The Right will say whatever they like without challenge to protect their narrative.
The cognitive dissonance this story presents simply won’t break through to the unethical politicians who thrive on this narrative.
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They would spend all their time and treasure battling the NRA and the courts, finding that legislation illegal as a violation of 2A.
We don’t need the governors and legislatures to do all that more than they’re doing. It’s changing the legal mindset in the courts that’s truly the obstacle.
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Good idea. Now how do you plan to find and force licensing and insurance on the owners of the roughly 400 million guns already out there? Something like 45% of the US population has at least one gun in the household, so that’s about 150 million households.
There is no Federal database of gun owners. The ATF has a huge database of firearm purchase records, but it is prohibited by law from being in a searchable format. Thanks, Republicans!
Maybe in the future, if we get more Dem control of Congress we might get a licensing and insurance bill passed for new gun purchases, but that does nothing to solve the problem of too many guns already in people’s hands.
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That’s obvious but you have to start somewhere.
There is no silver bullet solution (pardon the pun). There are, though, many small steps that can and should be taken. I can’t snap my fingers in Seattle and magically end up immediately in NYC. There is a long journey involved. The length and difficulty of that journey should not dissuade us from setting foot.
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Presumably the mandatory sentence would only apply to a criminal conviction. A self-defense homicide that isn’t charged or is acquitted by a jury wouldn’t trigger the sentence.
It wouldn’t stop the mass murders committed by people planning to suicide at the end of the rampage, or domestic killings where the shooter suicides. There are plenty of episodes where the perp isn’t considering consequences like a long prison term.
It might put a dent in the number of gun crimes involving robbery, but I don’t know if that’s enough of an impact to offset the way this would be applied unequally across racial lines with regard to incarceration.
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Okay then, kill anything that moves! It’s the only to be sure.
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If we can’t (and we don’t very well) enforce the laws already on the books, what’s the point of adding more laws? The person already committing a felony of illegal gun possession isn’t going to care that you pass a law that makes them committing two felonies.
If we’re serious about gun crime and tackling that, seriously enforcing what’s already out there is a key part of the equation.
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I can hear the howling now
Gun Buying Restrictions on Base Are Needed to Reduce Suicides, Pentagon Panel Says | Military.com
Military exchange stores should stop selling guns to troops under 25 years old and require across-the-board waiting periods on firearm and ammunition purchases to reduce high suicide rates, an independent advisory panel to Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin is suggesting.
The firearms restrictions, along with repealing a law passed by Congress in 2013 barring the military from tracking gun purchases, could help reduce the alarmingly high number of troops who continue to kill themselves, the Suicide Prevention and Response Independent Review Committee said in its report released Friday.
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It’s the prudent thing to do.
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It’s the “security of a free state” part that gets me lately. Not even the so-called “2nd Amendment” folks think we’re secure. That’s why they want everyone to have instant access to guns! There’s bad guys with guns everywhere! We should all be carrying, always, everywhere, because you can never say when a gun fight will break out!
Security and freedom are the unambiguous goals of the 2nd Amendment. The “people’s” right to keep and bear arms is the means to those ends. But those who count themselves the defenders of that right these days have entirely and enthusiastically abandoned security and embraced insecurity as a reason for removing all restrictions on guns.
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No ‘way’!
(Note disagreeing, just point out the typo… 
)
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Using the murder example, because some arsenic poisonings are still being committed, we shouldn’t control new more poisonous drugs that are developed?
That is a large category of gun control measures, addressing changes in technology like automation and the larger magazines that are now available — and the NRA resists anything.
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I challenge your statement that we don’t already enforce laws already on the books.
Citation required but missing.
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And yet, Abbott blithely tosses that out without even the faintest hint that that problem should be addressed. The absolute lie on top of that is just the chef’s kiss.
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Pretty simple. Provide proof of license and insurance to buy ammunition or shoot at a gun range. That would catch quite a few.
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Not that we don’t enforce at all, but that we don’t do it well.
If tens if not hundreds of thousands of already-illegal guns are being seized every year around the nation, that suggests that we’re not effectively enforcing the stuff already on the books, or we should see much fewer violations.
So you’re saying that since we’re confiscating hundreds of thousands of guns per year means we’re not enforcing gun laws?
How does that even make sense?
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I think you’re underestimating the creativity of gun culture. Hand loading ammo is not difficult, in fact it’s part of the hobby for some. Although, I suspect ammo restrictions would never get passed into law because too many hunters and legit self-defense gun owners would object.
There are also plenty of ways to practice shooting without going to a gun range. It’s just more dangerous and sometimes illegal. Most of the target shooting I did years ago when first getting interested in guns was with friends at a canal embankment “rock pit” at the edge of the Everglades. Probably illegal but there was nobody around to care about it.
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We’re not enforcing them well, or we’d have a lot fewer found over time.
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As someone said upthread, if you never do anything because nothing solves 100% of the problem, no progress will ever be made. Might as well crawl into a fetal position in the corner and wait for the world to end.
My proposal, and many others folks have identified would make a difference. A whole lot of small steps would ultimately make a large difference. But let’s not start. Someone might haz a sad if they had to register their firearm … or something.
Sorry about the sarcasm, but every proposal is met with the same exact response - total paralysis.
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