Obama's "gun control" - yawn!

We have now seen BHO's anti-gun violence program and it is revealed as a "paper tiger" that is no real threat to the gun owners of the United States.

The legislative proposals are such that only the police funding is likely to pass either or both houses of Congress.  In particular the transparently regulatory requirement for the background checking of private gun sales will fail as objectionable in term of the property rights of individuals not in the gun trade.  This measure would also create a de facto national firearms registry and that will not "fly" in the Congress.

The anti-gun people, especially those in the corporate media, have flooded the airwaves with spurious "polling" that purports to show that US citizens and US gun owners now want the kind of gun law that "Wilmington Joe" Biden has suggested.  IMO the result in Congress will show that the anti-gun forces are as mistaken as the Romney polling was in insisting that he would win the presidential election and that the Republicans would capture the senate.  BHO has created for hiself a scenario for an initial step in making himself a lame duck.  He should be worrying about the coming sequester.  That is likely to be a second step in his progress toward "The Inferno."

His EO measures are largely trivialities, but even so, his wish to spread mental health records around as well as all kinds of federal records (i.e. VA treatment records) will cause him trouble.   I actually think that this provision is one thing that might contribute to better sales procedures, but Obama's desire to put all federal records in the background check "hopper" will lead to veterans avoiding PTSD treatment among other things.

Someone explain to me how any of his intended measures would have prevented the Newtown massacre.  Is it imagined that the madman could not have killed these people without the Bushmaster and 30 round magazines?  pl 

 

http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2013/01/16/us/obama-gun-control-proposal.html

Comments

[optimax]

PL

I've heard that Lanza's mother had four guns. Two pistols and the Bushmaster were found in the school and a shotgun in the car trunk. He shot his mother in the face four times with a .22, so unless one of the handguns is .22, there might be another gun.

The Sandy Hook police are withholding all evidence until they are done investigating, which they say could take months. Most news footage has disappeared from the web and there should be video from the schools security cameras the police will eventually release.

[Medicine Man]

I think your take on the outcome of this legislation is pretty accurate. My take is that this is intended. The gun control issue is one that was forced on Obama by circumstances. He'll put on a good show for the Dem-base, demagogue a bit, and then move on to what he really wants (splitting the house over the fiscal cliff, etc.). This is just a gut impression though.

[Medicine Man]

Col.: Do you think there is some merit to option 2 administered by the NRA and backed by federal largesse?

[optimax]

Never trust a man named Carl T. Bogus. Where is the list of primary sources?

[optimax]

I know he killed his wife, was a junkie and self-admitted paranoid but I still at times like his perspective and sense of humor. Why hold that other stuff against him?

[Walrus]

If laws regarding the sharing of mental health treatment information ever become law, anyone who presents at a clinic with depressive symptoms, perhaps caused by job loss, a death or a divorce is going to lose their right to own guns and will never get it back.

How do I know this? Read the aviation medical manual and find outwhathappens to pilots who report depressive symptoms.

The slippery slope is real. In Australia they first wanted us to have a firearms licence to possess guns. Then they wanted us to register them and they knew who to ask. When the semi automatic prohibition became law, they again knew who to ask to surrender their weapons. And most law abiding folk did just. That.

Criminals still have plenty of access to firearms of all sorts. The law abiding don't.

[NancyK]

I am a liberal, but I think that an armed guard at every school may be needful. We are a violent country and with all the guns and ammunition available to almost anyone, murder and mass murder has become almost epidemic.
I would love to see a ban on assault rifles and other such limits but I feel it will never pass in our present congress, which seems to feel that the NRA and hedge funds such as Cerberus are more important than the average American citizen's safety.

[turcopolier]

Nancy K

I can understand that gun ownership means nothing to you but in fact this is still a federal republic and the wishes of people outside the urban islands still matter. Insults about the NRA will just grow the number of members. I have no idea what Cerberus fund is about. pl

[turcopolier]

MM

Gun safes with combination locks? Yes. pl

[turcopolier]

MM

Over and above the rather shallow emotionalism of BHO and Wilmington Joe, I think the reaction in the WH is largely about the mid-term election. pl

[steve]

I don't think Obama has any principles at all save this one:

He likes nothing better than to go through the motions yet position himself as the one who delivers the answers to the Big Question of "What Should Be Done?"

In the particular matter, I don't think he has either strongly held pro-gun or anti-gun beliefs; only that "principle" is operative.

Perhaps that's true of the majority of politicians, yet Obama's rhetorical skills and apparent intelligence have combined to make him a particularly more venal practitioner.

[NancyK]

Cerberus is a private equity firm that dominates the gun industry, It's owner Stephen Feinberg is putting it up for sale. Gun ownership is not meaningless to me, we own a gun. I just wonder when it will all end, this bigger is better in gun ownership. Perhaps the founding fathers would have approved of the average citizen having a RPG or a tank in the backyard.

[Tyler]

Its kind of how HL Mencken can't be mentioned in many academic circles w/o someone screaming that he was a racist anti semite.

[Peter]

City, County, and State Police are getting a whiff of Uncle Sam moneys floating down. The big Federal Prime contractors are licking their chops at setting up these onerous databases. The gun safe importers are calling China for more units.

An economic stimulus for the civilian arms and ammunition purveyors, is going to be lasting more than a few weeks.

I can't count the number of times my copy of American Rifleman was taken away in study hall for looking at all the cool WW2 and WWI era rifles that could be ordered by mail before the 1968 gun control act stopped mail order. I fondly remember going into military surplus stores in the late 1950s and seeking barrels of bolt action rifles, 19.95 for fair, 24.99 for good, and 29.99 for almost new condition.

[Robb]

Option 1 is a non starter in the US a little like putting speed limits on the Autobahn might help but no one will accept it. My mother (certainly not a rabid gun owner) won't give up the prized pump action 22 she bought when she was 16. On option 2 we can probably do better (maybe a tax write off or voucher for buying a gun safe?) but I would venture that the majority of gun owners are responsible the issue is not the vast majority of owners but the fringe (similar to drunk drivers to use a car analogy). Option 3 is not financially possible and may not work anyways against a determined individual.

For the record I am neither a gun owner or enthusiast just someone who supports the right of people to own them if they want to.

[hope4usa]

I have been lurking through the gun conversations here for a while. As someone who has never owned, nor fired a weapon, I thought it was important to listen to the views of those who clearly have done both. I do have a father in law, retired police officer, Uncle who is avid hunter, and mother who is a sharp shooter. I was raised with the belief that children should be taught gun safety early (my father in law took his kids to a shooting range early so that they would understand the magnitude of firing his service revolver, emptied his gun every night, counted the bullets in front of the kids, and stored his weapon.), guns should be stored safely(gun safe), weapons should never be left in an empty house, and should be kept out of hands of family who had questionable mental health issues (ptsd etc). I do believe there is some consensus here about regulations that might work: gun safes; mandatory background checks no loopholes; limit on magazines 30 bullets and above; better coordination/recognition of mental health issues; mandatory gun safety training; and restoring police officers and their funding to schools. I'm sure there are more. I recognize that their are issues with any one item. My point is that I thought that these were positions held by the NRA 20 some odd years ago. If gun advocates and gun opponents can agree on these items, isn't that a place to start?
I am curious to find out why Mrs. Lanza, someone who clearly taught gun safety to her kids, and had a gun safe, left her home with a mentally unstable son with access to weapons. That doesn't make sense to me.

[Robin Fennessy]

turcopolier, MM and Optimax --

"... the requirement that any lawful firearm in the home be disassembled or bound by a trigger lock makes it impossible for citizens to use arms for the core lawful purpose of self-defense and is hence unconstitutional." A. Scalia, majority opinion, H vs DC, 2008

While gun safes with combination locks were not directly addressed in Heller vs Disrict of Colombia, it is reasonable to assume that any legislative requirement to use them would also be determined to be unconstitutional.

Indoctrination of gun owners to keep their firearms in "really secure containers" doesn't sound like it would have prevented Sandy Hook, either. But encouraging gun owners to take personal responsibility for their firearms will undoubtedly prevent a future occurrence of this sort.

[turcopolier]

robin

"But encouraging gun owners to take personal responsibility for their firearms will undoubtedly prevent a future occurrence of this sort."

The encouragement is a good idea but "undoubtedly will prevent" is probably overly hopeful. A tax subsidy for gun safes with combination locks would be a good idea. Liability for unsecured weapons would also be a good idea. pl

[turcopolier]

All

BTW, if my doctor should ask me if I own firearms I will tell him that this is not his business to know. pl

[jerseycityjoan]

Well, the problem is that nobody wants to hear the truth about violence in America.

As best I can determine, for the most part, we all have a lot more to fear from people we know or live nearby us -- our neighbors, friends and family -- than we have from strangers or the government.

Obviously there are many exceptions to this, but I think overall it is the case that you are far more likely to be attacked and/or killed by someone you know (that covers domestic violence as well as urban area street crime) or lives near you (that covers lots of the drug and street crime deaths, but not all).

So yes, one great reason not be buy a gun is that you can never use it against someone you know or a neighbor. Another great reasons is that if you don't have a gun, it cannot be used against you by someone you know or someone who lives nearby.

Until we really look at sources and targets of violence and accept the harrowing truth about who it is who goes after whom, nothing much will change. The mass incidents are the exceptions; targeting them won't change much.

[turcopolier]

JCJ

"one great reason not be buy a gun is that you can never use it against someone you know or a neighbor. Another great reasons is that if you don't have a gun, it cannot be used against you by someone you know or someone who lives nearby."

Maybe you could not use a gun in self defense against a neighbor but a lot of us could.

Many millions of Americns live with guns that are not used against them. pl

[Stephanie]

I would think that shooting your wife dead under strange circumstances, lying about it, and being convicted in absentia would pretty much disqualify someone as a supporter of gun rights. Adding to that the paranoia and drug addiction you mention and you have the very picture of someone who shouldn't be anywhere near guns, much less complaining, however amusingly, that the nosy guvmint shouldn't be fretting about such matters.

And given the background I admit I don't find his remark terribly funny, but it could be me.

[optimax]

But why think a president that considers acceptable the collateral killing of children in Pakisatan, Afganistan or Yemen cares about dead American children as anything more than a political opportunity?

[Cronin]

Fred -- Washington had no part in putting down Shays' Rebellion. You're thinking of the Whiskey Rebellion.

[Rider]

" Is it imagined that the madman could not have killed these people without the Bushmaster and 30 round magazines?"

Probably not so many, so fast without tactical firearms. How many rounds are left in a revolver after shooting open a steel door? I don't know. The point is, if he hadn't had tactical firearms with 30-round capacity, it might have slowed him down significantly. Even a few lives saved would be preferable.