"Philosophy is common sense with big words."
James Madison

Prologue:

This is an insistent article for readers troubled that our current politcal path leads to the unspeakable and final product of mistrust. It is a correspondence of some urgency. Contemporary claims of existential threat are misdireted. Again, this essay is about the real threat to our Republic: distrust.

While the overt goal of the Red-flag / Green-flag law is to reduce gun crime, its core target is actually trust: increasing the public's trust in armed citizens and making governments more trustworthy in filling their primary responsibility.

The primary government responsibility is insuring our personal liberty -- our individual freedom. The continued existence of governments -- from dictatorships to monarchies and democracies -- always depends on how well that government insures personal freedom. It is just that simple and just that complicted.

This truism stems from the primal law that spawned the Magna Carta: the law that governs the way humans think. From our creation, Homo sapiens have had free-will: the ability to choose our next actions. We are loathed to relinquish it. It defines us.

To borrow from the ancient story, Adam was free to develop his own moraility: the rule-set guiding his action within his reality. The only foil for Adam's free-will was the consequence of natural law.

When "Eve" arrived, neither was alone. For both, life had new possibilities. While the consequence of natural law was similar for Adam and Eve, neither had developed a moral rule-set adequate for their new reality. So together, they had to agree on a rule-set accommodating the other; a rule-set allowing them to pursue happiness in their joint venture while protecting both of their individual lives and their personal liberties.

Thus, community began.

In order to live harmoniously, new communities develop rule-sets always abridging individual free-will. While morality is the individual's behavioral rule-set, ethics is the community's behavioral rule-set.

Looking at the bigger picture, community is a plurality of individuals sharing some proximate reality. Just as individuals define their morality, communities define their shared ethics. Obviously, some individual actions might harm the well-being of another. So, ethics establish compromised boundaries on interpersonal action; these limits must still honor individual liberty (minimal infringement) while providing community benefit. To varying degreees, both community membership and secession are a choice... but not always free.

Governments are special communities. They are established to enforce basic ethical rule-sets (laws) that must be observed within a proximate reality... realities usually bounded by physical location. Individual free-will cannot ignore the rules without penalties and secession from this community is ominous. Governments force subtle levels of membership on all individuals within adequate proximity.

Again, government's primary responsibility is to allow as much individual free-will as possible... only preventing entities from inflicting material harm to individuals without their consent. This is basic government.

Revolution does not start within simple basic government. It starts when rulers choose to do more than that required by the primary responsibility. Britain's Lord Acton once suggested: "Because they have power they think themselves wise.

Lord Action's cynicism is cautionary and occasionally on point. For example, when Vladimir Lenin said: "It is true that liberty is precious; so precious that it must be carefull rationed"... his goals seem quite transparent. For Lenin, government is liberty's "gatekeeper." He negates that every human was born with a free-will that thinks it should decide how to live. Natural law already "rationed" liberty without Lenin's help.

While the psychology of this issue is later discussed in more depth, free-will is at the core of every revolution. So, to avoid even the perception of overreach, enduring Red-flags are only issued by juries and Green-flags by a plurality of non-government entities. Government retains only the power needed to accomplish gun crime reduction. Similar thinking prompted Henry David Thoreau to write:

"That government is best which governs the least."

Two thousand years of political history convinced our Founders, we are a safer social system when all trustworthy citizens can elect to be armed. Whether done by foreign or domestic power, forcibly taking individual liberty is tyrannical oppression. Such tyranny only succeeds when power balances to the oppressor's favor. When the law fails, armed citizens are the democratic power equalizer. Whether the despot is a carjacker, a mass killer or head-of-state, armed citizens are their bane. The better the citizenry is armed, the more the balance tips in favor of democratic liberty. Thus, the Bill Of Rights appoints armed citizens as the final bastion against all enemies foreign and domestic.

Trained well armed citizens vetted for soundness of mind are not a threat to peaceful neighbors. Nor are they a threat to governments not causing them to collectively conclude government is thwarting their liberty. Thus, the founders plan.

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This segment adds depth to why the proposed Red-flag / Green-flag law is structured as it is. It offers a method for identifying individuals with thinking disabilities... disabilities provoking unjustified violence; such persons are called miscreants herein. Stigmatization of such people is minimized because Green-flag vetting is their choice and private... private unless exacebating circumstances arise. Yet, gun availability to miscreants is quite restricted... thwarted before they act and before there are victims. Further, to enhance public safety, people choosing to arm themselves are formally trained in gun safety, firearms ethics and recognizing danger signs in people they might mentor.

While mass shootings are only a tiny fraction of violent crime, they warrant extensive focus because they are flagitious (gut-wrenching) crimes made even worse by killing the most innocent among us. Because they are so grievous and guns are used, they drive some public opinion toward a seemingly quick easy solution: get rid of guns.

Unsurprisingly, other millions see banning guns as a great threat. They exclaim: "Suppressing speech and guns is a despotic tactic that destroys trust... the actual existential threat to the Republic."

Clearly, we are divided. And trust is central. The following are pithy samples of what is being said: Why trust strangers to have guns at all? Why does anyone need a gun today? Only perverts want guns. Can government be trusted when they disarm their people? Why does government need to know who has guns? Is gun registration so they know where to send the confiscation army? Why do some countries have less crime than we do? Why does government make crimes of innocuous acts... acts with no victims?

Because such trust-centered ideas drive the division, they are addressed here, even down to fundamental psychology. Thus, the underlying rationale for this law's structure is exposed. There is even a glimpse of hope... hope beyond quelling mass shootings.

The Proposal:

First, an overview of the law itself. This law requires firearms safety and ethics training. Novices are trained, tested and vetted by experienced instructors. Such training and vetting have been part of the world-wide gun subculture and police training for centuries. Our gun subculture is ready... and, doing much of it now. Most states already offer Hunter Safety Training. In essence, this law only crystallizes and codifies legacy conventions nationwide. Further, this law will likely increase both the depth and perceived legitimacy of the gun subculture in the U.S.

Gun ownership (chattel ownership) is of little importance. This law governs gun possession: (Who could pull the trigger right now?). All gun possession must be supervised by a Green-flag Certified person. Unsupervised gun possession would be a federal crime and perpetrators subject to arrest. For innocent purpose, this is much less onerous than it first seems (also see SIGNIFICANT FEATURES)... and, getting Green-flag Certified is not hard. Yet, miscreants must be quite clever indeed, for nefarious gun possession. And then, don't get caught.

Conviction must have consequence.

Green-flag Certified status is easy for anyone twenty-one years of age, sound of mind and without a Red-flag. They can supervise themselves and anyone else they choose. In the process of getting Green-flag Certified, they will be trained in gun safety and ethics as well as vetted for soundness of mind.

Green-flag Certification is not issued by governments. It is issued by a plurality of non-government organizations each sanctioned by at least one state. All Green-flags are valid everywhere the U.S. Government has jurisdiction.

It can be argued, a Green-flag Certification is a gun permit; and it effectively is. However, governments do not issue them and cannot have a list of who holds them. Governments only set the standards for the process used to train and vet candidates. Governments are forbidden by law from requiring Green-flag Certification Organizations to submit any information about a Green-flag Certified persons without the holder's permission OR, a search warrant naming the individual as crucial to a criminal investigation.

Green-flag Certification holders may possess SmallArms for any lawful purpose... alone, without external supervision. Except by contractual obligation, other permission, permits or licenses are not required by any government for SmallArms possession. Green-flag Certified holders are free to buy and sell guns among themselves and use the U.S. mail or other available bailment services to transport guns among themselves. While Green-flag Certified persons are the "front-line" in this law's training and vetting process, only Green-flag Certification Organizations can issue Green-flags.

The Red-flag (the other of the two flags) restricts holders to possessing only unloaded guns... and then, only under Green-flag Certified supervision. A "durable" Red-flag only results from a conviction using the same due process as that required for any felony conviction. Detail about temporary flag found under SIGNIFICANT FEATURES.

Persons with no flags, may freely possess guns for any lawful purpose with adequate supervision by a Green-flag Certified mentor. This supervision is adequate when the supervised person does not commit gun involved criminal acts while under supervision; the Green-flag Certified supervisor has some liability toward assuring this remains true. Possession of SmallArms by unsupervised persons is unlawful.

A written supervision agreement is recommended.

More than gun crime is at stake.

In the last few decades, the worst among us are mass-murdering children and teachers in their classrooms, murdering your neighbors while they grocery shop, murdering families watching a parade. In this same period, most countries in the world have experienced a decline in their homicide rates. The public is outraged. Laws passed since Chicago's 1929 mass-murder, have failed to make even Chicago safe enough.

What is wrong? As the United States leads this planet in exploring beyond Earth and the U.S. Navy suspects visitants from beyond Earth may be watching us, we are at an evolutionary juncture over issues far more profound than gun-control.

Yet, gun-control is a litmus test. Balancing individual liberty with community is not new. It has been a human challenge since our first tribe, our first town, our first country. It is a topic addressed by every religion. It was central to our Constitutional Convention in 1787.

The trust between the individual and community is a layer of reflection deeper than gun-control alone. In this layer lies the answer to: What is wrong?

If we want to stop the killing of children in their classrooms, the killing of grocery shoppers and parade watchers -- and, if we want to convince visitants the Earth's Humankind Experiment is successful -- we need diligent work... work starting with that required to understand ourselves.

Nearly a century of law, seventeen presidents and forty-six congresses since the Saint Valentine's Day Massacre leave a trail of underachieved promise and fractured trust. The division bifurcates with one group seeming to believe:

U.S. culture is so widely debased that it cannot be fixed without reducing freedoms for all gun owners. They tout outlawing auto-loading and automatic weapons along with gun accessories that also increase fire-power. Further, they argue, there is no legitimate need for these arms or accessories; such are instruments of war not intended for private citizens and their further dissemination only adds to the problem. Every gun transfer must require a background check done through a licensed firearms dealer... every one, stranger or grandchild.

The other group argues:

U.S. culture is narrowly debased with only a small fraction of largely identifiable people committing crime. Mass killers are obvious if we would only look. Isolating miscreants from all guns would plummet gun crime. Largely they agree, background checks are important. But using the Internet would take seconds... without cost or delay and no licensed dealer needed. Many in this group have become suspicious of despotic elements in the ruling-class wanting to reduce threats to ruling power by further disarming the citizenry. A Wyoming cattle rancher wishes for machine-gun fire-power when he alone must protect his herd from ten middle-of-the-night rustlers with horses, guns and livestock trucks. These are some of the very reason for the Second Amendment. Finally, this group thinks almost all of their neighbors are trustworthy.

A Look At Evidence:

Saying that banning guns reduces gun crime is a tautology. Of course it does. Tautologies are inane necessarily true statements.

Suggesting that banning automobiles would reduce vehicular crime and banning chemistry would rduce fatal explosions is equally mindless. The crimes they imply involve violent perpetrators murdering victims. Whether discussing Darrell Brooks driving a sport utility vehicle, Timothy McVeigh exploding fertilizer bomb or Stephen Paddock shooting an AR-15, murder is the significant issue and mental derangement the cause. Instrumentality is subordinate. Yet, well informed government and media leaders frequently spew this tautology as if they said something significant.

Moreover, gun-death is the term often used... more than half of which are suicides. Suicide has no need to overpower a victim so guns may be expedient but are neither necessary or causal. Quite like murder.

The core of the gun-banning argument is that gun prevalence promotes antisocial behavior; gun-culture threatens democracy itself, is sometimes added. As will soon be seen, germane widely available evidence fails to support this. Since smart well informed people advance gun-banning, this promotion "smacks" of hidden goal and sophistry.

[Sophistry, is a term meaning: a clever fallacious argument intending deception. It is an all too common public policy ploy and a necessary duplicity tool.]

Here, murder is our focus because victim-hood is not voluntary. So, how effectively does reducing "gun-density" (number of gun per 100 people) reduce the homicide rate (number of homicides per 100 thousand people)? Said another way, would banning guns affect the homicide rate independent of other causes... or, fewer guns, less killing?

Thanks to the Australian experiment, world homicide rates help answer that question. In response to a 1996 mass shooting, Australia forcefully purchased and destroyed well over a million citizen owned firearms from their 20 million population. This reduced the private holdings by at least a third. Obeying the tautology, firearms related death (including suicide) quickly dropped by a factor of almost four, in four years. [Notably, their suicide-by-hanging increased by just over 52%.]

So, did the confiscation work? Looking at Australia's homicide rate before, during and after the confiscation (1990 through 2019) shows their overall homicide rate dropped in half. That correlation suggests that lowering gun-density might cause homicide reduction... but, that would only be true if gun availablility is a driving homicide cause and little else caused the drop. Alone, the Australian experiment is not enough.

Another experiment is needed... another "petri dish". This one without the gun-crushing "antibiotic." Examining another sequestered venture in the same time-frame might further disclose the relationship between gun-density and homicide-rate. Possibly, there were other wide-spread causes for the rate drop not involving guns. This "other-cause" theory would be strongly supported if gun-density increased while homicide-rates decreased.

How did the U.S. do? Over the same three decades, our homicide rates also dropped to about half the beginning rate. And, our gun-density also dramatically changed. FBI statistics show the background checks, needed for gun purchase, tripled from about 8 million annually to 23 million in 2015. An astounding one person in 14 bought a gun in 2015.

During the sample period, Australia's homicide rate and the U.S. homicide rate dropped virtually the same amount; this while U.S. gun-density increased due to millions of new guns and Australia reduced their gun-density by about a third. Even Australia's selective banning of "high-fire-power" weapons left any progress in the statistical noise.

Actually, most of the world's homicide rates dropped in the last 30 years. Many "sequestered ventures", like the U.S. and Australia, dropped to about half. While a comprehensive analysis of all the true causes is beyond the scope of this essay, latter sections "shed light" on possibilities. It surely appears as if homicide-rates are driven by a plurality of causes but gun-density and fire-power seem unimportant.

More examination (of other sequestered ventures with varying gun-density) further shows that gun-density or fire-power little affects homicide rate. Thus, it becomes ever clearer, banning guns does little to homicide rates or suicide rates. Most likely, gun-bans just force despairing but determined people to find another method.

It may surprise some to learn, increased gun-density actually rduces overall crime. [See MORE GUNS, LESS CRIME, John R. Lott Jr., 1998, University of Chicago Press.] Concurring is a 2021 Georgetown University study estimating private citizens use guns for self-defense approximately 1.67 million times per year in the United States.

The bottom line: increased gun-density actually results in increased personal security; further, whether people kill themselves or others is not significantly affected by gun availability. Believing otherwise is fallacy; but, a fallacy some find compelling.

Depending on their primal-views, some want to believe gun-bans save lives. They like the argument that because a mass killer was forced to take more time to load another low capacity magazine or work a bolt action far slower than an assault rifle, more will live. They claim, gun-bans are at least progress with little negative effect. Common primal-views linking stranger based uncertainty-anxiety to an emotional fear of armed others, promotes gun-banning. For them, ban-the-guns "feels good" and seems an easy reasonable compromise.

While this mind-set is sophistry bait, a fallacy based on a hopeful feel-good solution with minuscule possibility impedes real resolution. It delays reappraisal until after more killing. This is the history of U.S. gun law. Indulging the ban-the-guns fallacy hides the thinking disorders actually causing the crimes. Thus, guns become the scapegoat, a whipping boy focus... a distraction allowing us to deny reality. And who would want us to deny this reality? Shallow thinkers or people with a secret goal.

Would this law stop mass shootings?

An analysis of 11 mass shootings with 14 or more killed, shows that 9 would have been thwarted by this law because these crimes were committed by known miscreants. While the two exceptions are discussed below, virtually all mass shootings are done by people clearly exhibiting some thinking disorder. Not only does this law disamrm miscreants, it also trains armed people how to help with the problem.

The Las Vegas shooter, Stephen Paddock, was not an obvious miscreant... althought the Islamic State dubiously claimed him as their operative. Because he clearly had a thinking disorder, the MMPI test might have shown more than even Paddock's acquaintances new about him.

The other non-obvious shooter -- Charles Whitman, the 1966 Texas Tower killer -- was found to have a growing brain tumor, possibly causing his thinking disorder. Whitman suspected a tumor caused his relentless new evil urges and unsuccessfully tried to get help. Depending on its timing, Green-flag vetting might have missed catching Whitman's disability.

None of the mass shootings would have been stopped by yet another feckless ban on bump-stocks, large capacity magazines, assault rifles, silencers, sawed off shotguns, and who knows what comes next. Whitman used a bolt action rifle. Paddock had 24 firearms in his room; most were semi-automatic rifles shotguns and pistols. While many types of guns had already been banned, all these killers just found another way. It was always their disability and never the weapon.

Instead of banning some guns for all people, the Red-flag / Green-flag law bans all guns for some people. Miscreants are disarmed because the process forces them to lay bare their violent thoughts and be disarmed or disarm themselves to avoid such exposure. This gives them three choices: wait until they find a way around the process, kill using another weapon or, start on the path toward mental health (perhaps with the voluntary Red-flag). All three choices retard violent gun crime.

Comprehensive vetting, training and certification of millions of armed citizens now works well in Switzerland. It has for centuries. Switzerland has an exceptionally low crime rate (about like that of New Hampshire) regardless of their assault rifle plethora. Typically, they suffer less than 0.6 homicides per 100 thousand population and fewer than one-in-ten killed using guns. Doubtless, cultural effects beyond gun strategy account for much. Nonetheless, comprehensive vetting and training is the heart of their gun management and that is the heart of the Red-flag / Green-flag strategy.

Another thought about trust.

Timothy McVeigh killed 168 using explosives. Nineteen Al-Qaeda "tourists" killed nearly 3000 using hijacked commercial airliners. While guns were not the method in the two largest U.S. mass murders, feckless government gun policy was complicit. If airline pilots had been armed by FAA rules (as was true in the past) miscreants using mere box-cutters could not hijack airliners. If government agencies had not been arresting people for inept victimless gun crimes, McVeigh would not have bombed the Murrah Building.

Among the thousands killed, there were millions injured. Not just injured by smoke inhalation and fractured bones; this fracture was the fractured trust between our government and us. The sophistry we see is evidence that might suggest there is a secret autocratic goal to disarm us, to usurp the final democratic power our Constitution guarantees individual citizens.

Many will now shout: "this is an irrational fear, just another "wing-nut" consiracy theory. One might wish this concern is irrational. Irrational or not, it is easy to fix. This is the best time left for government to prove the wing-nuts wrong by supporting this solution to violent gun crime and returning our gun rights... rights that are the Constitutional final democratic power.

Instead of shouting these ideas down, write a cogent rebuttal with better ideas.
It is past time for public policy to solve this problem.
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********Send Comments to: Publius@Liberty.Ink**********



published by Liberty Ink, PBC
First publication date: 20July2022
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Publius Extant