Gun Control Is Now a Matter of National Security

With mass shootings becoming nearly a weekly occurrence, any sane person should support new gun restrictions, especially a ban on assault style weapons designed for one purpose: killing numerous people very quickly.   But, as two former National Security Council members argue in a piece in Politico, there is another reason for new gun legislation: the growing threat of right wing militias/white supremacist groups that pose a growing threat to safety and - as demonstrated on January 6, 2021 - democratic government.  Enacting common sense gun restrictions and banning assault weapons will be difficult, but by framing the issue as a national security matter may make the task easier if shooting and hunting enthusiasts realize that the militias pose a threat to the rest of society.  Here are article excepts:

For all the tragic mass shooting headlines this year, the American gun control debate seems permanently stuck. Last week, nine people were killed by AR-15 fire in Indianapolis; before that, 10 died in Boulder, and eight in Atlanta. Despite the anguish over the past month — and despite a push by President Joe Biden — Congress looks unlikely to take any immediate action.

We share Biden’s view that the level of U.S. gun violence is a “national embarrassment.” But as National Security Council veterans who have specialized in counterterrorism—with direct experience involving far-right American terrorism, burgeoning jihadism, and Northern Irish extremism in the 1990s—we also see a new threat rising, one that has the potential to change the urgency of the debate: the growing, and heavily armed, American militia movement, which made a show of force on January 6.

Increasingly, as militias acquire and stockpile weapons, they’re turning guns from a public-health concern into a threat to national security. And it’s possible that if proponents of reform—including advocacy groups, congressional leaders and Biden—began addressing it that way, they’d have a chance of energizing the debate against the National Rifle Association and its allies. Indeed, the shock of the insurrection has increased the political burdens of an NRA in internal disarray and offered a new perspective on the need for significant gun control legislation.

As America learned on January 6, anti-government militia groups are more than willing to jump walls, break doors and disrupt the underpinnings of our democracy. These groups, with transnational ties, also enjoy easy access to high-power, high-capacity, small-caliber semiautomatic weapons—many of which can be converted to fully automatic. . . . . they make mass casualty attacks against political or cultural adversaries both easy to carry out, and easy to frame as inspirational events of the kind that mobilize insurrection.

The executive orders Biden issued earlier this month imposing restrictions on gun kits and devices that turn pistols into rifles are marginal safeguards and rather thin gruel overall. But his call for reviving the federal ban on assault weapons is more promising and an acknowledgment that serious action is required. An important additional measure would be more rigorous required background checks.

[R]eframing the issue as a national security imperative could galvanize passive backers now focused by the assault on the Capitol on maintaining political stability in the United States. A plausible objective would be to impel the U.S. government to take further substantial regulatory steps and to lay the groundwork for effective legislation should the Democrats consolidate their Senate majority in 2022.

The administration, however, will have to tread carefully to avoid provoking the very behavior it means to deter. Extremists will interpret increased firearms regulation as validating their narrative of government-imposed social engineering and personal disempowerment. . . . But the increased magnitude of those very risks is exactly why we need to recast gun control as a national security challenge.

As delicate an issue as gun rights is, without action the prospect of cycles of escalating civil violence is particularly worrisome. Even assuming law enforcement agencies adjust their threat perceptions to accord domestic terrorism due attention—as they should—the wide distribution of automatic weapons and abundant ammunition to individuals hostile to the state is likely to be seen as justification for the further militarization of law enforcement in the post-9/11 era.

While Trump’s nod to white supremacism and incitement of far-right insurrection have already prompted some Black citizens to arm themselves in self-defense, continuing police antagonism on top of that could increase the likelihood that Black militias will emerge. Armed conflict between nonstate groups would be even harder to subdue than one-sided, far-right aggression.

Meanwhile, the broad dispersal of mass casualty small arms makes every individual willing to use one a potentially catalytic lone-wolf terrorist . . . . Many far-right American militias, including the anti-authoritarian Boogaloo Bois, explicitly encourage their followers to act on their own initiative, as Tarrant did, in “leaderless resistance” against the state, and several, starting with Timothy McVeigh, have done so.

[T]he extreme political polarization in the contemporary U.S. is not terribly far from what existed during and immediately after our own Civil War. That toxic and potentially explosive intramural animosity has remained latent and is now resurfacing in the form of the white supremacism preached by most of the armed militias, convinced that the country is run by a malign and treacherous liberal “deep state” and destined to be ethnically compromised unless they take drastic, violent action.

Right-wing extremists hold guns in vastly disproportionate numbers. Law enforcement appears constrained to tolerate their training in military-style camps, more or less openly, and their incendiary, often seditious rhetoric, turbocharged by the internet, as the lawful exercise of free speech. The possibility of muscular legislation, like “red flag” laws permitting law enforcement officers to seize firearms from those judged to be public-safety risks — has only fueled their anti-government fervor.

Large-scale confiscation and deradicalization and are not realistic prospects in the near future. But an assault weapons ban does seem within the Biden administration’s political grasp.

[W]ise policy in contemporary America would seek to separate destabilizing extremists from ordinary people with remediable grievances. This is common sense. The administration’s message to garden-variety firearms enthusiasts should be: Don’t let seditious radicals imperil your access to the guns you cherish. Protect your hobby by backing enforcement. Hunting, recreational shooting and personal defense against criminal threats are all fine; anti-government, white supremacist militia activity is not.

Durably reducing the threat to political stability clearly hinges on the resolution of big issues, including income inequality, cultural anxieties and an overheated media environment. But we will buy ourselves room to maneuver and time to deal with these challenges by reducing the firepower of militias and the lone wolves they inspire.