Senate Gun Control

This is largely the same President and Democratic Congressional caucus that passed the largest single expansion of the welfare state in over half a century without a single Republican vote. Your fretting about cowardice is silly.

And your condemnation of the tactic of reaching for politically low-hanging fruit is just bizarre.

 

It isn't silly. Obamacare is now painted as radical government overreach. And that is ALL we could get passed, even riding on the biggest political wave in the last twenty years. Let's see any Democrat for 60 years try to push through what should be the actual holy grail of the Democratic Party - single payer health coverage (which, you know, most of Europe has had since right after Hitler kicked the bucket.)

Guess that is why I am not a politician.

 

As I pointed out earlier, one of the big flaws with the bill is that in trying to prohibit the creation of a gun registry, it only applied to the Attorney General (and those who report to him). It in no way made the creation of a gun registry illegal for another agency, such as HHS, or State, etc.

However, even if we ignore that detail and accept that it made a gun registry illegal, as I pointed out earlier, the bill still had numerous major flaws, not the least of which was the host of bad definitions set forth in the bill that would do such things as criminalize letting someone at the range try your gun (depending on whether it is a public or private range). In other words, at a public range you could let the person next to you try your gun, but at a private one (such as a place on private property with a good backstop) it would be illegal.

 

Kimball: Even if you think it has "many other flaws" that doesn't excuse the numerous elected Republican officials who claimed their primary problem with the bill was one that did not and could not exist.

EBB: And what the Republicans "should" push for is the complete dismantling of Social Security and Medicare, as Reagan's original opposition reflects. Let alone the much-watered down transformation into a voucher program under the original Ryan budgets. Let alone their still further diluted revisions of said budget.

Your position doesn't seem like a position so much as just "whiny." Political parties aim for actual results instead of making the act of governance into ideological symbolism, regardless of the consequences? I'm pretty sure everyone but the Tea Party agreed that was a good thing.

 

I don't think I am being whiny, I think you are being naive. The whole difference I want to sort out is, I suppose, what does the Democratic Party "stand for"? I could describe the Republicans in a paragraph at most, that would be simple, but doing so for the Democrats would be very difficult indeed. The clearest answer seems to me to be that the Reps and the Dems represent Right and Left Reaganism, i.e. Neo-liberalism.

Most believers in the social democratic position excuse Obama on the market nature of Obamacare because he "didn't have the votes" to get single payer, but by that logic we can just assume that if Obama had had the votes he would have went for public ownership of the means of production, which of course is nonsense.

Obama certainly doesn't ease my suspicion here:



If what I am laying out is the case, we need to start looking to form a SYRIZA to the Dem's PASOK.

 

90% of Americans support universal background checks. I'm not a fan of gun control in general (prohibition doesn't make sense), but more background checks just make sense. As well as being supported by a majority of gun owners, even a majority of NRA members. This Cruz-Grassley bill doesn't have it, and even further waters-down the extremely-watered-down Manchin/Toomey compromise.



Anyways, results of today's vote...

Democrats voting against the amendment were Mark Begich of Alaska, Heidi Heitkamp of North Dakota, Mark Pryor of Arkansas and Max Baucus of Montana. (Sen. Harry Reid of Nevada switched his vote to no at the end, a procedural tactic that allows him to bring it up for a vote later.) In addition to Toomey, Republicans who supported the amendment were Sens. Mark Kirk of Illinois, Susan Collins of Maine and John McCain of Arizona.

 

Putting aside all of the flaws of the bill for one moment, can someone explain to me how universal background checks are going to reduce the incidence of shooting massacres like we have seen in the last few years in the US anyway? How is this meaningful gun control? Criminal gun violence won't be affected or lessened in any meaningful way because crims don't buy guns from legitimate dealers anyway, they don't have to as there are just so many guns in circulation . As I understand it, the weapons used by the shooters in the recent massacres were legitimately purchased either by the shooter or someone else and so the background checks contemplated by Obama now wouldn't have made one iota of difference id they were in place at the time those massacres were perpetrated.

So why bother? The measures will eventually pass but they won't prevent another disturbed kid taking his dad's firearmes and storming a school intent on killing everyone inside.

 

But you're still missing the point. Or you're characterizing the issue in completely partisan terms. What's the overall goal? Is it to reduce violence? Is it to simply put more gun control laws on the books for the sake of having more laws? But even those are macro-questions. If the immediate goal is to get some sort of law passed, then those who want to do so have to start engaging these questions, or it won't get enough votes to do so.

For as much as this issue has ebbed and flowed, there has never even been a standard legal definition of what an "assault weapon" is, for example. What's a "high capacity" magazine? What exactly is the "universal background check" that's been mentioned so frequently? There's no legal definition for that either. For all the talk of banning such weapons, you'd think there would be something more than an arbitrary label that is used, misunderstood, and abused by either side. That's where those members of Congress should begin. Is there a common set of definitions that can be used as any kind of starting point?

Why does someone like Diane Feinstein think that a rifle with an adjustable stock is bad (and therefore proposed that such features be made to be illegal) but that a rifle with a non-adjustable stock is perfectly fine under the law, especially since behavior is not tied to how a gun looks? Is it another illustration of someone knowing absolutely nothing about how guns operate? Does she just not care? What goal does she think it will bring about? Who decided that 10 bullets were "non-high capacity" but 15 bullets should become illegal, even knowing that anyone can buy as many of either version as they want? So again, what's left is simply people's interpretation, and a mish-mash of local and state laws. But this is why gun control has been so ineffective in the US. Under some laws, if I wanted to put a competition stock on my target rifle, I couldn't, because doing so would turn the same rifle into an "assault weapon," without changing in the slightest the manner in which the gun operated. Why do anti-gun politicians spend so much time fixating on such cosmetic features then? Both sides could say "who cares what a gun looks like," and let's look at actually looking at laws that make sense.

The problem with the anti-gun politicians is that there doesn't seem to be any rational goal, or established point of origin, and the only desire is to "get guns laws" passed because they don't like guns anyway. So while statements from someone like Diana DeGette (that's who thought that magazines get used up when the gun fires) don't represent the norm, it has a snowball effect, because her (lack of ) knowledge is what is currently driving the gun laws being proposed. This is not to say that pro-gun politicians are automatically more rational. As you pointed out, what concerns exist toward a registry and are they exaggerated, for example? But if someone has concerns, they just won't vote for a bill. If the goal is to get votes vs simply not voting for the issue, you have to explain why something makes sense.

 

Except that it did exist, or did you miss the part where I pointed out that the text of the bill only prohibited the Attorney General from creating a registry? The way it was worded did not prohibit any other officials or departments from creating such a registry. It also did not prohibit creating a registry from the records the ATF currently has from FFLs that are no longer in business.

Additionally, the person who would be responsible to prosecute the Attorney General (or his underling(s)) for creating a registry would be the Attorney General. The "penalties" were completely for show and completely toothless.

 

Personally, I find the 90% figure suspect. The polls I've seen had questions that come across as very leading (making it seem like no background checks are required currently). Even if we assume that number to be accurate, that doesn't mean that 90% of the population think that universal background checks are an urgent matter, that need to be implemented no matter what the cost.

Keep in mind, there's a lot of misinformation out there being used to support "universal background checks". For example, the claim that 40% of gun sales don't have background checks is completely false. The number from the study was actually 35.7% (which was then rounded up), and if you actually break down the numbers more it was actually more like 14 to 22%, with a margin of error around 6 points. And that was from a survey conducted in 1993-94, mostly before the current background check system went into effect, which would further lessen the numbers. Moreover, studies show that only about 10% of criminals legally bought their guns through private party sales, as opposed to buying stolen guns on the black market or through a straw purchase. (Technically, one criminal selling a gun to another could be called a "private party sale", but if you are honest, you will recognize that no "universal background check" law will ever cover that.)

There's also a very significant constitutional issue involved in trying to mandate "universal background checks", because the only avenue to do so is under the Commerce Clause. However, Congress already required background checks for interstate commerce. The only transfers that don't require background checks are specifically intrastate transfers, and there are real limits to how much they can stretch the justification of guns having ever moved in interstate commerce. (The original Gun Free School Zones Act was struck down because it didn't actually involve interstate commerce, and although it was redone with that hook to the Commerce Clause, the government has specifically avoided using it in cases that could potentially threaten to have it struck down again.)

And all of that doesn't even get into the significant costs that background checks can add for individuals. For example, there is only one person in DC with an FFL who is authorized to perform firearm transfers, and he charges $125 per gun. That's a significant additional expense, and it's largely unjustified when you can find FFLs in other states that perform transfers for as little as $10-20. It also doesn't get into the bad definitions that would have potentially required me to have a FFL perform background checks every time I wanted to go shooting with a friend and wanted to try one of his guns (or he wanted to try one of mine).

Finally, as LostOnHoth points out, the law wouldn't really accomplish much and wouldn't have prevented anything. Of the high-profile massacres in recent years (such as Tucson, Aurora, Newtown, Virginia Tech, the Sikh temple, etc), only one of them involved someone who didn't go through a background check to get the guns used, and that was Newtown where he killed his mother and stole the guns. No background check requirement will ever work in that sort of circumstance.

Quite simply, it's a "solution" in search of a problem.

 

I remember when 54 votes was a majority.

 

At this point I am all in favor of the filibuster being removed.

 

They wouldn't make a difference. I am favor of a broad gun ban myself. But given the amount of resistance the gun industry has put up against even this tepid reform, maybe it passing would be at least a symbolic victory? 'Cause that matters?

...

Ugh.

 

A symbolic victory towards what goal? As you said, you are in favor of a broad gun ban, which is outright unconstitutional (as shown in both Heller and McDonald). But the constitutionality of what you want doesn't seem to bother you.

That's a large part of the problem in this discussion. Those in favor of gun control try to act like they are being "reasonable", when it is clear that they have ulterior motives. You don't care whether a reform would be effective, nor whether it would respect the Constitution. You only care that it moves you forward towards eliminating a right explicitly outlined in the Constitution.

To use an analogy in another area of constitutional law, how would you react if in a debate on abortion a pro-life supporter said that they supported a broad ban on abortion, and then tried to use the Gosnell trial right now to place heavy restrictions on first-trimester abortions? When a pro-choice person points out that those reforms wouldn't have made a difference with Gosnell, the pro-life person responds with a tepid reform", and talks about passing it as a "symbolic victory", "'cause that matters".

I guarantee you that the pro-choice movement would outright reject that "tepid reform" the exact same way that the pro-gun groups have rejected the ineffective and poorly written "tepid reform" in this case.

 

It isn't as though the Constitution is Holy Writ. I see nothing, in principle, wrong with either rewriting (or clarifying, if you believe that it has been poorly interpreted) or eliminating the Second Amendment. I lived in Iceland for a time, where even the cops didn't have guns, and that place was like a Utopia compared to what is going on in the US.

At the same time, on a practical level, it is clear that no one single cause in all of politics brings together Angry White Males like gun control, and I don't forsee it being enacted anytime in my lifetime, without something akin to a revolution.

 

BTW, for peeps who watch it, Jon Oliver nailed the anti-gun control guy to the wall on the Daily Show last night. He is the only good investigative segment guy they have left.

 

I can only get a 5 second clip of it in the UK thanks to Comedy Central's comedy lawyers.

 

The Constitution isn't "Holy Writ", but it is the Supreme Law of the Land. You can't just ignore it because you don't like parts of it, nor can you decide to selectively enforce it.

If you want to eliminate the Second Amendment, then go ahead and try. All you need to do is get 2/3 of each house of Congress to agree and then get your amendment ratified by 3/4 of the states. Alternately, you can have a convention called for by 2/3 of the states.

Of course, you and I both know that's effectively impossible for gun control proponents to get. What you are really saying is that you don't care what the law actually is, you just want to have things your way. Well, the reason that he have a Constitution that is hard to change is to help protect individual rights. How would you like it if some Christian fundamentalist wanted to ignore or eliminate the First Amendment and turn the US into a theocracy? Or how about ignoring or eliminating the Fourth Amendment to create a police state (all in the name of fighting Terrorism)? Or force suspects to confess to crimes by allowing torture and eliminating the right to remain silent? While we're at it, why don't we just let the military commandeer your home to quarter troops?

You might not like the Second Amendment, but it is still the law of the land. Until it is repealed, it needs to be protected just as much as the other Amendments.

EDIT: Incidentally, it's a little hard to use a country with a population of only 319,000 people and a surface area of only 39,770 square miles on an island as a model for how to run a country of over 300 million covering an area of almost 3.8 million square miles with borders stretching for thousands of miles.

 

But that isn't what I am saying. I am saying that I don't think it should be a law or a right.

And as I said in the rest of the post, you are correct. It is pretty unlikely that the 2nd amendment, right-wing darling that it is, will go away in the forseeable future.

Something tells me that if it is/were possible, you would still be opposed. Making your comment seem disingenuous.

 

Then why even bring up that you wouldn't mind "rewriting" or "eliminating" it? All it does is make you seem like you don't care about whether any specific reform proposal is constitutional or not. You and I both know that it's not going to happen.

Not disingenuous. I'm simply pointing out that your comparison isn't a very valid one.

It's like trying to compare a small town like Mayberry and a big city like Chicago. You simply can't run both of them the same way. While having a sheriff's deputy like Barney Fife might work out in Mayberry, it would be disastrous in Chicago, even if you still had Andy Griffith playing the sheriff.

 

Frankly I brought it up to highlight that fact that we could, hypothetically, remove the 2nd amendment. This is rightly a meta-constitutional argument that you are framing in moralistic terms that are inappropriate.

Frankly, yes it is.

I didn't say "The US has to be exactly like Iceland." I wasn't making a comparison, simply highlighting what I thought to be good policy. One doesn't have to think that gun control would work in exactly the same way in the US to think that the idea is good in principle, and that we need to find a way to apply it to our circumstances.

 

No, it isn't. If anything, using Iceland as a comparison is disingenuous. You essentially compared apples and oranges, and then you accused me of being disingenuous for pointing out that an apple isn't an orange.

Except your underlying assumption (that because gun control worked in a small population in a very confined space it would work in a large population distributed over a larger area) simply doesn't hold up.

For example, where I live, there is enough population density that police can usually respond in force (i.e. multiple cars) in 5-10 minutes, if needed. (The average response time for my neighborhood is about 6 minutes.) However, there are large parts of the US where police response is measured in dozens of minutes, because there is such a low population density. A policy that might seem to work for one area could potentially prove disastrous for another because of those differences.

 

Ok.

If Gun control worked and reduced crime and violence, would you support it?

If not, then yes, you were being disingenuous.

But it also worked in Australia. So something tells me it isn't about the volume of territory. You are pushing a red herring.

A toddler could argue in the vein of "Iceland is different than America therefore it is useless to even think about gun control". It isn't critical thought, it is dogma disguising itself as reasoned objections.

 

It would depend on what form it took. As I said above, there are some forms of gun control I don't have problems with (such as requiring checks at gun shows or for online purchases). There are others I do (particularly when they involve horrible definitions as all of the recent ones have done). For example, were it not for the poor definitions in Manchin-Toomey, I could have supported it, as I felt the trade offs would have been worthwhile. If it had actually been as they described in their summary, it wouldn't have been bad. Unfortunately, as often happens, the text of the law (which is what really matters) didn't match the intents of the law.

However, that's really a moot point, as I've yet to see a proposed form of gun control that could be conceivably implemented in the US and would actually address the underlying issues behind crime and violence without massively infringing civil liberties. (Of course, if by "gun control" you actually mean "gun prohibition", then I will not support that, ever. Guns have uses beyond crime and violence, and any attempt at "gun control" that would prohibit those uses is fundamentally flawed.)

Again, there are significant differences between Australia and the US as well, particularly the bit about Australia being an island and not having long borders with any nations. You were comparing apples and oranges, and now you are trying to throw a pomegranate in for good measure.