By KHAL SPENCERLos Alamos
It’s an unfortunate observation, nearly rising to the level of a physical law, that both sides in the Great Gun Debate will usually miss the target on any given issue.
After the recent Clovis Library mass shooting, someone wrote a long essay to the Santa Fe New Mexican calling for a ban on concealed carry in libraries. But concealed carry was irrelevant to the shooting as the shooter, at 16 years old, was not a legal concealed carrier nor eligible to become one at his age. Further, it should be noted that in spite of concealed carry being lawful in libraries, that fact did not prevent the tragedy, either. Indeed, the root causes being investigated include how an allegedly troubled sixteen year old had access to guns that were supposed to be secured in a safe and how his state of mind allowed him to create such carnage.
Likewise, gun buybacks generate misdirected political blowback; they are seen as irrelevant or an attack on the Second Amendment. But these are not mandatory buybacks, i.e., the “Australian Solution” that raise Constitutional issues. These buybacks are voluntary. While admittedly they have not been proved to put a huge dent in gun-related crime, they serve an important purpose, operationally and philosophically.
The idea is not to turn in one’s prize handgun or rifle but to provide a means for people to safely and securely dispose of unwanted, abandoned, or unused firearms. Those which are more likely to end up in the back of a closet or in a drawer and thus forgotten, accidentally or deliberately discharged by an unauthorized person (sometimes at a person), or stolen.
Such efforts as these also provide a convenient disposal mechanism for people who have inherited or otherwise acquired family guns but who are not part of a firearms culture, may not know much about guns, nor are interested in learning.
Someone who is unsure of the value or intended use of a specific firearm (i.e., hunting, target shooting, self defense) can by all means take it to a gun shop or Federally licensed firearms dealer, of which Los Alamos has quite a few, for a knowledgeable appraisal and then decide what to do with the gun. But in the case of disposing of a gun with a lot of value, please sell it via a background check or to someone you know well enough to trust.
The gun buyback campaign sponsored by New Mexicans to Prevent Gun Violence is tied to a Guns to Gardens program that forges donated guns into garden tools. It is a rational political statement derived from Isaiah 2:4 that calls for reducing civic violence and putting guns in a proper perspective, i.e., ensure we do not see guns as the primary conflict resolution tool in one’s mental toolbox. Solving social ills with firearms is rarely a good idea. New Mexico sees enough of that mentality. Thankfully, we don’t see much of it in Los Alamos.
A gun buyback program must be part of a greater violence-reduction program, which requires focused efforts; a target rifle rather than the scattershot proposals of some pro-gun and anti-gun advocates. Too often, both sides of this debate not only shout past each other but miss the intended target that we all should wish to hit: reducing the misuse, either deliberately or accidentally, of the firearms we are Constitutionally entitled to keep and bear.
