Regarding Guns, This Is What We Really Need

It's rather paradoxical that gun ownership is less and less part of our lives, even as the ones who own guns seem to be getting nuttier with time:

America has witnessed the proliferation of gun-happy laws in recent years, especially laws making it easy for citizens to carry concealed handguns, and the now-widely discussed “stand your ground” laws. The spread of such legislation would lead you to believe that Americans are fonder of guns than ever before, but in fact fewer citizens own firearms now than they did in the 1960s. Why have America’s gun laws loosened even as guns themselves decline in popularity?

...[C]ritics often overlook the NRA’s motivations. There are more than Second Amendment principles at stake. The NRA confronts an existential threat to its recruitment base: declining gun ownership and use among Americans.

Not only do fewer Americans own guns than before, but fewer Americans engage in traditional hunting and sporting activities. And younger age cohorts take less interest in guns than their parents and grandparents. In a 2008 survey, for example, gun ownership rates were highest among those over the age of 70 (48 percent), and lowest for those ages 18 to 29 (17 percent). Even though roughly 80 million Americans own guns, demographic decline is already in the cards. Gun familiarity comes mostly from family habits, and fewer families are carrying on gun traditions. What better way for the NRA to re-supply the gun users pool than to strip the nation’s laws of obstacles to gun purchase, use fear of crime to motivate potential gun buyers, and to desensitize the nation’s majority of non-gun owners to the sight of civilians packing heat?

Stripped of consumer appeal, and absent strident defense, in time, gun ownership is likely to become a relic of a bygone age. How can we accelerate this process?

Gun ownership issues aside, my big fear regarding guns is the very lucrative gun-show trade near the Mexican border. Gun owners near the border head to the gun shows, and in complete anonymity sell their guns at a premium to narco-mafiosi mules, who bring the guns south across the border for endless mayhem. The money to be made is breathtaking! The narcos are no obligation to follow our laws, or anyone's laws but their own, and, in time, having a foreign base so close to our homes is a direct threat to all of us.

What we really need to do is to break up this arms-for-cash trade. The weak link is the anonymity of the trade. We need people to set up cameras outside these venues, capture license-plate numbers, find ways to look these numbers up, and post online the identities of the people who own these vehicles. These are the people who most-endanger our lives with their appetites!

A little bit of Anonymous, James Bond, and all for a good cause! No conservative dweebery here!