Make Gun Owners And Sellers Take Responsibility

Lawmakers Must Climb A Steep Hill To Stem Shootings

Commentary By John Morse

Special to the GPHN

The national gun lobby is extraordinarily proud that they successfully recalled me. And I am proud that every common sense gun safety measures we passed during my time in the Colorado Legislature that resulted in my recall remain on the books to this day.

During 2013, when this all went on, I was serving as the President of the Colorado State Senate. The legislative session started 26 days after the massacre of 20 kindergartners, six teachers and staff members at Sandy Hook Elementary in Newtown, Conn. It followed the mass shooting in the Aurora Theater that left 12 dead and 70 people injured just six months earlier.

How do you serve as an elected official and not do everything in your power to ensure the public’s safety by passing sensible, common sense gun reforms in such an environment? You don’t.

And if the result is a recall, well, that’s OK because preventing senseless gun violence is a hill every politician in the country should be willing to climb. Last month, on June 22, I was heartened to watch as Democrats in Congress staged a sit-in, demanding a vote on national gun-control legislation. But the country and our elected officials need to continue to catch up — even if more of them get recalled. They, too, must climb this steep hill.

What we did in Colorado

What was Colorado able to do to stem the tide of gun violence? Should the country do something similar in the wake of last month’s shooting in Orlando, which left 50 dead and 53 wounded? In a word, yes.

So what measures did we take, that resulted in my recall?

First, we required background checks, both mandating the seller require one, and requiring the buyer to obtain one – no matter where the gun is purchased. Before we passed that law in Colorado, people had to get a background check at a gun store or at a gun show, but not to buy a gun out of the trunk of someone’s car. Now people need a background check, no matter what. Since then, hundreds of transactions to people that can’t pass a simple background check have been thwarted.

The second thing we did was limit magazine size to 15 rounds. That means that after cranking out 15 bullets, a shooter needs to stop and reload. In a shooting rampage, that gives people a few vital seconds to escape or overpower that shooter.

The third thing we did was require people wanting a concealed weapons permit to bear the cost of the required background check themselves, instead of shifting it to the taxpayer.

Fourth, we required that a portion of the training required people obtain concealed weapons permit in person. Before this law was passed you could do 100 percent of the training online.

Finally, we passed a law to keep guns out of the hands of domestic abusers.

If these laws applied in all 50 states, we would have less gun violence and fewer gun related deaths. So, yes, the rest of the country should follow Colorado’s lead. However, even after doing so, we would not eliminate senseless gun violence and the related injuries and death. We would still suffer many of them—fewer of them to be sure—but still too many.

Here’s a solution

Zero gun violence deaths is a high standard and one that many in the gun lobby will outright reject. But I ask myself a simple question: “How many gun deaths am I willing to suffer in my family?” My answer is zero. Why should the country apply a different standard to your family? The country needs to do even more than Colorado did in 2013. The country needs to climb a higher hill than we did.

Congress is currently considering a Colorado-like background check requirement and related legislation that would prohibit those on the no-fly list from buying a gun. These are simple common sense proposals that should have been the law of the land generations ago. They are not enough. As others have pointed out, these alone would not have stopped the Orlando shooter.

Our focus should be on eliminating gun violence. We shouldn’t settle for reducing astronomically high rates of gun violence to slightly less than astronomically high rates of gun violence. We need to eliminate it. And we can, without confiscating a single gun or treading on anyone’s Second Amendment right.

The gun lobby talks about “responsible gun owners” and “responsible gun sellers.” But these are just ideas that don’t entirely exist in practice in our country right now. If we were to make them exist, gun manufacturers, sellers and owners would all work to find ways to eliminate gun violence instead of shrugging it off as “not their responsibility.” And we could make it happen nearly overnight.

The idea is simple. If a gun you made, sold, or purchased is used in any way that kills or injures another human being outside a situation that is clearly in self-defense, then you become a “responsible gun owner or seller.” You are responsible for the damage inflicted by that misused firearm. Period. As a result, you are required to pay each person or each person’s estate the cost that society sets in law.

Under this system you would bear the responsibility for the damage your gun inflicted. Moreover, this system allows for a responsible balance between the profit from these transactions and their actual cost to society.

Shifting responsibility

This is a dramatic shift from current policy. It would shift those costs away from taxpayers, victims, and the victims’ families, back to those who imposed the costs by putting their gun in the hands of someone who used it nefariously.

Part of the beauty of this proposal, is that it would allow for an instant realignment of the incentives. Gun makers, sellers, and owners would have an interest in making sure they never have to pay for an inappropriately used gun. That interest would be in complete alignment with society’s interest of not having guns used inappropriately.

We could, and likely will, tolerate our elected officials passing into law something short of this kind of responsibility. In that case, we need to be prepared for many more preventable gun violence deaths and injuries.

Of course, this is exactly what we are doing now: enduring gun violence and hoping against hope it only impacts someone else’s family.

John Morse is a former President of the Colorado State Senate. He served from 2007 to 2013. That year, after successful efforts to pass tougher gun laws, he became the first legislator in Colorado to be recalled by voters in his Colorado Springs district. Now a CPA living in Denver, he wrote this commentary exclusively for the Greater Park Hill News.