Tag: gun control

Biden Responds to Sacramento Mass Shooting by Pushing More Gun Laws

President Joe Biden said that more gun laws should be passed in Congress after a shooting in Sacramento left at least six people dead and more injured over the weekend.

In response to the shooting, Biden said that Congress needs to “ban ghost guns,” although there is no evidence that a “ghost gun”—an unserialized and untraceable firearm that can be assembled after purchasing components online—was used during the Sacramento incident.

“Require background checks for all gun sales. Ban assault weapons and high-capacity magazines,” he also said, without elaborating on what he means by an assault weapon or high-capacity magazine.

Some elected officials have suggested a high-capacity magazine is one that holds 10 rounds or more, but others say it’s seven rounds or more.

Meanwhile, some firearms proponents have said the term assault weapon is intentionally misleading and vague, while others have said that a ban on “assault weapons” would entail banning nearly all semiautomatic rifles and pistols. Fully automatic firearms haven’t been available for purchase in the United States since 1986 when Congress passed the Firearm Owners Protection Act.

“Repeal gun manufacturers’ immunity from liability. Pass my budget proposal, which would give cities more of the funding they need to fund the police and fund the crime prevention and intervention strategies that can make our cities safer. These are just a few of the steps Congress urgently needs to take to save lives,” Biden said.

The state of California, meanwhile, has among the strictest gun laws in the United States. The state already enacted a ban on ghost guns, it requires background checks for all gun sales, the state has also banned “assault” weapons—which applies to many semiautomatic firearms—for decades, and it has a ban on magazines that contain 10 or more rounds. A court in 2019 deemed California’s magazine ban unconstitutional, although that ruling was placed on hold while the case is being appealed.

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ATF Shuts Down Gunmaker After Suit By Anti-Gun Group

The Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms, and Explosives (ATF) revoked a Nevada firearm manufacturer’s license following litigation from an anti-gun organization and two states challenging the agency’s decision to reinstate the gunmaker’s license, multiple outlets reported.

“ATF hereby reports that, on March 24, 2022, it sent JA Industries a notice of revocation of its firearms license,” a March 30 letter from the ATF said. The letter came after a lawsuit brought by the city of Kansas City, Missouri, and the state of Illinois as well as Everytown for Gun Safety, a gun-control group partly founded by New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg and other mayors, challenged the ATF’s decision to grant a license to JA Industries, USA Today reported. 

The company, originally known as Jimenez Arms, made affordable handguns until filing for bankruptcy in 2020 on the heels of a lawsuit in which Kansas City claimed it was a public nuisance due to its alleged contribution to firearms trafficking, Newsweek reported. It later reincorporated as JA Industries and was reissued its license by the ATF.

Everytown then followed up with a 2021 lawsuit against the ATF over its decision to grant the license to JA Industries, claiming that due to its alleged violations of the Gun Control Act, the gunmaker was ineligible to be licensed.

“I think this is an undisputed important step toward shutting down a manufacturer that flouted federal law and facilitated gun trafficking,” John Feinblatt, president of Everytown, told USA Today. “It shouldn’t have taken three lawsuits to get ATF to do its job. I can only hope this marks a beginning of a new era at ATF where it starts to serve as a watchdog of the American people rather than a lapdog to the gun industry.”

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Handgun Carry Permits Transform a Right Into a Privilege

As of last week, 24 states have decided to let law-abiding adults carry handguns in public without a license. That policy, known as “constitutional carry,” strikes critics as self-evidently reckless, while supporters think it improves public safety.

Both sides in the long-running debate about the practical impact of reducing legal barriers to public handgun possession can cite studies to support their position. But beyond that empirical question is a moral and constitutional issue that may render it moot: If people have a fundamental right to armed self-defense, should they need the government’s permission to exercise it?

Because the proliferation of constitutional carry laws is a relatively recent development, research on its consequences is nascent. But there is a substantial, decidedly mixed body of research on an earlier shift: from “may issue” laws, which give government officials broad discretion to grant or deny applications for carry permits, and “shall issue” laws, which give licensing authorities little or no discretion as long as applicants meet a short list of objective requirements.

Only nine states still have “may issue” laws, one of which (New York’s) is the focus of a case that the Supreme Court will decide this term. The rest either do not require permits or make it relatively easy to obtain them.

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5 Stories Ignored by Mainstream Media While They Focus Solely on Ukraine

As we have been reporting for the last three weeks, the Russian invasion of Ukraine is horrific. Russian president Vladimir Putin is a thug who is committing war crimes and who is killing innocent Ukrainians while endangering the people of Russia — all the while threatening nuclear war. While this war is not near American soil, because of the United States’ involvement in NATO and its relationship with Ukraine, it most certainly affects all Americans.

US sanctions on Russia have helped to drive oil prices up nearly 50 percent since this conflict began, which is undoubtedly going to drive up the cost of literally everything else.

These things most assuredly affect the lives of millions of Americans and this war deserves coverage in the media. That being said, given the track record of US media, and their tendency to deceive the American public to get them to accept wars for profit, we shouldn’t be so quick to let down our guard and unquestioningly absorb the constant barrage of information coming from them.

If the mainstream media was so concerned about wars and illegal invasions why don’t they ever report on the genocide in Yemen which is being aided by the United States or any of the other places the US has invaded over the years? The corporate press is actively avoiding these conflicts while conveniently using the Ukraine crisis as a means of ignoring other very important stories that also affect your life.

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Now Beto O’Rourke Says He Will Buy Back Texans’ AR-15s

The shifting sands of Democrat gubernatorial candidate Beto O’Rourke’s gun control plans have solidified, for now, into a pledge to buy back AR-15s and AK-47s from Texans if the state legislature will support doing it.

O’Rourke spoke with Texas Tribune CEO Evan Smith on Saturday and KVUE reported O’Rourke’s comments.

Smith asked O’Rourke to clarify his position on confiscatory gun control.

O’Rourke stressed his belief that citizens should not be able to buy a AR-15s, then said: “And if I can find the consensus within the Legislature to have a law in the state of Texas that allows us to buy those AK-47s and AR-15s back, we will.”

He has been down this road many times before.

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