A couple of years ago and on another blog, I wrote a series of posts enumerating the many reasons why the democratic party, in its current form, has no worthwhile future. Some reasons, such as shrinking of their core support base and institutional inertia, are systemic in nature. Others, such as their unpopular obsession with promotion of certain "social causes", are a cover for the neo-liberal policies promoted by them. But a few do not neatly fall into either category. The very peculiar obsession of democratic party establishment with implementing “gun control” is one of those.
Republicans believe that the victims of mass shootings are just the price we have to pay for gun rights. If everyone has the right to own guns, then bad guys will own guns and there is nothing we can do to stop bad guys from shooting random people. The only way to stop it is to take guns away from everyone. There are more people killed every year in traffic accidents but nobody suggests banning cars because of that.
This argument misses the point. No one has proposed banning cars, but there has been a major government effort to make cars safer: seat belts, air bags, crash standards, ...
The government prevents you from buying fully automatic machine guns, bazookas, Javelin anti-tank missiles, and Stinger anti-aircraft missiles because those weapons are just too dangerous. The government could decide that semi-automatic rifles like AR-15s are too dangerous also. They did between 1994 and 2004. The rate of mass shootings declined between 1994 and 2004 and began to rise after that ban expired.
Actually in the US you can legally own a fully automatic machine gun. You just have to pay a $200 fee, pass a background check, get a special license from ATF and register your machine gun with ATF. What is illegal is manufacturing any new fully automatic machine guns. The only machine guns you can buy legally were manufactured before 1986 and they are now very expensive and hard to find.
Something similar could be done with automatic rifles. Not outlaw them, but stop manufacture of new ones, require them to be registered and place a high transfer tax on them. Price them out of reach of the typical criminals or impulsive mass shooters and require a lot of red tape before you can purchase one. This would not stop mass shootings, but it would reduce them over time.
Congress could do that and there would be broad public support. The problem is Republicans are largely owned by the NRA. The NRA is controlled by gun manufactures who make lots of money selling AR-15s. So they will block Congress from doing anything about the problem and then turn around and say Democrats want to send jack booted federal agents to your house to take all your guns away to boost the gun nut turnout for the next election.
The victims of mass shootings are simply the sacrifices the Republicans make to keep themselves in power and power is all that matters to Republicans.
Republicans believe that the victims of mass shootings are just the price we have to pay for gun rights. If everyone has the right to own guns, then bad guys will own guns and there is nothing we can do to stop bad guys from shooting random people. The only way to stop it is to take guns away from everyone. There are more people killed every year in traffic accidents but nobody suggests banning cars because of that.
This argument misses the point. No one has proposed banning cars, but there has been a major government effort to make cars safer: seat belts, air bags, crash standards, ...
The government prevents you from buying fully automatic machine guns, bazookas, Javelin anti-tank missiles, and Stinger anti-aircraft missiles because those weapons are just too dangerous. The government could decide that semi-automatic rifles like AR-15s are too dangerous also. They did between 1994 and 2004. The rate of mass shootings declined between 1994 and 2004 and began to rise after that ban expired.
Actually in the US you can legally own a fully automatic machine gun. You just have to pay a $200 fee, pass a background check, get a special license from ATF and register your machine gun with ATF. What is illegal is manufacturing any new fully automatic machine guns. The only machine guns you can buy legally were manufactured before 1986 and they are now very expensive and hard to find.
Something similar could be done with automatic rifles. Not outlaw them, but stop manufacture of new ones, require them to be registered and place a high transfer tax on them. Price them out of reach of the typical criminals or impulsive mass shooters and require a lot of red tape before you can purchase one. This would not stop mass shootings, but it would reduce them over time.
Congress could do that and there would be broad public support. The problem is Republicans are largely owned by the NRA. The NRA is controlled by gun manufactures who make lots of money selling AR-15s. So they will block Congress from doing anything about the problem and then turn around and say Democrats want to send jack booted federal agents to your house to take all your guns away to boost the gun nut turnout for the next election.
The victims of mass shootings are simply the sacrifices the Republicans make to keep themselves in power and power is all that matters to Republicans.