There are many opponents of gun control who reject laws that would restrict gun ownership any further on principle or for reasons that seem practical to them. A society where law-abiding citizens can carry guns to defend themselves against criminals who have guns (or even those who don’t) seems like a sensible arrangement to them. Those people are entitled to their views, and I’m not particularly interested in arguing with them.

The people I want to argue with are those who are in favor of gun control but who reject it for practical reasons. They point out that there are at least 200 million guns in private hands in the US, and that even if we wanted to ban guns, there’s no realistic way to do so.

I would suggest that those people lengthen their time frame. What if we came up with a plan to fundamentally change America’s gun culture over the next 100 years? There are policies that we could start pursuing today that would move us in that direction, and taking those steps beats giving up in every way.

I’m actually not in favor of a blanket ban on guns. I respect hunters, and I think that target shooting and skeet can be fun. If it were up to me, though, there would be no concealed carry permits, and handguns would be completely unavailable. The idea of owning a gun for self-defense would seem completely perverse to people.

There are a lot of ideas out there for making guns more difficult to purchase, making ammunition more expensive, and taking existing guns out of circulation. If changing America’s gun culture is important, it’s worth thinking about how to do it, even if it takes 100 years. Believe me, that’s how the gun advocates think.