Solving Our National Gun Crisis, Part 1

The currently proposed legislation to deal with our national gun violence crisis is nothing more than a tiny band-aid on a gaping wound. It cannot even begin to deal with the problem. What is needed is a comprehensive approach dealing with all the contributing factors and agencies.

That means we must first neutralize the forces and structures which have created and still enable the expansion of the problem. How do we accomplish that? We must:

Elect a Congress which has a substantial Democratic majority in both the House and Senate, and a Democratic president. Until we do that, we will never fully address the problem.

Deal with the lobbying issue by passing legislation which requires that any organization engaged in lobbying (a) must specify and account for both the source and distribution of all funds devoted to lobbying, be prohibited from giving campaign funds to any politician or political party.

Deal with the dark money issue by requiring that all funds contributed to a PAC on any issue must identify the source and amount of the contribution. Political bundling by a person or organization other than a political party (soliciting money from a variety of sources and individuals and putting those funds together to funnel them to targets must likely to have influence over an issue) must be prohibited. A person or organization who acts as a bundler acquires undue power and influence in the political process without ever being elected to public office

Prohibit any candidate for federal office from contributing more than $500,000 of his or her own money to campaigning for public office.

Prohibit political candidates from using their campaign funds for anything other than their own current political campaigns. That is, no candidate may give money from his or own current campaign fund to any other political candidate’s campaign.

Either by litigation or legislation, strip the NRA of its tax-exempt nonprofit status.

Once these steps are accomplished, we will finally have a constructive and equitable framework in which something can finally be accomplished in truly dealing with the gun violence crisis. In Part 2, I will outline what actual gun-related steps should be enacted.