Gun culture runs deep in the United States, and it's not a bad thing.
Born and raised in Arkansas, I know being around guns is just a part of the experience. Most gun owners are responsible folks. Most people around guns -- adults and kids -- don't die in gun accidents, nor do they gravitate to a life of brutal violence because guns are present.
Guns are not the problem. But our nation has a serious problem involving guns. Those pushing gun control refer to it as gun violence when the issue is really, well, violence in whatever form it takes.
Firearms, however, can harm more quickly than other legal weapons, say, a knife. It's a particular form of violence that ratchets up the number of dead and injured in attacks such as recent mass shootings.
The Second Amendment isn't a stepchild to the others in the Bill of Rights. It preserves individuals' right to gun ownership. What is does not and should do is leave the nation impotent in its work to reduce violence involving guns.
President Obama last week outlined steps he would take through executive action or that he wants Congress to take to respond to violence involving guns. The proposals are modest and fall short of anything one might suggest is an infringement of individual gun rights. Indeed, the NRA would restore some faith it's not just a knee-jerk, anti-everything reactionary group if it reasonably evaluated the proposals and helped put some of them in place.
Supposedly driven by a passion to stop the next mass shootings, the president nonetheless acknowledged his proposals would not have prevented San Bernardino, Sandy Hook or several other incidents in which many were killed. According to the AP, he dismissed criticism of the fact as a tired trope of gun lobbyists who question "why bother trying?"
"I reject that thinking," Obama said. "We maybe can't save everybody, but we could save some."
In other words, he's being intellectually dishonest, tossing out horrific mass shooting incidents, posing with survivors of their horrors, while proposing changes that would have not had one bit of impact on whether those incidents were carried out.
For some, effectiveness simply isn't the point. Rather, the mass shootings are simply the chink in the armor of what has been a largely -- perhaps too much so -- successful lobbying effort by the National Rifle Association and other supporters of gun manufacturing, sales and ownership.
Obama, an ineffective president on most issues, is grasping for anything. To be a liberal president who achieves little to nothing on gun control is like being a GOP president who can't beef up defense spending.
Some of his proposals make perfect sense, if viewed through the calmness many gun owners insist they're capable of demonstrating under the most tense of conditions.
Nobody should be able to routinely and regularly sell guns, at guns shows or online, without being considered a dealer who must run a background check. Perhaps hobbyists who trade in small volumes shouldn't be forced to get a full license just like a business would, but the background check should be a minimum expectation when they sell.
Adding more FBI examiners to process background checks? Nobody, except perhaps those who should be kept from obtaining guns, benefits from an ineffective system of background checks. If it takes another 200 agents to accomplish a task the federal government has already implemented, so be it.
Why wouldn't dealers want to report a gun lost or stolen in transit? Probably to escape liability if and when that gun turns up in a crime, but responsible people can handle such a requirement.
And $500 million for improved mental health care? The president hasn't detailed enough about that proposal to determine whether he's just throwing money around or affecting positive change to get mental health services to people in need. He acknowledged two out of three gun-related deaths are from suicide, so mental health advances can make a difference regardless of the more specific debate over mass shootings and gun control.
There's some evidence the money, however, is there almost entirely as an afterthought, as a political tool.
"And for those in Congress who so often rush to blame mental illness for mass shootings as a way of avoiding action on guns, here's your chance to support these efforts. Put your money where your mouth is," he told his receptive listeners in the White House's East Room.
New technology that makes guns harder for unauthorized people to use? Why not, as long as it works? But tracking guns electronically? Many gun owners won't stand for it.
My point is, there's something to work with in Obama's modest proposals if people can get past their long-held NRA-induced hard-headedness, their gun-hater-driven paranoia about firearms, or their adamant resistance to any idea Obama proposes.
Commentary on 01/11/2016