Posted on 02/17/2021 7:37:43 AM PST by Kaslin
This week, President Joe Biden marked the third anniversary of the mass shooting at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Florida, by urging Congress to "enact commonsense gun law reforms." The implication was that the gun controls Biden favors would prevent crimes like the Parkland massacre.
There is little reason to think that's true. The bills Biden is eager to sign would instead arbitrarily limit Second Amendment rights and threaten the viability of the industry that makes it possible to exercise them.
Biden wants to prohibit the production and sale of "assault weapons" and require that current owners either surrender their firearms to the government or follow the same tax and registration requirements that apply to machine guns. Yet, he concedes that the 1994 federal "assault weapon" ban, which expired in 2004, had no impact on the lethality of legal firearms.
The problem, according to Biden, was that manufacturers could comply with the law by "making minor modifications to their products -- modifications that leave them just as deadly." But there is no way around that problem because laws like these are based on "military-style" features, such as folding stocks, threaded barrels and bayonet mounts, which have nothing to do with a weapon's destructive power.
Even if the government could eliminate all guns with those features, would-be mass shooters would have plenty of equally lethal alternatives. Several of the deadliest school shootings in U.S. history were carried out with weapons that would not be covered by Biden's ban.
Biden also would ban "high-capacity magazines," which politicians generally define as magazines that hold more than 10 rounds. Americans own millions of those; they are standard for many of the most popular handguns and rifles.
The rationale for the 10-round limit is that the need to switch magazines can create a "critical pause" during which a mass shooter might be overpowered or his victims might escape. But as a federal judge noted when he ruled against California's ban on "large-capacity magazines" in 2019, that restriction also can create a "lethal pause" for a crime victim "trying to defend her home and family" -- a far more common situation.
Also on Biden's agenda: repealing the Protection of Lawful Commerce in Arms Act, a 2005 federal law that generally protects gun manufacturers and distributors from liability for criminal uses of their products. As Sen. Bernie Sanders, I-Vt., noted in 2016, exposing businesses to potentially ruinous judgments when a legally purchased firearm is used to commit a crime is a prescription for "ending gun manufacturing in America," meaning "your position is there should not be any guns in America, period."
Biden also supports background checks for nearly all gun transfers, which in practice would mean requiring the involvement of federally licensed dealers in private sales. That requirement would impose new burdens and costs on law-abiding gun owners without having any impact on run-of-the-mill criminals, who are no more likely to follow Biden's rule than they are to obey all the other laws they routinely violate.
As for mass shooters, they typically do not have criminal or psychiatric records that would disqualify them from buying guns, meaning they would pass the background checks Biden wants to expand. The Parkland shooter, for example, bought his rifle legally, which makes the invocation of his crime as a justification for expanded background checks rather puzzling.
To the extent that Biden's policy would actually prevent people from buying guns, it would hurt many people who are legally barred from owning firearms even though they have never demonstrated violent tendencies. Prohibited owners include cannabis consumers, even in states where marijuana is legal; anyone with a felony record, no matter the nature of the offense or how long ago it happened; and anyone who has ever undergone involuntary psychiatric treatment, regardless of whether he was deemed a danger to others.
Biden's "commonsense" gun control prescriptions are "common" in the sense that politicians often push them. Whether they make "sense" is another matter.
Well, the lack of commonsense certainly helped to prepare the circumstances which allowed that young man’s horrible act that day to take place.
Less sense than the GOP helping to cheat President Le Petomane into office.
What does more Harm to Society as a whole?
A crazy person with a gun that kills someone during an Armed Robbery??
A Banker that swindles Billions of Dollars and destroys millions of lives, only to be bailed out by the Taxpayers??
A Public Servant that never tells the truth and destroys millions of lives while enriching his family and friends at your expense??
Biden has never had commonsense he lacks the ability of reason he’s always has been and will be just a yes puppet for someone else.
A coward with power is most dangerous to all world wide.
Just wait until the DC pinkos finish their plans for ‘common sense’ speech control — and it is coming.
Common sense is not that common.
Banning guns, ammo, magazines or implementing licensing restrictions or intrusive background checks will not have the slightest effect on culture driven “gun violence”.
All this proposed legislation is either a diversion to avoid addressing the real issue or is driven by more sinister motivations.
So if they remove the liability protections from firearms manufacturing, then by precedent and extension they also remove those protections from all products such as cars, knives, baseball bats, computers, just about anything that can be used as intended yet still causes harm. Everything made today will become more costly.
It isn’t supposed to make sense. They want bans and you will comply or the nice Federal agents will be along to summarily execute you.
Make no mistake. This is what is coming.
Somebody ought to tell this senile old idiot that most of what the lunatic wants has already been shot down by the Supreme Court.
Every despot who goes after privately owned guns claims it is a “common sense” measure.
We assume there is thought and knowledge behind the actions of the Left.
And so, when we are confronted with things like these gun control ideas, we attempt to combat it with facts, history, logic, and science which is what would, and should normally be done.
But we engage in this activity with people to whom facts, history, logic, and science are completely irrelevant.
So they lay the trap for us, let us walk into it, watch us squirm and struggle as we attempt to factually, historically, logically, and scientifically address issues, all the while sinking into the La Brea Tarpits of their making.
What is the solution to governance when one side refuses to engage in factual, historic, logical, and scientifically based debate on issues? Other than ripping their hands from the levers of power, I don't know. But it will never work, and someday, we as conservatives will need to recognize that and act accordingly.
Why would you expect commonsense solutions from a man who was a buffoon before he developed dementia?
>>What does more Harm to Society as a whole?<<
Politicians pretending to care about our country, leaving the Southern border wide open allowing criminal illegal aliens such as Zetas, MS-13, Mexican mafia to cross into the interior of America bringing horrific violence, human smuggling, diseases, worlds impoverished and deadly drugs such as Chinese communist fentanyl which has been documented to have killed 80,000+ Americans due to overdose.
>>This is a trap that we as conservatives fall into constantly...and not just over the 2nd Amendment. We seem to do this on everything.
We assume there is thought and knowledge behind the actions of the Left.<<
We? You gotta mouse in your pocket? lol
We conservatives I think is the wrong label...with all respect. I believe you may mean republicans.
Like Water, Evil finds its way.
Sure hope Biden never sees this Video:
I am using “we” in the general sense which you probably get. Of course there are those of us who don’t fall into that trap, but the overwhelming majority of conservatives do, in my opinion.
A lot of people simply don’t want to accept that there are a vast number of people who cannot be reasoned with, and who can blame them, because the ramifications of that are not palatable in a “government by the people, for the people”.
Blocking legal sales and then having wide open borders is “common sense”.
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