Continued:
Trump made a big public show of directing Jeff Sessions to consider regulating bump stocks. Does he not know the ATF has already determined they have no power to promulgate any such regulation without Congress passing a new law? Apparently not.
But it isn’t just his embarrassing ignorance. The insincerity of Donald Trump is so abysmal he came to the meeting with survivors yesterday armed with crib notes (captured by a photographer) to remind him to respond with “I hear you.” Who needs such a reminder except a terminally insensitive creep?
What we have in America is a boat with 3 huge holes in it.
We’ll break it down. In principle it’s real simple to understand and to fix. But you can’t just plug one hole, or even worse just partially or temporarily fix one hole, and expect the boat not to keep sinking.
1) The Background Check Sieve
When you hear talk about fixing the background check system, most of the time it does not even consider gun shows or online sales. The back burner bill languishing in Congress right now, the Fix NICS bill being touted by some, would do nothing but provide additional funds to enforcing EXISTING and inadequate provisions, it would not cover these massive gaps. As long as anyone, even a mentally ill person, can walk into a gun show and buy anything they want no questions asked, nothing has been fixed.
2) Patchwork Gun Registration
Even if we had a truly robust background check system, it would not keep guns out of the hands of lunatics if private parties, outside of the background check system, were spreading them around. It MUST be illegal, nationwide, to transfer a gun without licensing. For those irrationally paranoid about jackbooted federal thugs, we are prefectly happy with state registration systems. They work perfectly fine for cars, but they must be univesal, just like car registrations.
3) Obscene, Murderous Firepower
Do we allow civilians to have flame throwers, bazookas, or an Abrams tank for so-called self-protection? No, we do not. Because these are weapons of war, and we don’t want our streets and classrooms to be war zones. Assault rifles, even so-called semi-automatic ones, gonzo magazines, bump stocks, these are all totally unacceptable in private hands in a civil society. Ban them all.
There was a time in America when a foreign army might come marching up your street at any moment, when you might need a guy on a horse riding at midnight to warn you they were coming, when you might need a “well-regulated militia” to respond to an actual armed invasion. If you want to get your hands on weapons of war in these modern times, join a real militia, which in today’s America would be the Army, the Navy, the Air Force or the Marines.
There is a reason why the Constitution also prohibits quartering of soldier in private homes. We don’t want our armed forces turned on our own citizens. But what we have today is even worse, militias of one, mowing down our own peaceful citizens in bulk.
Each and every one of these three huge holes must be permanently patched, with laws not allowed to lapse ever again. Otherwise the massacres will just continue. The NRA knows this perfectly well, and they will fight tooth and nail to keep their gun sales booming, which is ALL they care about.
The NRA talks about hardening schools, because of the threat THEY have created by deliberately handing out assault weapons like candy to sickos. Where is this going, having every citizen having a gun pointed at every other citizen at all times? The only thing the NRA is interested in hardening our hearts as their own hearts are already petrified in the name of profit.