vigorous campaign claiming that federal regulation of the use of firearms severely curtailed Americans’ Second Amendment rights. Five years after his retirement, during a 1991 appearance on “The MacNeil/Lehrer NewsHour,” Burger himself remarked that the Second Amendment “has been the subject of one of the greatest pieces of fraud, I repeat the word ‘fraud,’ on the American public by special interest groups that I have ever seen in my lifetime.”

Got that? The conservative Chief Justice Warren Burger, appointed by President Richard Nixon, said that the NRA had perpetrated a fraud on the American people by twisting the words of the Second Amendment to deregulate military weapons and put then in the hands of civilians.

Justice Stevens added:

”In response to the massacre of grammar-school students at Sandy Hook Elementary School, some legislators have advocated stringent controls on the sale of assault weapons and more complete background checks on purchasers of firearms. It is important to note that nothing in either the Heller or the McDonald opinion poses any obstacle to the adoption of such preventive measures.”