Tag: gun control

4 Reasons Gun Control Can’t Solve America’s Violence Problem

The gun-control paradigm—the idea that the solution to American violence is more laws restricting guns—is unhelpful.

Gun control doesn’t work. Indeed, any statistical connection between gun policy and violence is tenuous. But even if gun control was effective, it would still be flawed.

Gun control burdens the free exercise of the constitutionally-protected Second Amendment right to bear arms, so it’s subject to compelling legal challenges and is flatly rejected by many Americans. In addition, the enforcement of stringent gun control invariably inflicts heavy burdens upon other civil liberties—especially in poorer communities and among marginalized populations.

Gun control’s coexistence with the values of a free society is, at best, an uneasy one. But it’s even less viable in the particular context of the United States. Consider the 400 million guns already in private circulation, plus the totally irreversible and ever-increasing ease of the self-manufacturing of firearms. No matter what laws are passed, widespread distribution and access to firearms are (and will remain) immutable facts of American life—especially for people who are willing to break laws.

In this context, it’s evident that gun control cannot solve the problem of violence in this country. The following four observations about American violence suggest some promising alternative paradigms.

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Federal Bump Stock Ban Blocked by Divided Appeals Court

The federal ban on bump stocks—devices that increase the rate of fire for semiautomatic weapons—is likely unlawful and must be put on hold, a divided Sixth Circuit said Thursday.

Bump stocks harness a gun’s recoil energy to rapidly move the firearm back and forth, bumping the shooter’s stationary finger against the trigger. In the wake of the 2017 Las Vegas mass shooting, in which a gunman using semiautomatic rifles with bump stocks killed 58 people, President Donald Trump ordered the Justice Department to quickly ban “all devices that turn legal weapons into machineguns.”

Federal law generally bans civilian ownership of machine guns manufactured after May 1986, including any parts used to convert an otherwise legal firearm into an illegal machine gun. It defines a machine gun as a weapon which fires “automatically more than one shot, without manual reloading, by a single function of the trigger.”

The Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives issued a rule reinterpreting the terms “single function of the trigger” and “automatically” to ban bump stocks.

The group Gun Owners of America and others sued, claiming the rule violated the Administrative Procedure Act, the Fifth Amendment’s takings clause, and the 14th Amendment’s right to due process.

A lower court should have granted the plaintiffs’ request for a preliminary injunction against the rule, because they’ll likely be able to prove that the bump stock ban is unlawful, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit said.

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Biden: I Don’t Have Any of the Facts on Colorado, But We Definitely Need a Gun Ban

Speaking from the White House Tuesday afternoon, President Joe Biden admitted he doesn’t know or have all of the facts about the shooting that took place in Boulder, Colorado Monday night. Regardless, he called for additional infringement on the Second Amendment rights of law abiding Americans. 

“I want to be very clear. This is the one thing I do know enough to say on in terms of what’s happened there. While we are still waiting for more information regarding the shooter, his motive, the weapons he used, the guns, the magazines, the weapons, the modifications that apparently have taken place with those weapons involved here, I don’t need to wait another minute, let alone an hour, to take common sense steps to save lives in the future and to urge my colleagues in the House and Seante to act,” Biden said. “We can ban assault weapons and high capacity magazines in this country once again. I got that done when I was a Senator. It passed, it was the law for the longest time…we should do it again.”

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White House Confirms Biden Will Sign Gun Control Executive Orders

White House press secretary Jen Psaki confirmed Friday that President Joe Biden intends to sign executive orders instituting increased gun control.

“Yes,” Psaki flatly stated in response to a question on the subject during Friday’s press briefing. “I can’t give you an exact time frame in part, because they have to go through a review process, which is something that we do from here.”

“I will note that when we, when the president was the vice president in the Obama-Biden administration, he helped put in place twenty three executive actions to combat gun violence,” she continued. “It’s one of the levers that we can use that any federal government, any president, can use to help address the prevalence of gun violence and address community safety around the country.”

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Nobody’s ‘coming after your guns,’ says Kamala Harris, who campaigned on coming after guns

As the Biden administration launches a new push for gun control, Vice President Kamala Harris insists that nobody’s “coming after your guns.” With Harris on record saying the exact opposite, will anyone believe her?

Speaking to CBS News on Wednesday, Harris urged Congress to pass a pair of bills that would strengthen background checks for weapon purchases. The bills were recently passed by the Democrat-controlled House, but need a 60-vote majority in the Senate. With control of the Senate split 50-50 between Democrats and Republicans, they are unlikely to pass, even after two high-profile mass shootings in the past two weeks.

Harris scolded Republicans who equate gun control with “getting rid of the Second Amendment,” telling them to “stop pushing the false choice that this means everybody’s trying to come after your guns, that is not what we’re talking about.”

Harris’ appeal echoes President Biden’s call for “common sense” gun laws, a call he made on Tuesday, one day after alleged gunman Ahmad Al Aliwi Al-Issa murdered 10 people in a grocery store in Boulder, Colorado. 

However, gun owners and Second Amendment advocates are unlikely to be moved by her promise not to “come after” their guns. For one thing, Joe Biden explicitly vowed on the campaign trail to rid America of “assault weapons,” a term ascribed by Democrats to hundreds of weapons, from certain shotguns to pistols to the ubiquitous AR-15 rifle. Asked in 2019 by CNN’s Anderson Cooper if “a Biden administration… will come for my guns?” Biden answered: “Bingo, you’re right if you have an assault weapon… they should be illegal, period.”

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