I don’t know that I can speak for liberals generally, but I can speak to the numerous conversations I’ve

had with my liberal friends about gun. I know of none of them that believe that guns should not be able to
be legally owned for hunting, target practice at a shooting range, or held in the home for home protection.
That’s a huge swath of commonality, in my opinion. Sure, there are fringe people on the left that would
“outlaw” guns, and they stir up emotions on the more moderate left. But there are fringe people on the
right who are “prepping” for a civil war, and are stockpiling guns to kill the left! I think there’s a difference
in extremism there, but in either case the fringes are successfully exerting their control over the middle.
The tail is wagging the dog.

Of course, there are lots of points of contention. On the moderate left, we believe there are certain
firearms that people who intend to commit violent crimes gravitate to, whether because of that firearm’s
capabilities or even appearance or reputation. We think that’s legitimate grounds for legislation. We
believe guns should be safely and securely stored in the home, so that children or others who shouldn’t
get to them aren’t easily able to. We think that’s legitimate grounds for legislation. We believe that if you
“lose” a gun or have it stolen, the law should require you to report (as is true in Maryland), because many
of those “lost” guns are resold at a profit on the street. And most contentiously, because guns move
freely across state borders, we believe there needs be baseline federal legislation to make these
measures effective.

Regarding carry laws, on the moderate left we believe that gun violence generally is increased by
permissive carry laws and that they complicate the job of law enforcement. We also believe that the
reason the police seem to shoot first and ask questions later is that they, with good reason, assume that
anyone they approach may have a gun. And finally, on the left, we believe that guns should be
commensurately difficult to acquire proportional to their ability and likelihood to cause harm. We think
research into gun crimes and gun ownership should be robust, so that where possible we can accurately
target who is likely to commit a crime or who isn’t mentally stable enough to responsibly own one, and as
a society work to prevent their access to them.

I think gun's rights people often misinterpret liberal’s objections to the interpretation of the 2 nd Amendment
as our support for banning or taking away all gun rights. Many liberals, myself among them, do not
believe that the 2nd Amendment guarantees the right to own a gun for self-protection. I find that many
people on the Right don’t recognize that any Constitutional “right” to carry a gun for self defense was only
established by the supreme court in 2008. Prior to that, consensus opinion even on the Right about the
2nd Amendment didn’t think that’s what it meant. But was owning a gun for self-defense illegal? No, of
course not. Just because many on the moderate left believe that there isn’t and shouldn’t be a
Constitutional right to own a gun for self defense don’t mean we think that should be illegal. But it does
mean that we think local laws should be able to more stringently regulate those rights depending on the
circumstances of states or cities without needing to contest against what’s perceived as a Constitutional
right. What the right level of gun control is for Philadelphia, where someone is shot every 6 hours, isn’t
what’s right for the rest of our very rural state. And yet state laws reflect only that rural reality here, and
forbid the city from enacting more strict ones.

Still, this battle has been fought, and we lost. But, I wish the winners would act like winners. Instead, the
guns rights people still act like they’re hanging onto their right to own a gun by the last dwindling thread,
rather than having swept the board with the power of the Supreme Court’s interpretation of a
Constitutional amendment behind them. There are no more dominoes to fall, and they’ve almost all fallen
your way. Maybe from that position of strength, it’s time to examine reasonable measures of control that
could reasonably protect our cities from escalating gun violence?