The Gun Fight in Washington. Your opinons?

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OK, let me explain what I'm looking for here.

I'm not interested in hearing from the pro-gun people here (you know who you are) how President Obama and the others are about to trample on your 2d Amendment rights. I'm not interested in hearing from the gun control advocates (and you, too, know who you are) how we need some serious new laws to curb gun violence. This has been hashed out to a fare-thee-well on so many other threads that the partisan rhetoric is coming out of my ears.

What I am interested in is your honest opinion on what the chances are that the current hysteria (and that's all it is) will actually lead to some significant legislation at the national level regarding weapons control. Regardless of what you think should happen, what do you think, realistically, is going to happen? Please try and back it up with some reasons of why you think this.

I'd like to hear from both the Left and the Right, liberals and conservatives alike.

Personally, I think this whole thing, coming on the heels of the Connecticut grammar school massacre, will die down and no significant new laws whatever will be passed. That's what happened in the wake of the attempted Ronald Reagan assassination. The so-called Brady bill was introduced, watered down to a level of absolute meaninglessness and passed amid cheers by the truly gullible who thought that some new anti-gun laws had been passed. I predict that the same will happen this time with minor variations on an existing theme.

What do you think?

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View best answer, chosen by Lustig Andrei

I think the congress lacks the character to pass any meaningful legislation at all. Obama can use executive order to make a few things happen. But overall, we are still at square one.

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I am quite hopeful that we will see an expansion of mandatory background checks. Proposals to do so reach approval ratings of 75% + across every single poll taken on the subject, including a majority of Republicans and NRA members polled. You just don't see approval numbers like that for almost anything.

What more, Obama's election organization (OFA) is re-forming itself right now to become an advocacy organization, now that he'll never need to worry about being elected again. And they've vowed to jump right into this fight. I think Obama sees a very popular issue with which he could hammer the Republicans mercilessly coming into the Midterm elections, forcing them to either face the wrath of the voters or split when they make a deal.

Cycloptichorn

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@Lustig Andrei,

Nothing much will happen. I think you have it about right.

The NRA and those they control in congress will stretch it out as long as possible. Unless there is another 2 or 3 mass shootings in the next couple of months, public opinion will eventually wane. It looks like it's the states that will make the biggest splash on this, NY already passing a law. I would bet CT won't be able to avoid some legislation. Then the issue will become the NRA challenging those laws.

Ultimately it's going to be a long battle. If people like Giffords and her husband can cause any movement over the long term it will be small until the Supreme court rules and we have another incident like this one.

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@Lustig Andrei,

Schools have hundreds, sometimes thousands of kids within their walls. Where else in our society do we put that many people together without having adequate security - yes, armed security staff. School districts should contract with the local police department and have officers on staff, especially at the middle school and high school level, but now, at all levels.

I see no use for automatic weapons. Hollywood and the gaming industry should take responsibility for glamorizing that whole scene.

That kid (and he WAS a kid) who murdered children in Conn. was so full of hate about his life and mother that he would have burned, bombed that school or run into the building with his car. IMHO, his mother put those guns in his hands. He wanted a big splash and to hurt his mother. What better way than to hurt the most people in a place where she had a connection and he felt he was rejected from (school system)

I'm surprised he didn't spray the local bar she frequented.

Now, what can we do? I have no idea. There is no way we could have prevented that entire episode from happening. We have created a society that thinks it needs automatic weapons and likes to play with them. There's no legislation that can deal with that.

In the meantime, parents should insist that their local schools crammed with hundreds of kids are secure with armed, trained staff in the halls and at the doors.

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@Lustig Andrei,

I don't see any effective legislation coming out of all this.

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Lustig Andrei wrote:

OK, let me explain what I'm looking for here.

I'm not interested in hearing from the pro-gun people here (you know who you are) how President Obama and the others are about to trample on your 2d Amendment rights. I'm not interested in hearing from the gun control advocates (and you, too, know who you are) how we need some serious new laws to curb gun violence. This has been hashed out to a fare-thee-well on so many other threads that the partisan rhetoric is coming out of my ears.

What I am interested in is your honest opinion on what the chances are that the current hysteria (and that's all it is) will actually lead to some significant legislation at the national level regarding weapons control. Regardless of what you think should happen, what do you think, realistically, is going to happen? Please try and back it up with some reasons of why you think this.

I'd like to hear from both the Left and the Right, liberals and conservatives alike.

Personally, I think this whole thing, coming on the heels of the Connecticut grammar school massacre, will die down and no significant new laws whatever will be passed. That's what happened in the wake of the attempted Ronald Reagan assassination. The so-called Brady bill was introduced, watered down to a level of absolute meaninglessness and passed amid cheers by the truly gullible who thought that some new anti-gun laws had been passed. I predict that the same will happen this time with minor variations on an existing theme.

What do you think?

My expectations accord with the spirit of your post.
What COUNTS is how the majority of the USSC
will sculpt its interpretation of the 2nd Amendment,
which is hinted at in HELLER, with a mostly libertarian,
historically accurate result.

I agree that the obama ministrations = only empty bloviations.
I don 't believe that he can possibly do much.
(Executive orders operate only upon his subordinate employees,
not upon the citizenry.)

I feel secure.

David

0 Replies

@Cycloptichorn,

Cycloptichorn wrote:

I am quite hopeful that we will see an expansion of mandatory background checks.
Cycloptichorn

What happened to equal protection of the law??
It is a very invideous discrimination to tell one man
that he is free to defend his life, if he is attacked
and then tell a woman that she is legally DENIED the means to do so.

That makes a real joke of the law of discrimination;
i.e. it is abhorrent to the Constitution to discriminate
regarding inferior seating on a bus for a few minutes,
but discrimination qua the right to defend your life
(maybe even for the same bus passenger) is OK.

David

0 Replies

@roger,

I agree, roger. Even Obama's own party isn't backing him.

http://www.nydailynews.com/news/politics/dems-waiver-gun-bills-article-1.1242188

1 Reply

@parados,

parados wrote:

Nothing much will happen. I think you have it about right.

The NRA and those they control in congress will stretch it out as long as possible. Unless there is another 2 or 3 mass shootings in the next couple of months, public opinion will eventually wane. It looks like it's the states that will make the biggest splash on this, NY already passing a law. I would bet CT won't be able to avoid some legislation. Then the issue will become the NRA challenging those laws.

Ultimately it's going to be a long battle. If people like Giffords and her husband can cause any movement over the long term it will be small until the Supreme court rules and we have another incident like this one.

AGREED, for the most part.
Without even considering the Bill of Rights or the USSC in HELLER,
the NY law has many different procedural abnormalities.
That statute was not much above a college-boys' prank.
The governor (the head of the DEMOCRATIC Party in NY),
arranged it to PREVENT the citizens (like me)
from making demands of our representatives in the legislature.
Maybe he thinks that 's democratic. I glympsed a lot of other
weird issues ripe for judicial challenge.

Anyway, I intend to move to Florida in the near future.
There 's more freedom there n its more in keeping with spirit of ORIGINAL AMERICANISM

David

2 Replies

Quote:

What I am interested in is your honest opinion on what the chances are that the current hysteria (and that's all it is) will actually lead to some significant legislation at the national level regarding weapons control

Some of Obama's plans:
1. Background checks on those buying guns

2. Educate teachers to recognize students who have mental health problems

3. Provide students who have mental health problems with mental health care.

While background checks sound like a good idea, how does Obama plan on running background checks on Chicago gang members ( responsible for 500+ murders in 2012) who are buying their guns from sellers in Mexico?

If the mother of the kid who murdered the 30+ individuals in Conn had a background check, she would have come up CLEAN. Thus a background check in her case, as well as in the case of many other individuals could very well be meaningless, especially since she wasn't in a state of mental health that would result in her killing another person.

Education of teachers? Most adult teachers today can recognize when a child in their class is acting "strange". I don't think paying teachers to take courses in mental health is going to solve the current gun problem. If a child is acting strange, refer him/her to the student nurse, who can then take the issue from there.

Finally Obama wants ready access to mental health care for everyone with mental health issues. Most insurance plans now provide for mental health coverage and it's usually restricted to a set number of visits with a mental health professionl per year. The graduate student who killed all of the movie goers in Colorado was seeing an MD and receiving medical Rxs for his apparent schizophrenia. Did these visits or his meds do him any good?
The boy in Conn who killed the 30+ people in the school had been Dx as autistic. But, being autistic doesn't readily make a person a killer.
Thus having a mental health problem doesn't readily equate to an individual being a killer. Likewise, being treated professionally for a mental health issue is no guarantee that one will not turn out to be a mass killer.

In conclusion, nothing of real and lasting value will come from the recent efforts of Obama in the field of gun control or mental health. He will spend money ( estimated to be about $150,000,000) for what it's worth.

The mass killings that have occurred in the USA will continue until we learn why we as humans hate and want to hurt others.

0 Replies

@Lustig Andrei,

Lustig Andrei wrote:

Regardless of what you think should happen, what do you think, realistically, is going to happen? Please try and back it up with some reasons of why you think this.

On universal background checks, it could happen. The NRA will support it so long as there is no undue burden on gun buyers, and so long as there are no unacceptable measures attached to it.

But, if there are no undue burdens on gun buyers, and if there are no unacceptable measures attached to it, you may find it being opposed by the gun control side.

That happened in 1999, when a NRA-backed move to have background checks on all sales at gun shows was defeated by the gun control movement.

So, hard to tell. 50/50 maybe?

On an assault weapons ban, 100% that the NRA will not allow it to be passed through Congress.

And, 100% that the courts will strike down all bans on assault weapons within the next 10 years (that includes state and local bans).

On a stand-alone 10 round magazine limit (that is not attached to any ban on assault weapons), hard to tell.

The NRA would have more trouble opposing that than they would a full-on ban on assault weapons. But that does not mean they would fail to block it.

I would have said 50/50 if there had been a hard push just for magazine limits and background checks. But.... Obama has proposed virtually everything but the kitchen sink.

I rather think that any push for stand-alone magazine limits will get lost in the din (and the gun control movement may themselves oppose it, insisting instead on a full ban on assault weapons).

So it feels a lot less likely now. It is likely that Obama's long list of proposals will just be rejected en masse (unless compromise can be reached on the background checks, in which case that alone will pass).

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@PUNKEY,

PUNKEY wrote:

That kid (and he WAS a kid) who murdered children in Conn. was so full of hate about his life and mother that he would have burned, bombed that school or run into the building with his car. IMHO, his mother put those guns in his hands. He wanted a big splash and to hurt his mother. What better way than to hurt the most people in a place where she had a connection and he felt he was rejected from (school system)

I'm surprised he didn't spray the local bar she frequented.

He didn't hate his mother.

He shot her in the head while she was sound asleep (and I think with a rifle, if I remember correctly). Whatever compelled him to kill her, he went out of his way to ensure that she did not feel even an instant of pain.

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@Lustig Andrei,

Thank you for starting a fresh thread on this. I was watching Obama's news conference Monday and the language he chose at one point really stuck with me. I dug up the text from the speech:

"The issue is, there are some sensible steps that we can take to make sure that somebody like the individual in Newtown can't walk into a school and gun down a bunch of children in a shockingly rapid fashion."
http://www.whitehouse.gov/photos-and-video/video/2013/01/14/president-obama-holds-news-conference#transcript

The underlined says it all for me. He chose to awkwardly dangle those last five words at the end of his sentence. If it had been said immediately after the shooting, it would've seemed totally strange.

So no, not much significant change. I suspect the pro-gun powers that be know they're not going to lose much, and are just perpetuating the "hysteria" in an attempt to lose as little as possible.

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Quote:

He didn't hate his mother

I'd say you're right about that. If he "hated" anyone in his family, I'd have thought it was his father. After all, it was his father who left the family home , wife and him.

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@Lustig Andrei,

Lustig Andrei wrote:

I agree, roger. Even Obama's own party isn't backing him.

Thay REMEMBER what we did to Bill Clinton in 1994,
after he rammed thru his anti-gun law.
That is the politicians' line of work.

Social Security and defensive gun freedom are the 3rd rails of political life.

David

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@OmSigDAVID,

OMG....
The Democrats acted like Republicans?

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@Cycloptichorn,

I think if we simply depend on congress, including entrenched democrats, (perhaps some of the new ones will be different), those who think nothing will change will be right. However, if Obama and his election organization really comes through and keeps the issue going so the news will have to talk about it, there might be a chance of something happening. Plus, this time, I think the public might surprise everyone. Guess we will have to see.

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@Lustig Andrei,

Actually, Andy, I think a lot IS happening…just because of the volume of discussion occurring. That, rather than legislation, will eventually (I hope) make the difference.

Increased public disapproval is the reason most of the smoker restrictions are in place; “increased public disapproval” is the driving force behind most legislation of this sort that eventually gets passed.

For the most part, the coming legislative battle will be mostly posturing…with each side trying to get as much political mileage as possible out of the positions being asserted. Truly meaningful legislation will not be enacted—not because a decent effort will not be made, but rather because the reality is that no legislation will impact significantly on the problem of misuse of firearms—or mass/serial killings of any kind..

You cannot legislate away stupidity; you cannot legislate away carelessness; you cannot legislate away evil.

I certainly have modest expectations. Since I am an advocate for a general progressive agenda, the best I am hoping from the machinations occurring on this issue is that the power of the far-right will be lessened…and I see the possibility of this issue hurting the far-right significantly.

In the meantime, **** will happen…and while I hope we NEVER get to the point where we throw up our hands and say “nothing can be done…we’d all better get use to treating these kinds of things as we do hurricanes, tornados and earthquakes. They are going to happen…and they are not the fault of people who want to own guns any more than they are the fault of coming to grips with the fact that you cannot legislate away a hurricane, earthquake, tornado, or asteroid strike.

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@Lustig Andrei,

If they can keep it alive for a couple of news cycles, something might happen - maybe background checks at a max.

If it falls out of the news ... bupkis.

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The Gun Fight in Washington. Your opinons?

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