A young man is known to be unbalanced by doctors, police and the people around him.

Background checks for gun purchases are supposed to catch these things.

The background check, in the case of the Virginia Tech shooting, didn’t.

Therefore, we need more guns.

Guns, guns, guns. The way the gun lobby raves on about them, it’s like a fetishistic love affair. Some folk, like law Prof. Glenn Reynolds, argue for making gun ownership mandatory or, at least, offer legislative encouragement for citizens to arm themselves. It just boggles the mind that people want to have a highly armed society.

I can understand hunters. An ex-something or other of mine (don’t ask) enjoyed hunting and was very responsible about both the hunt and how weapons were stored and used. The same holds true for other hunters I’ve met. Guns are a tool of the hunt, and I can’t object to them even if hunting isn’t something I, personally, care for.

I can understand sport shooters. As an archer, I prefer to shoot sharp, pointy sticks at paper targets. But I can see how sharp-shooting with firearms appeals to some people. Again, there is no issue here in terms of gun ownership.

I can even appreciate that gun ownership for defensive purposes makes sense in individual circumstances, even if I don’t accept defensive gun ownership as a universal rule.

But this insistence that having more guns will create a safer society, despite whatever intuitive appeal it may have, is what really leaves me unconvinced. Many pundits have mused that if Virginia Tech students had been armed, the shooter could have been stopped. Well, maybe. Or maybe not. Maybe a gunfight would have erupted with many innocent bystanders getting shot. Maybe, in their panic (civilians, regardless of their proficiency with firearms, are not soldiers or police officers trained to handle dangerous situations), there would have been a free-for-all. We just don’t know.

Blaming Everyone but the Criminal

Exacerbating the issue is commentary by pop-conservative pundits, who not only decry an unarmed, “defenseless” population, but go so far as to suggest that ours is a culture of passivity and molly-coddling. (Naturally, liberalism and a lack of proper pop-conservative values are to blame.) It’s an outrageous position to take, one that blames the victims for their victimization. Next thing you know, women will be blamed for their own rapes because they wore their skirts too short, wore the wrong perfume, or simply dared to show their face in public.

The students weren’t armed, they didn’t rush the shooter (despite the tactical foolishness of rushing a man with semi-automatic weapons), they didn’t do this, they didn’t do that. All this talk about guns, accompanied by culture war salvos, fails to place blame for the horrific crime where it belongs: with the murderer himself. The Virginia Tech shooting is not the students’ fault, but Seung-Hui Cho’s. While the gun lobby wants to put more guns out there, the real issue is why Cho, with a known past of mental instability, was allowed to get a gun.

This brings us to the notion that the view that only responsible individuals should be allowed to get guns is a de facto argument for gun control. (Thankfully, Virginia closed the loophole that allowed vital information from escape Cho’s background check.) But we know all this, right? Still, the morally disgusting blame-the-victims argument from the pop-right has come and gone without any real condemnation. Stricter gun control will be ignored, as usual. Everyone on either side of the gun control debate will trot out the familiar arguments. We’ll all be shocked and saddened, then move on. Until something else comes along to shock and sadden us, after which we’ll move on, too. Frankly, I don’t have much confidence in anything changing.

The Seed of an Idea

I do have a question, however. Why does the gun industry follow what is essentially a consumer retail business model? Guns are not like other products. They are not plastic toy robots, or cars or anything else. They are weapons. Why do we accept guns, then, as legitimate retail products? Why can we just go into a store and buy a gun? (Granted there aren’t that many stores, but still…) Why does the gun industry continue to manufacture more guns, despite the mathematical fact that the more guns that exist, the greater the chances of criminals and murders getting their hands on some?

“But wait,” someone might say. “Haven’t you already agreed that hunters and sport-shooters should be allowed to have guns? Haven’t you already agreed, loosely, that guns for defensive purposes can be acceptable?”

The answer is yes. But suppose instead of a mass manufacturing process the gun industry functioned like a print-on-demand digital publishing house? Guns could be made on an as-needed, more-or-less custom basis, thus fitting in with a proper background check, ensuring that individuals are properly trained to handle firearms safely. Add in technology, such as bullet serialization, and we have important forensic tools for use in dealing with gun-related crimes. Altogether, this would allow for responsible gun ownership without mis-categorizing guns as retail objects.

Hmm. Something to think about?