Righting Gun Wrongs

Despite my exercise of Point of Personal Privilege in his comment section recently (see: here), I quite admire Kevin Baker's writing(s) on firearms, the 2nd Amendment to the US Constitution, and human rights generally (a few days off escaping the day-to-day cares of life can be spent to good effect in his side bar :)), and I wish to take this opportunity to point out another of his essays: Universal Background Checks. As is usually the case with a Kevin Baker essay, there's a lot involved which makes summarizing challenging, but I think this captures the essence:

Everything you do in the U.S. (with the notable exception of VOTING) requires a state-issued photo ID.

• Alcohol? ID
• Tobacco? ID
• Buy or rent a place to live? ID
• Buy a car from a dealer? ID
• Travel by commercial air? ID
• Check into a hotel? ID
• Purchase Sudafed? ID

Anyway, you get the point. So here’s my suggestion:

Everybody who needs a state-issued ID gets a background check and a new ID. If you are a prohibited person, somewhere on that ID will be this symbol:

If you’re not prohibited, you get a green circle (don’t want to trigger the sensitive by putting an icky gun on their ID). Everyone that already has a driver’s license or a state-issued photo ID gets a new one with one of the two symbols. Any new IDs issued, the applicant gets the background check.

As he later acknowledges, this would entail some considerable added expense (and I think might come into conflict with already established Smart ID legislation now universal to all states in the USA), but I concur with his judgement that, "It’ll cost a lot of money and won’t prevent any crimes, but that’s what “gun control” usually does. But hey, we’re DOING SOMETHING!!"

I have an alternative suggestion to Kevin's and hope to read his (and your) thoughts in response.

Since the US Constitution, specifically to include all of the amendments thereto, is an empowering document to all legislation within the USA, I suggest that a national form of ID - while generally along the lines suggested by Kevin - would be the more constitutionally consistent approach to addressing the undeniable problems that are part-and-parcel of the individual responsibility that comes with American national citizenship and legal residence. 

The US Constitution already requires a decennial census of all US citizens and residents, which neatly provides Congress with an already established government function whereby unlawful gun ownership fears might be substantially addressed. The United States doesn't have any form of civil national identification (as opposed to US military or government employee/contractor identification) other than a US passport, which is intended for use outside the boundaries of the country. My alternative to Kevin's suggested state-level ID is the creation of a United States Voter Registration Card explicitly as a form of national identification card for all US citizens and legal residents, irrespective of their personal employment status, state of residence, or other demographic classification.

By making a standard background check (effectively identical to that already in use for firearms purchase) a part of the decennial census process, we create a national identification document that clearly states each person's status to vote and to lawfully participate in all other activities constitutionally guaranteed to a citizen of the United States. Or not. Making a distinction between eligibility to exercise the right to vote (or other constitutionally guaranteed freedoms, many of which are age or otherwise restricted already) wouldn't have to be nearly as garish as the means suggested by Kevin, wouldn't necessarily be all that much more expensive than the existing census function (I presume here that there actually is an existing effort made to verify the respondents statements made as part of the census process), and might even prove actually effective in helping manage the unintended consequences associated with citizenship and legal residence in our Constitutional Republic.

As Kevin noted in his blog post excerpted above, there are already established forms of state issued identification intended for a variety of applications. By requiring presentation of a valid Voter Registration Card as part of the background check process already in place, we create a national database against which to compare state documentation already required to prove eligibility to exercise the freedoms guaranteed to citizens by the US Constitution, in this example to purchase a firearm. Form 4473 (the .gov document used to itemize eligibility to purchase a firearm) already requires a statement of nationality from the purchaser under penalty of perjury, so requiring presentation of a national ID document that corroborates this declaration (also made under penalty of perjury) doesn't seem to me to be excessively abusive to exercise of one's rights. Such a system needn't interfere with the already established process whereby citizens and legal residents of the United States who go through the modest expense and effort required to obtain a state-issued concealed handgun license (or whatever your state calls such an ID) to be exempt from the background check process at time of purchase, and indeed would offer a means to regularly submit all citizens and legal residents to the background check process entirely separate from (additional to?) that required by any state's concealed handgun licensing requirements. An added layer of security protecting citizen's exercise of their rights as guaranteed by the US Constitution, as it were.

Gun writer and columnist Tamara Keel has made the point on her blog in times past that she requires display of a drivers license/ID issued by the state she resides in from anyone she sells one of her guns to as a matter of personal privilege (I hasten to point out that Tam is not a licensed firearms dealer and thus - like every other American - has no legal obligation to do so under existing US law, but has been buying for her personal pleasure a modestly impressive collection of firearms for some years now, which she upon occasion finds useful to turn some item from that collection into cash to subsidize other of her interests - demonstrating the blatant nature of the deliberate falsehood entailed in the phrase "gun show loophole" not coincidentally). I leave to the consideration of my fellow citizens whether, or to what extent, such a custom ought to be enshrined explicitly in law. Personally it is my opinion that making such an individual obligation (to assure ones self of the mutual legality of a private transaction) a legal requirement might be more usefully enshrined within existing laws enacted under the auspices of the 14th Amendment than otherwise, but IANAL (and aren't we all grateful for that?  :))

One final note from Kevin Baker, who has the well exercised habit of saying things so well:

You want to buy a gun, whether from an individual or a FFL dealer? Show your ID. If the red symbol is on it, no sale. If NO symbol is on it, no sale. If you don’t have ID, no sale. If you do something that makes you a prohibited person, you must turn in your ID for one that has the red symbol. If you don’t, five years in Club Fed on top of whatever sentence you got for the crime that disqualified you.

The state can’t build a database of gun owners, and everybody who wants to buy a gun gets a background check. That’s what I call “compromise.”

"The state can't build a database of gun owners", precisely because everybody (who isn't in some fashion a "prohibited person" due to age or whatever) is effectively licensed to be a gun owner as an explicit function of their citizenship. It is already against US law for the US government to require retention of firearms sales data beyond - three years? - by FFL's, and this particular prohibition shouldn't change as a result of these efforts.

Protecting the exercise of individual citizens freedoms as guaranteed under the US Constitution is of at least equal importance to protecting those same citizens from the illegal actions of those who choose to abuse the exercise of those guaranteed freedoms (far too many of whom sadly are also fellow citizens). Spending the money necessary to better achieve those two objectives rightly ought to take precedence as a national, state, and local legislative priority. A United States Voter Registration Card explicitly designed to function as a national identity card based upon the decennial national population census, is a mechanism whereby to achieve those priorities and is my suggestion of a "compromise" that all US citizens and legal residents can comfortably and (at least arguably more) securely live with.

How say you all?

Update: I see I've entirely failed to mention any possible time line for this process. How about something like this?

President Trump has famously said that citizenship will be one of the questions asked as part of the 2020 census. Beginning in 2023, all citizens and legal residents of the USA regardless of state of residence, may apply for a Voter Registration Card ID by including copies (Issuing state database links more probably) of their existing state-issued ID along with their 2020 census data as part of the application process. Such ID to be valid until two years after completion of the next scheduled decennial population census, whereupon issuance of replacement ID cards will be automatic.

That shouldn't be too hard to improve upon.