The law will not end infant circumcisions, but education just might. A judge’s remarks have reignited the debate on the practice. While banning it is no solution, the case for better information and regulation is incontrovertible.

In her ruling this week, the family court judge Mrs Justice Roberts was quite clear that the two boys at the centre of her hearing could be circumcised when the time was right. She was also quite clear that the time was not yet right.

“I am simply deferring that decision to the point where each of the boys themselves will make their individual choices, once they have the maturity and insight to appreciate the consequences and longer term effects of the decisions which they reach.”

The father of the two boys, aged six and four, had applied for a court order to compel their mother to have the boys circumcised in accordance with his Muslim faith. The mother, from whom he is separated, successfully persuaded the court to allow the boys to mature to an age where they could make their own decision about their religious and bodily preferences.

While the ruling in this case is specific to the individual circumstances, the case is not unique. Last year in Florida, a similar court case ruled the other way, obliging Heather Hironimus, a mother, to surrender care of her four-year-old boy to his father to arrange his circumcision. She initially refused, disappearing into hiding in a domestic violence refuge for three months before being located and then jailed for nine days until finally, sobbing loudly and still shackled in handcuffs, she signed the release papers. It is reported that the boy was circumcised last November.

Across the world, attitudes towards routine or ritual infant circumcision are changing. In the US, where circumcision rates were once close to 90%, the latest surveys show that only slightly more than half of newborn boys are now cut. That is expected to become a clear minority within a generation. Even among Jewish and Muslim communities, there is a small but growing movement to abandon the tradition. Meanwhile the type of interfaith and cross-cultural relationships that sparked the case this week are an inevitable feature of an increasingly migratory global society.

As these trends gather pace, it is inevitable that there will be more and more cases like the one in Exeter. That judge’s ruling is correct and welcome; where there is a dispute between parents the deciding factor has to be that, while one outcome is easily reversible at a later stage, the other (barring complex plastic surgery) is not.

Inevitably, however, the judge’s remarks have already invited discussion of the deeper principles involved. What right do or should parents have to impose permanent bodily alteration or, as many would call it, mutilation, on their own children? What rights do or should cultural communities have to preserve their own religious rites and customs? To participants on either side of the circumcision debate, the answers to those questions seem self-evident and unarguable. They are also entirely incompatible.

It is the role of a secular democratic state to intervene in such clashes of competing rights. Yet over the years UK governments have almost entirely neglected their duty of care on this question. No formal attempts have been made to quantify the extent of medical complaints arising from circumcisions. We know that hundreds of babies and children are admitted to British hospitals every year with infections, uncontrolled bleeding or other complications. Shockingly, despite horrific evidence of serious injuries and even deaths arising from botched circumcisions conducted by unqualified practitioners in non-clinical conditions, there remains no legal regulation of circumcision in this country. Anyone can set up shop as a circumcision practitioner in Britain today.

Personally, I would like to see an end to all non-medical infant circumcision, but I recognise that any attempt at a legal ban is entirely the wrong approach. Rightly or wrongly, it would be perceived as an attempt to force assimilation on Jewish and Muslim communities, and would require them to leave the country in order to observe their religion. It would also encourage the very same backstreet, blackmarket practices that pose by far the greatest medical risks.

At the same time, an informed and unapologetic public health debate is long overdue and necessary. If parents wish to have their children circumcised then that has to be facilitated, but no parent should make that choice without understanding that even medical circumcisions carry risks of permanent mutilation, terrifying injuries and even fatalities. The NHS has a formal position that routine circumcision brings no identifiable medical benefits that could justify the quantifiable risks. We need to go further, however, in challenging and exploding prevailing myths about circumcision, such as the idea that it is painless for babies, that it is no more invasive than an ear-piercing, or that it has proven health and hygiene benefits. All these ideas have now been resoundingly and repeatedly disproven by medical science.

Circumcision has been practised for thousands of years, and it will not be ended by an act of parliament, however well-intentioned. But it might well be reduced and eventually even eliminated by growing consideration of the rights of the child, by education, by information and, ultimately, by nothing more than the will of parents.

Keep guns out of the wrong hands through background checks

The Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives (ATF) is making clear that it doesn’t matter where you conduct your business—from a store, at gun shows, or over the Internet: If you’re in the business of selling firearms, you must get a license and conduct background checks.

ATF is finalizing a rule to require background checks for people trying to buy some of the most dangerous weapons and other items through a trust, corporation, or other legal entity.

Attorney General Loretta E. Lynch has sent a letter to States highlighting the importance of receiving complete criminal history records and criminal dispositions, information on persons disqualified because of a mental illness, and qualifying crimes of domestic violence.

The Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) is overhauling the background check system to make it more effective and efficient.

The envisioned improvements include processing background checks 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, and improving notification of local authorities when certain prohibited persons unlawfully attempt to buy a gun. The FBI will hire more than 230 additional examiners and other staff to help process these background checks.

Make our communities safer from gun violence

The Attorney General convened a call with U.S. Attorneys around the country to direct federal prosecutors to continue to focus on smart and effective enforcement of our gun laws.

The President’s FY2017 budget will include funding for 200 new ATF agents and investigators to help enforce our gun laws.

ATF has established an Internet Investigation Center to track illegal online firearms trafficking and is dedicating $4 million and additional personnel to enhance the National Integrated Ballistics Information Network.

ATF is finalizing a rule to ensure that dealers who ship firearms notify law enforcement if their guns are lost or stolen in transit.

The Attorney General issued a memo encouraging every U.S. Attorney’s Office to renew domestic violence outreach efforts.

Increase mental health treatment and reporting to the background check system

The Administration is proposing a new $500 million investment to increase access to mental health care.

The Social Security Administration has indicated that it will begin the rulemaking process to include information in the background check system about beneficiaries who are prohibited from possessing a firearm for mental health reasons.

The Department of Health and Human Services is finalizing a rule to remove unnecessary legal barriers preventing States from reporting relevant information about people prohibited from possessing a gun for specific mental health reasons.

Shape the future of gun safety technology

The President has directed the Departments of Defense, Justice, and Homeland Security to conduct or sponsor research into gun safety technology

The President has also directed the departments to review the availability of smart gun technology on a regular basis, and to explore potential ways to further its use and development to more broadly improve gun safety.

The president has concluded his remarks on new executive actions on gun control. Here’s what we learned:

In an emotional appearance, President Obama announced that he was taking action beef up background checks on gun sales, and to institute new legal penalties for illegal gun sales.

The president cried freely as he talked about the victims of the 2012 massacre at Sandy Hook elementary school. ““Every time I think about those kids it gets me mad,” he said.

Obama called for new gun safety measures to prevent children from dying in accidental shootings. “If a child can’t open a bottle of aspirin,” he said, we should make sure they can’t pull the trigger on a gun.”

30,000 Americans die each year in gun violence, Obama said: “We do not have to accept this carnage as the price of freedom.”

The new guidelines include measures to encourage states to swap information on those with mental illness.