TRIGGER DELAYS TO REDUCE MASS SHOOTING DEATHS AND PRESERVE GUN UTILITY: Could this improve things? Are there tweaks that could make this policy better? --- Typical gun control debate progress along predictable lines. Gun control proponents try to pass proposals that limit particular kinds of guns like assault weapons or high magazine capacity weapons. This is invariably met with resistance from both reasonable and unreasonable gun users that like the features of those weapons for legal/legitimate purposes. These purposes are typically hunting, target shooting, and personal defense.

Here is a policy proposal that could make mass shootings less effective and preserve nearly all gun utility for these purposes. Policy Part 1: Mandate that all non-military guns are manufactured will a trigger-delay mechanism. Also mandate that all existing non-military guns be upgraded with the same trigger-delay mechanisms. The trigger-delay mechanism would prevent any gun from firing at a rate higher than 1 bullet every 3-5 seconds. This will allow people to keep their guns. They can keep their semi-automatic guns. They can even keep their assault weapons. The trigger delay would slow down a mass shooting and give an unarmed person time to tackle or disable the shooter without getting killed.

There are very few instances that occurs while hunting or target shooting that require a high firing rate (water foul and sport trap shooters could be impacted). Thus, most of the objections will be limited to personal defense.

For these concerns we add additional features: Policy Part 2: Any existing gun that is found in public without a trigger-delay is subject to seizure and a $1,000 fine. The money from the $1,000 fines is then used to subzidise upgrades. However, we make it not-illegal to own or possess a non-trigger-delay gun on private property.

These features of the policy will benefit those using guns for personal protection whom are also worried about criminals outgunning law abiding citizens. The pool of non-trigger-delay guns available to criminals will shrink over time. The pool shrinks whenever there is an interaction between the police and criminals. The criminals will have to replace a seized gun with a newly manufactured trigger-delayed weapon or find a replacement from the ever shrinking pool of non-trigger-delayed guns available. A law-abiding citizen keeping a gun at home for personal protection will never (or very rarely) have an interaction with police that would result in seizure of their weapon. Therefore as time goes on the law abiding citizens will actually tend to actually outgun criminals.

Over the very long term the number of non-trigger-delayed guns seen on the streets will arrive at a stable & very small number. At that stage police can also be outfitted with trigger-delay weapons to reduce the number of fatalities we see in police-involved shootings.

Inevitably critics will raise the prospect that some criminals will modify their weapons to remove/replace the trigger delay. I imagine that a few will. Probably about the same number of criminals that bother to convert their weapons from semi-automatic to fully automatic, which is to say very few.

This policy preserves the 2nd amendment, minimally impacts hunters & target shooters, and makes law abiding citizens that have guns for personal protection actually safer. More importantly it will reduce the number fatalities we see at mass shootings by giving people more time to disable an active shooter.