I wrote about the Colin Gray case yesterday in this post, and a discussion ensued about gun rights and laws requiring a person to lock up guns in the home.

Commenter “Brian E” commented by describing a local school shooting and the tragedy that ensued, and added: “Having seen the aftermath relatively close up, it’s hard to have infringement of personal liberty as the hill to die on.”

Later, he added:

I agree with Neo, he [the killer’s father, Colin Gray] should have been charged with negligence, not homicide– but I do think the sentence needs to be serious enough that people change their behavior on how they store their firearms.

Many or perhaps most laws that restrict liberty are rationalized as being necessary and/or desirable in order to protect the innocent. The problem is how far to go, because at a certain point the infringements become unconscionable, and perhaps they don’t even prevent the behavior. These are constant issues, and not just in the field of gun control.

Arguments about the protective benefit of a restrictive law are nearly always used to justify infringements of personal liberty . There are terrible tragedies that appear to be preventable through restrictions on personal liberty. In the case of Colt Gray (the 14-year-old murderer) and his father Colin (who failed to lock up weapons), however, there was no law in Georgia that required such a locking-up. I see the harsh verdict in the Colin Gray trial as an attempt to rectify that, ex post facto, without actually passing such a law. In the service of this effort, another law – one I see as inappropriate to the facts of the case – was pulled into service in order to label one person, the father, as responsible.

The desire to turn back the clock and undo what happened – an impossibility, of course – is part of the motive behind this. The other desire is the one stated by Brian E, which is for the sentence “to be serious enough that people change their behavior on how they store their firearms.” But I doubt that will happen; people think they’re safe and their family is safe, and they don’t foresee what is an extremely unlikely act: that of their child committing mass murder with a gun found around the house. Or, for many who do foresee or at least imagine such possibilities, they either are already locking up their weapons or not owning them in the first place.

In addition: where does this assigning of responsibility stop? In the Colt Gray case, why not the mother, the school, the police? They all had roles and all failed to fulfill them effectively enough to prevent the murders; some were even arguably negligent (the school, for example). And one could argue that the school authorities possessed more training than Colt’s father Colin had, more resources than he had, and supposedly more objectivity about Colt than he had. For that matter, why not blame the school for not using metal detectors?

There’s also an assumption that if the guns had been locked up Colt couldn’t or wouldn’t have killed people. I agree that it almost certainly would have been more difficult for him to do so, but it still could have been accomplished. He could have used a knife. He could have used explosives. He could have bought a gun on the black market or stolen one. Where there’s a will …

If a state or city wants to require people to lock up their guns, it can do so. If someone fails to follow the law, impose the penalty for violation of that law rather than twisting another law around in order to punish someone you have designated as the one to blame even though everyone is to blame.

SCOTUS has ruled on how much can be required of homeowners regarding gun storage – that is, it has ruled on what cannot be required. The case was District of Columbia v. Heller (2008) (see this):

Provisions of the District of Columbia Code made it illegal to carry an unregistered firearm … The Code also contained provisions that required owners of lawfully registered firearms to keep them unloaded and disassembled or bound by a trigger lock or other similar device unless the firearms were located in a place of business or being used for legal recreational activities. …

[Heller] sought an injunction against the enforcement of the relevant parts of the Code and argued that they violated his Second Amendment right to keep a functional firearm in his home without a license. The district court dismissed the complaint. The U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit reversed and held that the Second Amendment protects the right to keep firearms in the home for the purpose of self-defense, and the District of Columbia’s requirement that firearms kept in the home be nonfunctional violated that right.

So the appeals court ruled that the requirements were too strict and effectively disarmed people, making it impossible to use their guns for self-defense. The case ultimately went to SCOTUS and its ruling was 5-4, which is about as close as it can be. The ruling divided along the usual political lines. The majority basically agreed with the need for self-defense and claimed the 2nd Amendment protected that right, whereas the dissenting minority went with the “militia” interpretation and did not think this case unduly limited the right to bear arms because that right only applied to militias or militia-equivalents. SCOTUS has since declined to rule further on the issue of laws about gun locks in the home, which leaves those laws standing. I believe the idea at present is that some restrictions are okay as long as they preserve the right to self-defense.

NOTE: Once again I am reminded of the chilling poem by A. E. Housman, “The Culprit.” Regarding the Gray case, the poem is somewhat ironic, because Colin the father is being punished (15 years), although the son Colt still drew the harsher sentence (life without parole):

THE CULPRIT

The night my father got me
His mind was not on me;
He did not plague his fancy
To muse if I should be
The son you see.

The day my mother bore me
She was a fool and glad,
For all the pain I cost her,
That she had borne the lad
That borne she had.

My mother and my father
Out of the light they lie;
The warrant would not find them,
And here ’tis only I
Shall hang so high.

Oh let not man remember
The soul that God forgot,
But fetch the county kerchief
And noose me in the knot,
And I will rot.

For so the game is ended
That should not have begun.
My father and my mother
They had a likely son,
And I have none.