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I could not have imagined any of this a week ago. I can’t imag- ine how many more children will have been killed, scarred, damaged by the time you read this. A week ago, a disgruntled employee walked into the bank where he worked and gunned down five co-workers. Two weeks ago, a young woman walked, well, no, not walked but rather shot her way into her former elementary school and killed six people, including three children. Is any of this OK? Of course not. Can we do anything to pre- vent it from happening again? Of course not. A year ago, shortly after the Uvalde Texas massacre (nineteen children and two teachers murdered), Bloomberg News reported that Americans own 125 guns for every 100 people. Yourfamilyoffour,statistically,ownsfiveguns.Accessiblewhen the doorbell rings, or when someone pulls into the driveway. Maybe you keep one of your five guns in the glove box of the family car, just in case. Typical American family of four. There are more than 400 million privately owned guns in the United States. Forbes estimates that 20 million new guns are sold each year. I have questions. No answers. So I’m going to channel Jonathan Swift. Satire to the rescue. I have a solution I think even the NRA can get behind. Stand your ground laws are here to stay, so rather than try to remove or emasculate them, let’s expand them. Since we allow, even expect, a homeowner to open fire when a stranger rings his doorbell or trods on his drive- way, let’s make it legal for the stranger to shoot first, in his own self-defense. Ralph should have come packing, and he should have shot the homeowner before the geezer could draw down on him. Stand his ground on the guy planning to stand his ground. At an NRA press conference, Wayne Lapierre pro- foundly observed that “The only thing that stops a bad guy with a gun is a good guy with a gun.” So we should require good people to carry guns in public. And use them whenever they feel threatened. New car options should include firearm packages, and glove boxes should have quick releases for easy access. We don’t need less guns. We need more. CAN WE DO ANYTHING? OF COURSE NOT. BUT CAN WE DO NOTHING? OF COURSE NOT. Can we do anything? Background checks are a nice idea, but that only addresses future sales; it doesn’t dent the 400 million existing guns. A federal red flag law? Yeah, might be good, but only incrementally. At least on what we know now, no back- ground check or red flag law would have spared Ralph, Kaylin, Payton or Kinsley. How about attacking the problem with economics? Buy back those 400 million guns, get them off the streets, out of night- stands and glove boxes? Yeah, but the gun that the eighty- four-year-old homeowner used to shoot Ralph is a .32 Smith & Wesson, probably worth about $300. A new Heckler & Koch MR556A1 (its version of the AR-15) costs $3300. It would cost trillions. Tens of trillions. And even if we could put that pot of money out there, no way we would collect all 400 million guns. How about mandating safe storage? Make it impossible, or at least difficult, to quickly get to a gun without a built-in cool- ing off period? Wait, what storage? It is legal in all but four states (plus the District of Columbia) to open carry guns. Some states require a permit, but thirty-one states impose no limits at all beyond a minimum age (usually 18). If it’s legal in most states to openly carry a weapon on your hip, how can we prevent quick-draws? We know that kids can handle guns – just ask Abigail Zwerner, shot by her six-year-old student. So let’s arm kids against school shooters. All students over six should pack heat while at school. Can’t wait to see the look on the face of the next whack job mental case who breaks into a classroom with his AR-15 and sees that he’s star- ing down at twenty guns pointed at him. And, to that point, since the school shooters’ weapon of choice is usually an AR-15, we don’t want our kids outgunned. They should have AR-15s too. Maybe grenades. That will solve it, right? Or maybe we should all think about answering our doorbells with a smile rather than a gun. We have another great issue for you. We remind you if you were there or recount for you if you were not about the distinguished speakers who presented at the Spring Meeting in Key Biscayne. We tell you a few things we bet you didn’t know about the Smith Act. We say fare- well to fifty-five departed Fellows but introduce you to seventy-four new Fellows. And more. Bob Byman SUMMER 2023 JOURNAL 4