In which I do an op-ed.

There’s a Twitter feed, called Well Regulated Militia (find it at @Well_Regulated_), that posts about nothing but the gun-related incidents and accidents that befall our, well, “militia.” Here’s a common example of its content:

“A member of our well regulated militia sleeps with a loaded gun under his pillow. His 2 year old son crawls into bed with him, finds the gun, and shoots himself. He dies at the hospital.”

The takeaway is that guns kill, even without human intent. All the time. Totally debunks the whole “guns don’t kill people, people kill people” bullshit.

Guns have one purpose: to propel a bullet at high speed into things, particularly flesh. Yes, you can kill with a car or a plane or a knife, but all of those things — cars, planes, knives — have other, primary, purposes. You can’t get to work or Europe in a gun, or make dinner with one.

Guns are dangerous tools, and it turns out they’re unsecured a shocking amount of the time.

While there are very good reasons to own guns, a great many gun owners obviously do not need, or know how to properly use or secure, their guns. (Because if you needed your gun, it wouldn’t just be lying around, now, would it.)

There’s also a really long thread by members of the armed forces (under @iAmTheWarax, if you want to find it), who are rigorously trained to handle guns, who still fuck up regularly because even highly trained humans are, well, fallible. Guns should just not be lying around, for fuck’s sake, because they’re dangerous.

You need to get a license to drive a car; you should also need to get one to purchase, own, and keep a gun.

I don’t want to ban guns, or remove them from all owners, not at all.

But I do want gun owners to assert that they need one (even if it’s just to shoot rabbits in the garden), that they’re mentally competent, and that they’re trained to handle and secure one.

Submit some forms (your shooting certifications, your completed safety class, your gun safe receipt), take a written test. Re-up every decade. Bureaucracy, used for its proper purpose. Will the occasional qualified applicant be denied gun ownership? Probably. Will the masses who shouldn’t be own guns be denied? Yes.

Will some bad guys have guns anyway? Yes, but they’ll be outliers, just like unlicensed drivers are outliers, just like unlicensed doctors are outliers, just like unlicensed anythings are outliers.

But IT WILL HELP. We need to regulate gun ownership in this nation.