"Deep thinkers of all stripes are heavy into accommodation and compromise. So I would like to propose a meeting of the minds on the issue of gun control.
Presently, those who defend the Second Amendment are reluctant to give up any ground because they fear that the gun control agenda is a type of incrementalism leading to absolute control of gun ownership. The people in the anti-gun lobby should understand this because of their demand for unrestricted abortion rights, which is similarly illogical but also related to the same fear of incremental erosion.
I am required to inform you that what follows is satire.
I would be willing to give up gun ownership rights if the other side would be willing to ban alcohol. Both would require a change in the Constitution, but given the enthusiasm to restrict the Second Amendment, this should be no major problem.
Both alcohol and guns are killers. Drinkers and gun owners claim to be responsible, but we all know better. If anything, a much greater percentage of drinkers will engage in unlawful behavior while in the presence of alcohol than gun owners in the presence of guns.
Figures vary, but about 40 percent of all traffic fatalities involve alcohol. It is currently illegal to drive while using this drug, but deaths continue to occur because a large number of alcohol users simply wink at the law.
There are about 25,000 direct deaths due to alcohol per year. An estimated 75,000 deaths per year are alcohol related. The near-fatal consequences of alcohol use result in 1.2 million visits to U.S. emergency rooms every year.
In 2010, supposedly about 400 people were murdered with a rifle in the United States, and almost 6,000 with a pistol. About two-thirds of all suicides involve a gun, but most of these also involve drugs and alcohol.
Another possible compromise would be to limit some guns in exchange for some alcohol.
For example, there is no need whatsoever for extreme alcohol products like vodka. Not only does it take food products out of circulation in a world with an epidemic of hunger, its alcohol content cannot be justified for any lawful purpose.
I would also suggest that any wine costing more than $20 a bottle be banned. Anything over that simply means that the manufacturers are taking advantage of consumer naiveté by pushing a product that takes very little to produce, to customers who have been socialized to accept this as a sign of sophistication.
Besides, rich people buy this stuff and we all are well aware of the evil greed of the rich.
Another possible compromise could be a trade-off between how many bullets a gun owner could have and how much alcohol a person could own and store at any given time. Of course, sales of alcohol in public venues without background checks would need to be forcefully banned.
But prohibition didn’t work, you say. We can’t ban alcohol. It was tried once and it failed.
Really?
Are you suggesting that if a program failed once, we can’t continue to push for it? This is 2013.
We have evolved. We are better and more moral than our grandparents. We can make this work.
Besides, I would ask you to look into the eyes of tens of thousands of children whose lives have been ruined by the legal consumption of alcohol and then be cold-hearted and uncaring enough to tell me that banning alcohol would not work.
If just one life could be saved, we have a moral obligation to ban all alcohol consumption.
So, let’s reason together. People with guns kill people. People with alcohol kill people. People kill people. We can’t ban people, so let’s ban guns and alcohol, and let us start with the one that kills the most people first — alcohol.
Law-abiding citizens would, of course, stop drinking, and law breakers would have access to less alcohol — a win-win."
http://wcfcourier.com/news/opinion/clayson/ban-alcohol-in-exchange-for-banning-guns/article_6db05f14-6c87-11e2-9639-001a4bcf887a.html