How to Reduce Rather than Avoid Mass Shootings

I can't make up my mind about guns. I can't even call the issue gun control or gun rights because whichever phrase you choose automatically places you in one camp.  My friend once said, "I would give up my right to own a firearm if it brought back just one of those kids from Newtown." I'll start there.

I do not own a firearm, but I am open to the possibility. Black bears have been spotted in suburban neighborhoods near my home recently. I have two dogs and a young child, I cannot think of a better way to protect my family than a firearm. I do not hunt, but my wife's family does. I will never understand how valuable hunting is to the culture of rural Pennsylvania, but I imagine that taking it away would remove a limb of their identity. There are good reasons for guns being legal. Here are some bad ones:

• The second amendment ensures my protection against a tyrannical government. (The government has bombs, flame throwers, and thousands of well-trained men and women. If they want to take your house, your assault rifle isn't going to stop them.)
• If you outlaw guns, people will just use knives. (You know what's a great defense against a knife? Two working legs. I can outrun a knife, I can't outrun a bullet. You don't hear about too many drive-by knivings. I understand the logic behind this, but if a few knivings replace lots of shootings, that's a win.)
• Outlawing guns won't stop bad people from using them. (As Jon Stewart once said, murder is illegal and people do it anyway. That doesn't mean we make murder legal.)

With any decision, we have to look through the cost/benefit analysis lens. There are serious costs to outlawing guns all together, so the benefits need to be worth it. If the benefit were a definitive "no more shootings," the cost is absolutely worth it. But I think even the most radical gun control advocate knows that isn't true. There have been so many guns disseminated in the country for so many years you could never track them down and destroy them. Comparing us to another country's gun control success is futile because we are so different. But that doesn't have to be the end of the conversation.

As one of my brother's friends pointed out on Facebook, after the Boston bombings, no one blamed the bomb. So why after shootings do we blame the gun? Is he right? What was so different about the bombing?

Bombings are rare because bombs are illegal and difficult to make for the average sufferer of mental health. The question we have to ask is: can we make shootings as rare as bombings?

John Kerry was once asked how to end terrorism. He responded that you can never really end terrorism, you try to contain it. There have been 74 shootings since Newtown. How many of those could have been prevented with some type of legislation: better mental health access, gun owner bracelets, banning assault rifles or the amount of gun/ammo a person can own? I know the answer is not all 74, because a percentage of that group is industrious enough to take the steps to ensure they take another's life.

Let's look at banning the assault rifle. The less ammo Adam Lanza had, the less shots he would have fired, the less children he would have hit. He'd still be a monstrous killer, but legislation would have reduced the number of dead children. We can't fix stupid, but can we contain it?

Lanza took his mother's weapons; he never had to buy any. So any gun legislation will take a while to impact the next generation of mass shootings, but the idea is to find ways to crowd out the on-the-fence killer. A certain percentage of those 74 shooters were always going to find a way; that's the world we live in. Maybe we should focus on what we can contain.