Posted on 12/24/2012 9:59:27 PM PST by Red Steel
With President Obama’s announcement of a commission to study and recommend ways to reduce gun violence, the two most important Democrats in government — Obama and Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid — have both indicated a desire to slow the momentum toward gun control in the wake of the Newtown, Connecticut school shootings. The president’s decision to appoint a blue-ribbon panel — the classic Washington ploy to defuse and delay consideration of an issue — along with Reid’s inaction on the gun question will undoubtedly frustrate many in their party who want immediate action.
Obama seemed to anticipate that frustration when he announced the creation of the commission, to be headed by Vice President Joe Biden, in the White House briefing room Wednesday morning. “This is not some Washington commission,” Obama said. “This is not something where folks are going to be studying the issue for six months and publishing a report that gets read and then pushed aside.” To stress his determination, Obama said the Biden Commission must report its findings in January. Its task, he said, is “to pull together real reforms right now.”
Obama’s move will likely dissipate the energy behind gun control advocacy on Capitol Hill. It’s unlikely that even the most pro-gun-control Democrats would want to get out in front of the Biden Commission and pass specific measures. And the political world, and the emotional intensity behind the gun issue, could be quite different even a month from now. So Obama is stopping Democratic momentum, and he knows it. Republicans know it, too. “The creation of a commission is by definition an effort to freeze in place whatever object it seeks to examine,” says one senior Republican Senate aide.
Reid apparently wants the same thing. Meeting reporters Tuesday, Reid made clear that he does not intend to do much of anything on the gun issue. Asked “what gun control measures would you support going forward?” Reid’s answer was a study in saying nothing:
REID: I watched the prayers, I watched everything that took place in Connecticut Sunday night. No one law can erase evil; that’s what the president said, and he’s right. But we need to accept the reality that we’re not doing enough to protect our citizens. I’m very happy that the president’s going to do everything he can administratively. We must engage on a thoughtful debate about how to change laws and culture that allow violence not continue to grow. Every idea should be on the table as we discuss how best to keep our children safe.
QUESTION: Can you speak specifically [about any] particular gun control measure?
REID: No. No, I’ve been very clear here. I think we have to have a full discussion.
Reid is not alone among Democrats. Although there has been much press coverage of some in the party, among them West Virginia Sen. Joe Manchin and Virginia Sen. Mark Warner, who appear to have softened on gun legislation, there are others who most definitely have not. “I’m going to be one of the more cautious (ones) about doing anything on new gun laws,” Alaska Democratic Sen. Mark Begich told the Anchorage Daily News. “I want to be careful that we just don’t start throwing new laws on the books, driven by emotion, when we need to refocus on this whole issue.” Begich told the paper he preferred to concentrate on the mental illness involved in recent shootings.
In the days since the Newtown killings, many Democrats and their supporters in the press have expressed a desire to enact “meaningful” gun control as soon as possible. In two brief statements, President Obama and Harry Reid have poured some very cold water on those hopes.
I guess the spike in gun sales didn’t go unnoticed.
Not much of a mystery if you follow the money. We’ve got to suspect they have investments in gun companies. Every time there’s a gun control uproar buying explodes.
And, even if they don’t like guns, they do like money.
Any significant changes in firearms regulations will raise a very important question: if history is any guide, compliance rates for any prohibition of magazine capacity will be very low, thus in order to achieve the level of safety that advocates insist, how many billions of the law enforcement budget dollars (not to mention manpower) will we divert away from school safety to mounting an entirely new war against these newly prohibited items?
from:
Gun Restrictions Have Always Bred Defiance, Black Markets
For reasons of their own, most people, in many countries, defy anti-gun laws
J.D. Tuccille | December 22, 2012
...
In a white paper on the results of gun control efforts around the world, Gun Control and the Reduction of the Number of Arms, Franz Csaszar, a professor of criminology at the University of Vienna, Austria, wrote, “non-compliance with harsher gun laws is a common event.”
Dr. Csaszar estimates compliance with Australia’s 1996 ban on self-loading rifles and pump-action shotguns at 20 percent.
And even that underwhelming estimate gives the authorities the benefit of the doubt. Three years after Australia’s controversial ban was implemented, when 643,000 weapons had been surrendered, Inspector John McCoomb, the head of the state of Queensland’s Weapons Licensing Branch, told The Sunday Mail, “About 800,000 (semi-automatic and automatic) SKK and SKS weapons came in from China back in the 1980s as part of a trade deal between the Australian and Chinese governments. And it was estimated that there were 1.2 million semi-automatic Ruger 10/22s in the country. That’s about 2 million firearms of just two types in the country.”
Do the math. Two million illegal firearms of just two types, and only 643,000 guns of all types were surrendered …
The Australian Shooters Journal did its own math in a 1997 article on the “gun buyback.” Researchers for the publication pointed out that the Australian government’s own low-ball, pre-ban estimate of the number of prohibited weapons in the country yielded a compliance rate of 19 percent.
...
Csaszar points out that, after Austria prohibited pump-action shotguns in 1995, only 10,557 of the estimated 60,000 such guns in private hands were surrendered or registered.
And when Germany imposed gun registration in 1972, he says, owners complied by filing the appropriate paperwork on 3.2 million firearms. This was a bit awkward, since estimates of civilian stocks were in the 17-20 million range...
...
he high water mark of American compliance with gun control laws may have come with Illinois’s handgun registration law in the 1970s. About 25 percent of handgun owners actually complied, according to Don B. Kates, a criminologist and civil liberties attorney, writing in the December 1977 issue of Inquiry. After that, about 10 percent of “assault weapon” owners obeyed California’s registration law, says David B. Kopel, research director for Colorado’s Independence Institute, a free-market think-tank, and author of The Samurai, The Mountie, and The Cowboy, a book-length comparison of international firearms policies.
That one-in-10 estimate may have been generous. As the registration period came to a close in 1990, The New York Times reported “only about 7,000 weapons of an estimated 300,000 in private hands in the state have been registered.”..
link:
http://reason.com/archives/2012/12/22/gun-restrictions-have-always-bred-defian
I’d like to think that such political maneuvering was the truth- but I don’t. Its smoke and mirrors designed to create the impression they are going to do nothing and then they will take the boldest steps. This administration is emboldened by its victory, and they mean to exploit it for maximum evil.
Recommend ways to reduce gun violence,change president create jobs.
I knew this was going nowhere when he appointed “Summer Recovery Joe” to be in charge of it.
“Trust but Verify” - Ronald Reagan
I believe I really needed to read this little dittie.
If nothing else, I FEEL a little better.
“I’m buying lowers next week and I’ll put em together later. Johnny Cash style....”
Welcome to the backorder list....
He appointed a commission and directed it to report next month NOT next year as is usual in the appoint-a-commission-dodge. The commission knows what it will find and then his majesty shall rule.
Maybe they don’t want civil war right now.
Yep, Dingy. Clear as mud.
Do you continue to act like a total fool on purpose? Is there a reason you endlessly embarrass your office?
We need to deploy Alinsky stlye class warfare type tatics.
When NBC Gregory, and the rest of the elites, have armed security to protect their children, everyone else has to put their children in gun free zones open and accessible to every sort of lunatic dumped out of an institution.
The elites create one life for themselves, and a second “ perfect utopia” for the remaining 99%.
Why are gun charges dropped and rarely prosecuted???
Why not prosecute the gun portion of crimes committed with a gun???
I am sure Sheriff Joe has a little room in his outdoor prison, and would hold the thugs for a few weeks while he shows the rest of the Country how to open and operate an effective prision
Those are the members of the dangerous army. If a civil war broke out, the armed union thugs would likely side with the statist against their own best interest.
They are armed and they are uninformed. It is a dangerous combination.
Sweet!!!!
Just keep throwing Chicago in their face everytime they bring up gun control.
The petition is almost to 65,000 signers asking to deport Piers Morgan.
It’s simple. A vote for gun control means bye-bye Washington come the next week.
Fixed it.
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