Helping other people understand the full ramifications of what they’re talking about actually makes me kind of proud.
On any hot-button issue, there’s a lot of uneducated opinion and emotion on both sides, if I can help guide even one person through to a better understanding of what it all means and what they can do, then I’m not going to cry over it.
If folks on the left want to do with guns what folks on the right did with abortion, it can be done… All you need is 50 years and a bunch of Supreme Court justices.
The thing that I find funny is that through ALL this, nobody has asked me “Well, what would YOU do if you’re so smart?”
Well…
I’d give up trying to ban guns. It’s money and energy wasted on an impossibility.
Examine what CAN be done knowing that banning guns is not an option.
For example:
The ATF form to buy a gun already blocks certain kinds of people from buying a gun. For example: If you’re indicted or convicted of a felony, you can’t own a gun.
We need an analysis of recent shootings and determine how we could change the laws to have prevented them without banning guns.
He was previously arrested on a felony gun charge, was allowed to plead to a misdemeanor, did his time, did his probation, bought more guns and shot up the place.
Here’s a wild idea… maybe make it so gun offenses, misdemeanor or felony, BOTH block you from future gun ownership. Ya think? You’ve already proven you can’t be trusted with a gun.
Or maybe, just maybe, make it so felony gun charges can’t be pled down to a misdemeanor? Felony or nothing.
Each shooting exposes holes in our existing laws that can and should be fixed, but if we get hung up on “well ban guns, hurhurhur” nothing will ever get done.
We were SO CLOSE to stopping that guy before he did anything.
He bought the guns before having auditory hallucinations that landed him in a mental hospital in New York for two weeks.
While New York has a red flag law, he wasn’t a resident of New York. It didn’t apply to him.
Army sent him home, banned him from handling THEIR guns, but Maine doesn’t have a red flag law which would have allowed the state to seize weapons.
So what could we have done? Well… how about getting every state to have a red flag law? Heck, how about a FEDERAL red flag law that could be invoked by, say, the Army, that would apply to all states a soldier might live in?
Again, ya think?
These are the common sense laws we can pass right now, and no Amendment or Supreme Court change is required to do it.