Three ideas, each one sure to antagonize someone

Coronavirus confinement has given us time to step back and contemplate life as we used to know it. It lets us review the way we usually look at even serious things — and then pass right by them. Here are three brainstorms of mine. What do you think? They are balanced so that one should antagonize the reich wing extremists and another the left-down lefties. 

First, the ever insoluble conundrum of gun possession. America and Yemen are about the only nations that allow handguns in the hands of citizens. Yemen is in the throes of a vicious civil war. Are we? Civilized nations depend on police forces and militaries. I grant that these agencies must have guns to maintain law and order. Foreign countries seem to do well with this blanket prohibition, with far fewer homicides. We instead have no problem with there being a handgun for every citizen, numerically. Those of us who do not own even one are met by those who have arsenals. The Second Amendment, written in revolutionary times when weapons were muskets whose bores were not rifled for greater accuracy, grants this despite over a hundred handgun deaths each day, 61 of which are suicides. But nasty government discriminates against firearms enthusiasts who also want to own bazookas and shoulder-launched ground-to-air missiles. How do the courts explain this miscarriage?

The National Rifle Association, which should be named the National Rifle and Handgun Association, champions this right, saying we need access to pistols for security the way they did in Washington’s time. Nearly no one else overseas agrees. The few there who own handguns illegally probably bought them here and stowed them in their luggage. Hunters with long guns appreciate the right to slay animals for food and for sport.

So here is my solution: in a simultaneous, lightning raid from Maine to Guam, law enforcement officials at the municipal and state levels, aided by the Army, Marines, the reserves, the National Guard and Marshals would seize every bullet from every gun store shelf in America. Gun owners then would have to use judiciously whatever munitions dumps that remain at home, till they use up their contraband ammo. Store owners would be compensated. Factories would be compelled to sell their bullets only to the Pentagon and to police. No need to confiscate anyone’s now useless handgun.

Second is the equally insoluble conundrum of abortion, which has slashed and burned politics nationwide. Political parties are so polarized over this one crisis that voters are left to hold their noses and choose the lesser of two evils. Over a million terminations are done legally every year, down from a million and a half. The motto of abortion devotees used to be “safe, legal and rare.” Abortions are legal and safe, mostly, yet now anything but rare. One of the Supreme Court justices a year after Roe v. Wade was astonished that more than 10 such surgeries nationwide were sought in that interim. 

So I suggest that the male participant in the unwanted pregnancy be legally required to sign a public paternity registry, open to the public the way a woman’s growing maternity is similarly visible, so that he identify with her burden. The motive is obvious: he should share with her society’s disapproval of cohabiting without benefit of clergy. If she should have to carry the burden of pregnancy before the abortion, why not require something equally onerous of him? Society finally would see an equal rights amendment the likes of which failed to pass muster several decades ago. 

Draconian? What then is the extermination of over 60 million embryos? Even pro-choice leaders ruefully admit that too many surgeries are being done, like the high court justice. When he and his colleagues decided that a non-person embryo has no rights, life is the first to go. 

Finally, I would also call for the outlawing of tobacco, a certified addictive poison. If our method so far is based on body counts, consider that 1,100 Americans die every day from smoking, and an additional thousand die every week from second-hand smoke. It’s as legal as handgun possession and abortion. We have smilingly legislated a culture of death all around us. Not smart.

But heck, this is Prohibition revisited. We know where that goes in cowboy America, where the national religion is rugged, ragged individualism with Christian pretensions. Blame it on COVID-19 craziness. My apologies. Stay tuned for more non-controversial columns here.