The term “common sense” once denoted things that were generally pretty obvious if you looked at the facts. Today, it’s often so rare that it qualifies as a superpower, but it was once something that we figured was, well, common.

However, I’m more than a little annoyed at how the term has been co-opted by people who wouldn’t know common sense if it jumped on their face and wiggled.

For example, those who talk about “common sense” gun laws. Anyone who uses that language is a partisan, biased hack who thinks that by calling it “common sense,” people who lack actual common sense will be fooled.

It’s worse when the term shows up in a headline.

Three ‘common sense’ bills

The bills that narrowly passed the House were sponsored by Democrats and include reforms that a growing number of states are implementing to quell gun violence.

One measure calls for expanding background checks for firearm purchases. The second, a red flag bill, calls for allowing courts to issue extreme risk protection orders in cases involving gun owners who are determined to be a risk to themselves or others. The third bill would impose felony charges on anyone who sells or purchases a ghost gun — meaning a firearm or firearm parts that lack serial numbers.

“We made history this session by advancing several common sense gun safety measures that garnered bipartisan support, and more importantly, are widely supported by the people we represent across Pennsylvania,” said House Speaker Joanna McClinton, a Philadelphia Democrat. “Unfortunately, like so many other priorities of people across the state, Senate Republican leaders have responded with inaction, opting to do nothing on the issue of gun safety.”

The background check bill, sponsored by Representative Perry Warren, passed 109 to 92; the extreme risk protection orders bill, sponsored by Representative Jennifer O’Mara, passed 102 to 99, while the ghost gun bill, sponsored by Representatives Morgan Cephas and Malcolm Kenyatta, passed 104 to 97. Perry and O’Mara represent districts in the Philadelphia suburbs, while Cephas and Kenyatta represent Philadelphia districts.

Let’s take a look at the actual common sense involved in each of these measures.

First, expanding background checks for guns does nothing to prevent the lion’s share of illegal firearm transfers. Most of those are carried out via black market gun sales, straw purchases, or gun thefts. Very few criminals buy guns from law-abiding citizens. If that’s where all the guns were coming from, they might have a point about it being a common sense way to address these, but that’s not what’s happening. All expanding background checks will do is be a pain in the butt for law-abiding citizens.

Second, red flag laws aren’t a common sense solution to anything, particularly when states have some kind of law that allows them to hold a dangerous person in a psychiatric facility for a period of time. Those laws don’t remove the guns from the person, they remove the person from the gun…and everything else they could use to hurt themselves or others. Red flag laws don’t do any of that.

And finally, the “ghost gun” law. This is going to take a minute.

First, let’s understand what it means for guns or gun parts not to have a serial number. For example, I have a firearm that fits that description within arms reach as I write this. It’s an old F&W .32 caliber revolver that my grandfather bought for his sister long before serial numbers were mandated for firearms. The damn thing doesn’t even work at the moment, but it would still qualify as a “ghost gun” and be banned under the law as described above.

Further, most gun parts don’t have serial numbers. If “gun parts that lack serial numbers” being banned is a “common sense” law, then just how the hell are you going to serialize something like a recoil spring? 

There’s nothing at all that’s remotely “common sense” about any of those, especially if you understand the topic at hand. But do slap that term in your headline while displaying absolutely no common sense anywhere.

If nothing else, it gives the rest of us something to point at and laugh over.