My feelings towards the kind of conversations that have been brewing is simply, what are you expecting out of policy?

Policy does many things, but there are limits to what policy can do and what humans can execute out of policy.

The response two years ago was that there simply was a need for ‘common sense’ policy, implying that there was no such policy in place already, and implying that what they were proposing was indeed‘common sense.’

Currently, there is a system of background checks through the FBI database, there are state and city level laws that dictate the rules around sales and manufacturing, there are serious repercussions to not following those laws — for the most part, current policy already seems ‘common sense’ considering the right to own guns is explicitly defined as a constitutional right.

The policies, at least back in 2016, that were being proposed under the ‘common sense’ label seemed rather odd — of the four bills that were submitted after Orlando, two were led by Democrats, two were led by Republicans. They voted closely on party line. All four failed.

Regardless of how one wants to cast the narrative of those bills, we ought to consider what ‘common sense’ means so that we can actually define what goals these policies have and if they can achieve them. Common sense, not really a legal term, means something like basic rules, like driving on the right side of the road or stopping at a stop sign. They’re not supposed to be restrictive — they’re meant to enhance the use of the ‘right’ by the individual.

‘Common sense’ can potentially answer a call to action regarding accidental firing of guns, or the misuse of guns by minors or former convicts. But they still have a limit to what they can do, and that is particularly important because the commotion around guns is almost always launched after some sort of incident that is not at all common sense.

Mass shootings, mass murders, and terrorism are not common sense — unlike robbery or homicide which are moreorless aimed at subverting the law for the contained nature of their crime, terrorists aim to actually destroy the essence of law and civil society. Robbers are trying to escape the law, terrorists are actually putting law in the cross-hairs.

That is where ‘common sense’ policy breaks down. They don’t answer the question that indiscriminate mass murders puts forth. The reality is that such crime of broad social fear and chaos is not a matter of ‘common sense’ policy, but rather ‘anti-terrorism’ policy. And that’s where the conversation about gun control should be clear and serious.

Omar Mateen, Dylan Roof, Adam Lanza, James Holmes, Nikolas Cruz — they are terrorists. They premeditate an act of massive social impact through the use of fear and terror. They are entirely purposeful against all sense, all costs, all risks. They may not be actually a part of any terror org or broader network, they may be suffering a psychoactive illness, they may be entirely insular — but they are not within the realm of common sense.

And that’s where only anti-terrorism policy is the only policy solution that is even potentially able to respond to this issue. What is troublesome is that policy makers already know that, but are still selling their policies as ‘common sense.’

This was strikingly true in the response to Orlando: of the four bills, Feinstein’s bill proposed giving the Justice Department the power to stop gun purchases based on putting people on watch lists based on ‘reasonable belief’ instead of ‘probable cause.’ This was backed by the Obama White House. Murphy’s bill expanded the already existing background check system. Cornyn’s bill had a similar ‘watchlist’ idea going through the attorney general. Grassley’s bill targeted the mentally deficient and mentally ill.

These were all anti-terrorism bills based on giving the federal government, most specifically the Justice Department, the power to deny a constitutionally explicit right without due process (in the case of Feinstein, reducing the standard all the way down to lax standard of ‘reasonable belief’.

This is not common sense. This is anti-terrorism, which is categorically different, is aimed entirely differently, and has a very different set of implications, both in the immediate sense and in the precedent they set.

This is particularly concerning considering that anti-terrorism policies has a very serious history in its effect on the disadvantaged. For example, people placed on terrorist watchlists are routinely selected based on their exercise of the first amendment: their religion, what they say, who they interact with. By giving the list even more unquestioned power, we can expect the list to be used more broadly both quantitatively and qualitatively. Does it need reminding that Martin Luther King Jr was listed as the single greatest threat to national security four days after his I Have a Dream Speech? Does it need reminding that Black Panthers as a whole were deemed a terrorist organization? Or that the Juggulos are considered one as well? These are serious powers given to a very powerful central government, currently being led by Trump, and Jeff Sessions more pointedly.

And then even on the more local level, gun control policies are currently used to target urban and minority communities already. Stop-and-Frisk, broken window policing, etc etc etc — they’re used to‘fight crime’ in a very broad sense. Their intrusive powers are given to them by policies of all sorts, from alimony and traffic fines to the war on drugs and yes, gun control.

So when we talk about gun control policy, we need to be clear. There is a lot of space for conversation, but to the 1100 or so people who can read this, my facebook feed has been a deplorable mashup of bad-faith conjecturing and ‘we’re done talking, this debate is settled, we’ve had enough’ ultimatums.

And as a final note, this entire post has been about policy and speaks nothing of the rest of the problem as it relates to society, parenting, mental health, and education. To limit the discussion to policy will be and has been crippling.