Vice President Joe Biden
The White House
1600 Pennsylvania Avenue NW
Washington, DC 20501

Dear Mr. Vice President,

My name is...., and I grew up in a house full of guns.  My Dad was a .... Police officer, a gun enthusiast, and a mostly-responsible gun owner. As you can imagine, I know a little about guns, and a lot about gun-owner behavior. I see that the President has given you the unlovely task of coming up with recommendations in the wake of the Newtown tragedy, and I hope you'll do me the honor of engaging in discussion about what those recommendations might usefully be.

I believe that you should steer away, except for banning high-capacity magazines, from discussion of gun or ammunition design, and focus instead on a set of simple best practices for gun-owners and sellers, to be written into Federal Law and called the "Newtown Rules," in honor of the twenty children who died on December 14, 2012.

The truth is that the way gun owners and sellers do things now is a mess, and we all know that quite a number of people who own guns for sport, self-defense, and for the sacred purpose of protecting the rest of us dummies from mass killers and threats to The Constitution, don’t do a very good job of looking after their weapons. There are now ten states in which more people die in front of a gun than behind the wheel of a car, yet so-called “responsible gun owners and sellers” seem to believe that all those guns just fell down from the sky and into the arms of people who couldn’t use them appropriately.  There is much to do that doesn’t involve getting stuck in the weeds of trigger and grip design. The simple “Newtown Rules,” if adhered to, will prevent most of the gun disasters that now befall us. As you share these practices with "responsible gun owners" nationwide, you have my full permission to say "Some of these practices are so fucking obvious that I'm embarrassed to have to suggest them as laws." (I know you enjoy the occasional use of the vernacular, and I think it will really get people's attention.)

Simply put, the “Newtown Rules” are a set of gun practices in the areas of storage, supervision, safety, sobriety and overall behavior which will hold gun owners to a standard of genuine and suitable responsibility. They will also outline penalties for those who overestimate their ability to keep their weapons out of the hands of people who would use them in an irresponsible way. The right for an adult to own a gun may be guaranteed by the Second Amendment, but those whose responsibility or ability to care for weapons falls into question will not be encouraged, or in some cases, permitted to keep them. Many of the rules will be easy to understand because they are similar to the rules for responsible drinking and responsible driving, which have made our roads so much safer over the past 30 years or so.

I’m sure you can see where I’m going with this, and are perfectly able to put together the “Newtown Rules” on your own or with your government colleagues. But if you wish to include me, my contacts and I would be honored to have the opportunity to add our two cents on the specifics. I’ve done quite a lot of thinking about how really responsible gun owners might be persuaded to stop crowing about their rights and focus right quick on their responsibilities. I do ask that if you wish to share or publicize this letter, please let me know; I’d need to break the news to my Dad that I told the Vice-President our family’s gun practices might have been a little lacking at times.

As I mentioned above, I think this is a terrible job. But you are a practical person, a gun enthusiast with a son in the military, and a man who has lost a child himself; I believe you are perfectly positioned to do it. Like many others, I wish we didn’t have to talk about this. We all hoped that "responsible gun owners" would live up to their name, and in that hope, we failed to protect the twenty beautiful children who perished in Newtown. I have a six-year-old daughter myself, and I know that we must not fail again. The very preciousness of the children those devastated Newtown parents have lost, and the children that the rest of us, by whatever grace exists in the universe, still have, must inspire us to purposeful, patient and reasonable action in pursuit of a nation that is safer for our children. 

Thank you so much for your service, Mr. Vice-President. Godspeed.

Sincere regards,