I am thousands of miles away from the land of mass shootings, about to head out with Marian and a picnic lunch for a beautiful afternoon walking along the Coulee Verte, an elevated park similar but larger than New York's Highline Park.
But don't think I'm not thinking of you. I've been collecting Republican proposals to stop mass shootings, and I have a stern tsk tsk for liberals who refuse to take anything with an R by its name seriously. It turns out they have lots of good ideas:
- Harden classroom doors. It works on airplanes!
- Arm teachers with serious weapons. It works in European airports!
- More and better trained school guards. It works in prisons!
- Hope and pray. It works in churches!¹
- More active shooter drills for kids. It worked during the Cold War!²
Does this seem to you an awful lot like turning elementary schools into prisons? Then you're a liberal who has no respect for the Constitution. Shame on you.
¹Well, not all the time. But way more churches haven't been attacked than have been, amirite?
²No one died from a nuclear war, did they?
The doors thing is particularly infuriating. Has any Republican actually visited their local schools? The ones I have been in feature numerous doors. If there is just one hardened door what happens when there is a fire? Our local high school held this discussion at a school board meeting after a previous mass shooting. Some of us were ridiculing the idea, and of course they had a police person standing at the entrance in case things got heated. The principal was saying how they already keep all the doors locked, blah, blah, blah. Suddenly, a door in the back of the room opened behind the school board and a late arrival walked in from outside, luckily not armed with an AR15.
I imagine the “stronger doors” plan would have to eliminate recess/PE too. Tell them it would eliminate football practice and see how that works out.
Harden school bus doors??? Chowchilla!!
I have faint memories of the 8th grade school where the classroom had a wall of windows that could be opened. They were low so kids could jump out of them. Of course California school post earthquake standards.
Google “good guys shooting Sacramento”. That’s what a single entry point gets you.
All the answers on both sides are kind of bs because nothing can entirely eliminate this except the complete removal of guns, which won’t happen.
However, lots of things could be done to lower deaths by shooting and it’s getting to the point where even small incremental reductions in gun violence save a lot of lives. But nope nothing can change because….which is why I pulled the R from my registration and went with the I.
We’ll that and the abject dishonesty about fiscal matters. D’s will spend on stupid choo choo trains that go nowhere but at least they’re honest when they waste your money.
We just need to build big beautiful walls all around our schools. After all, it worked so well on our southern border.
Works even better in prisons.......
I'm surprised Kevin missed Cruz's best "idea" that isn't about hardening doors but eliminating, which as you say adds all sorts of other safety issues and is just dumb as heck in every other way.
According to my back of the envelope math, mass shooting events account for something like 15% of gun murders in the US, so, even a strategy that successfully dealt with school shootings—or all mass shootings—would leave the country with a rate of lethal gun violence a lot higher than the rich country average.
Thankfully, though, we know what works, so we don't have to reinvent the wheel: just do what other countries are doing. Or even just what Massachusetts is doing.
I believe the logic of sane, standard-issue, rich country gun safety regulations is too compelling to forestall indefinitely. One day the US will adopt non-insane policies. So, I'm not a pessimist when it comes to gun violence. But I do think there's very likely to be little progress this decade. I just don't see the electoral outcomes lining up for substantive change (court reform would likely be needed in addition to much better margins for Democrats in Congress, so, it's a nontrivial political lift, to state the obvious).
I liken gun safety to where we were with, say, gay marriage or cannabis circa 1990. The progress we've made on these issues has been remarkable, and might well have been unimaginable to Americans from that year, if we could travel back in time and give them the good news.
The leading cause of death among children is gun related injuries which has over taken auto accidents.
https://www.npr.org/2022/04/22/1094364930/firearms-leading-cause-of-death-in-children
Overall, 45K deaths per year due to firearms; ca. 4.5K are children.
In adults, most firearm deaths are suicides, 65%. In children, it's 35%. The rest are homicides. I'm guessing the homicides are mostly collateral damage, except in cases of school shootings, especially for younger kids.
I fear we are headed more towards Texas type gun laws than Massachusetts.
I am already fearing the prop bet between. Gavin Newsom & Charlie Baker for a Warriors-Celts final: if Dubs win, Baker has to sign an executive order acknowledging joebiden won the November 2022 election, but if the Celtics win, Newsom has to admit the September 2021 recall was rigged & Larry Elder is the rightful governor of California, & as part of his ascension to the office, Feinstein must resign, to be replaced by Devin Nunes.
Make people live in fear. It works in North Korea.
What law would actually help and be able to pass our divided Congress? An assault weapon ban might do something, but now there are way more of them out in the wild than we could ever confiscate. Even so, the ordinary handgun is really the biggest problem, and nobody is talking about banning those. I wonder if Democrats could call the Republicans' bluff and propose an actual mental health review before every firearms purchase? It might do something to prevent 18 year olds from purchasing weapons. A real background check and waiting period for every purchase is my goal, along with having to obtain a real gun license that includes training, but I doubt we will see it in my lifetime.
The Giffords Law Center has great information on these issues, and there is a very strong correlation between states with stronger gun laws and reduced gun deaths. We don't need to look at the rest of the world to see what works--we've got 50 states with 50 different sets of laws to compare with results. https://giffords.org/lawcenter/resources/scorecard/#rankings
I don't see a confiscating, but I can imagine a buy-back. You want to keep your AR, ok, you want to sell it, ok too, but we (the Feds) will pay 2X the market, (whatever that turns out to be).
Gun registration and insurance requirements.
The most recent wacko didn’t even own the weapons he used to slaughter those people. It seems that the manufacturer of the AR-15 financed the sale with little or no money down. Which is the fundamental problem: it the nutters who won’t turn their military style weapons in that worry me.
What law would actually help and be able to pass our divided Congress?
Nothing that would have a very substantive effect. That, I'm afraid, is the hard truth, at least for the remainder of the decade.
Provided the US remains a democracy, I'm optimistic about the prospects for sane gun safety laws in the 2030s.
What do you believe is the upper limit on the number of guns that could be confiscated?
Start with all of them.
There is a school in my district that looks just like an old-fashioned prison. There are no windows to the outside. Instead, the classrooms face a two story courtyard with skylights to let in natural light. On the second story there are small balconies on each end. That is the perfect location for the armed guards!
But Kevin missed a new GOP option: not have in-person school at all and move everyone to distance learning! Kids will still be exposed to gun violence, though - family annihilation shootings and kids getting ahold of their parents' guns still happen all the time.
As always, Republicans have completely forgotten what their response to the last crisis was. Distance learning to protect children from a virus: bad. Distance learning to protect children from gunmen: good.
I’m already bracing myself for the infuriating response from gun nuts after we do finally take at least a tiny step toward sane policy with some sort of expanded background check and then there is inevitably another awful shooting. “See! The problem wasn’t guns!!” Then that will derail any further progress.
They are either too disingenuous or too stupid to look at the issue realistically. I feel like we MIGHT be getting enough momentum to make some sort of positive change, but maybe only once, so I hope it is something fairly significant and comprehensive.
Yup!! the problem isn't guns. The problem is people are talking about controlling guns. This must stop.
I think everything will be fine vis a vis your concern because I'm betting not even the smallest gun control measure will be passed at the federal level.
None of this would be happening if we just got rid of gov't schools!
/s
One wonders what the Republican reaction to a mass school shooting would be if it was a private school where children of the wealthy went.
I've often thought there was some unvoiced connection between the Republicans' concerted prevention of anything that would actually work to protect schoolchildren and their more general effort to destroy education.
It's all part of the same social conservative attack on society, and humanity in general.
Littleton, CO, was a pretty chi-chi area, & Moses upgraded our remonstrative effort to take his guns after the massacre there by reminding us, "From my cold, dead hands".
Isn't that what some hsve been attempting to do by sending public messages funding to private & parochial schools?
Yet another Republican objective.
It amazing how concerned Republicans are about mental health. Not concerned enough to expand mental health care mind you. Nor concerned enough to pass red flag laws, or background checks, or...well just about anything to help people inc crisis or prevent them from buying guns.
Remember, guns don't kill people--they just make it real easy to kill people.
Virginia finally got a red-flag law - too long after the lack of an appropriate hospital bed for Creigh Deeds' son resulted in his death after he injured his father.
Then the election of Youngkin, his gun-toting LG & AG, & more Republicans in the General Assembly changed everything - simply showed that neither mental health nor lethal weapons in the hands of people who shouldn't have them matter to NRA-backed politicians.
Easy to understand why rethuglicans talk about mental health. You can't control mental health but you can control guns.
Mental health is a problem
someone else hasand so it means nothing to them to say it. And doing something about it is also about someone else.And someone else is someone who didn’t work hard like you do and just wants a free lunch at your expense.
I meant to use a sarcasm tag but it turned out s is a an actual WP tag.
A number of their own states receive federal money that blue states have paid in.
Not that I want, say, Manchin's state or any other to be defunded.
Since I'm old, cranky and just tired of all the nuttery I simply ask them, "WTF is wrong with you that you can't through the day without a gun?"
No coherent replies. But it's fun watching them flounder.
What is wrong with them? Obsession over their small dicks, that’s what.
A man said this? And all this time I thought it was just their unpleasant faces.
My prediction? Nothing will happen. We will get angry, progressive member of congress will propose good ideas, Shumer is having bipartisan group of Senators talk. But nothing will happen.
Until we have an overwhelming majority in the US Senate to enact fundamental reforms including eliminating the Filibuster, statehood for DC and possibly other US colonies and unpacking the court system, NOTHING WILL HAPPEN.
I wish you were wrong but history says you're right.
I've gotten my hopes up so many times to only see them dashed. I thought for sure thing would change after VA Tech, but nope heck we even elected a wingnut IN VIRGINIA in 2009 instead of folks wanting to fix the problems. Then Newtown happened, nope not even little dead children moved folks.
I've lost hope, we are at the tyranny of a minority, until we find away to wrest away control from the cult of white male dominance, we are doomed.
If this were a marriage we'd be well past the irreconcilable differences stage. I understand there's no mechanism for a divorce but I can still wish there was.
A large enough Deocratic majority in the Senate might enable us "good guys" to also start amendments to
* Abolish the electoral college; go to direct popular vote for President
* Repeal the second amendment, much as Prohibition was ended
* Allow for legislative control of campaign contributions, eliminating the effects of the "Citizens United Not Timid" verdict
* and ultimately, abolishing the da**ed Senate itself, an un democratic vestige of the power of the slave states.
Well, I can dream, can't I?
Okay, that should be "Democratic" (sigh)
Life is cheap in America.
You (meaning the reasonable sane majority ) will never again have an overwhelming majority in the Senate
https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/politics/wp/2017/11/28/by-2040-two-thirds-of-americans-will-be-represented-by-30-percent-of-the-senate/
… just saying
There is no rule that says the less populated states will always vote Republican.
Justice Kennedy said ban the 2nd Amendment…I recommended starting there..take a maximalist position…the gun nuts have been working the refs for so long …Gun control advocates are too scared to say or do anything. I like Beto’s stance. Start shouting back….if the right an take away Roe v Wade….then the left ought to start the move to ban the 2nd Amendment.
How about enforcing the 2nd Amendment?
If that is the road the Left is going to take, and we are open about it, we should take it in the full understanding that there is probably no better way to guarantee 100% Republican voting turnout and maximal Republican political donations. For decades.
The road of being to scared to mention it has failed. Stating clear positions …register guns….etc…backing them up with non stop reminders that guns will not be banned…but regulated….draw the battle lines….
And this is different than what Republicans do so far?
I agree. The second has got to go. We don't need "militias" anymore, if we ever did (George Washington roundly condemned the ones he was forced to work with.) We have the National Guard, which epitomizes "well-regulated." Besides, the courts have pretty much ruled that the "militia" clause is irrelevant -- individual ownership is all that matters.
Events over the last few centuries have further indicated that the amendment doesn't apply to black people, just whites (and those granted honorary "white" status like that Florida "neighborhood watch" guy who murdered Travon). So it's discriminatory, too.
Yeah, let's start pushing a "Repeal the Second Amendment" movement. It's time to brainstorm some catchy, meaningful slogans -- because we all know The Left hasn't yet figured out how this "word thing" works.
George Zimmerman is an "honorary white?" I realize that some people assume that anyone bearing that surname is Jewish & some may consider Jews to be "other," but it is just as possible to be the family name of someone of German background - which I believe was what I read about his background but will recheck.
Did not remember reading about his "Afro-Peruvian" great-grandmother - but his father was definitely German.
It makes me wonder if he knew of the way in which part of his heritage & Trayvon Martin's were tenuousy linked.
There's no chance of jettisoning the 2nd amendment. A 2/3ds vote in Congress and 3/4ths of state legislatures is a non-starter for the next half century.
Far more plausible is simple congressional majorities to A) enact sensible, national gun laws and B) expand/pack the court with sane, litmus-tested liberal jurists.
How about saying that to comply with the 2nd amendment, you must be an active member of the National Guard, of whatever state you reside?
Take Alito's position. The only arms protected by the second amendment are those that were around when it passed.
If that is truly his position, he would be ignoring the 1939 Miller SC decision that basically says that the arms given to a modern foot soldier are constitutional. Of course, we don't go that far - fully automatic arms are not allowed.
But I wouldn't put it past him to ignore stare decisis whenever he feels like it.
Non sequitur
Have you taken any of the high speed trains?
The Guardian has a write up on the CA high speed rail project....I never realized it was soo bad....
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2022/may/29/california-high-speed-rail-bullet-train
For what it's worth, Ezra Klein has a discussion in today's Times about how this country needs a liberalism that can actually build things, as opposed to blocking, slowing down, and otherwise burying in paperwork. The link:
https://www.nytimes.com/2022/05/29/opinion/biden-liberalism-infrastructure-building.html
When it passed, I was certain 1/2 as far, twice as much. I was too optimistic, on both counts.
The idea to do it with Republican labor to benefit Republican cities turns out to be flawed in multiple ways. Who'd thunk it?
Things are going to change though; the Roberts court is poised to gut pretty much all currently effective gun control laws in "New York rifle and Pistol Association vs Bruen".
Although I see from the questioning that the conservatives are somewhat uneasy about allowing people carrying guns to freely enter places like, say, courthouses. I can't imagine why they would infringe on the 2nd amendment rights of law abiding citizens in the gallery so they might just rule that New York has to give a permit to anybody that asks for one.
Bruen, if struck down, will mean that people applying for concealed carry in NY will not have to show a special need for defensive carry. I live in Vermont. We have had permit-free concealed carry since forever. We have one of the lowest gun violence rates in the country.
I don't see how Bruen will affect other gun control measures. Including NY gun licensing.
The entire state of Vermont has about 1/3rd to 1/5th the population of a single borough in NYC. Having a large number of armed people, who can't possibly know who is the "good guy" and who is the "bad guy", with that kind of population density, is just asking for accidental firefights. And there are exactly 0 compelling reasons to allow it.
According to multiple surveys, approximately 20 million Americans have been walking around with concealed guns for many years. It is not responsible gun owners who are the problem with school shootings - it is deranged young men.
That said.... Texans are going to get permit-less concealed and open carry soon. They are kinda crazy in Texas.
Hmm, ‘approximately 20 million Americans have been walking around with concealed guns for many years’ and things are just fine, except that the US has a gun-deaths rate several times that of all other developed countries - 60% higher than Mexico’s: https://worldpopulationreview.com/country-rankings/gun-deaths-by-country
It’s not just ‘deranged young men’, it’s also domestic quarrels and bar brawls that turn into shootouts …
All people are "responsible gun owners" until they're not. This world is not separated along bright lines of "responsible" and "deranged".
Falling Down starring Michael Douglas made this point. When people have gun in hand, they can quickly cross the line, especially when stressed, eg fired, divorced, harassed/bullied, etc.
Seems to me the socioeconomic realities of NY State (including, erm, more violent crime in general) make strong gun safety regulations a more critical need in NY than in VT.
Vermont has a higher gun death rate than New York. More than twice as many killed per 100,000 residents. https://giffords.org/lawcenter/resources/scorecard/
Don’t confuse the issue with facts.
Vermont had had one of the lowest gun violence rates in the nation for years. 2021 is likely a blip and it appears to still rank a "B" if my eyes don't deceive me.
I take that back - we rank a C- for 2021.
We should care about all deaths via a gun, a life lost to suicide or accident is a tragedy too.
That includes suicides. There's very little doubt possession of a firearm can aid in killing oneself. And there's a nontrivial argument to be made that reducing suicides is one reason we should more tightly regulate guns. Still, the bigger concern for me—and I'd bet for most Americans—is the link between the country's mind-boggling gun surfeit and lethal crime.
Kevin Drum - have you lost your M-Fing mind?
Every public venue, every statehouse, every Federal building uses a single ingress past a checkpoint. For the safety of Federal employees, judges, legislators and the general public. But our schools ? Nope - they should be left vulnerable to murderers because if they were safe they would be "just like prisons" ? Seriously?
If the Right is willing to take measures to harden our schools, we should join them in that effort.
I'm guessing it's been awhile since you've been in a K12 school?
What are you saying? That they are all using single ingress through a checkpoint? That their perimeters are already secure? That they have armed personnel at the ingress point?
I do not think that is true.
None of the places you mentioned would be able to stop a person armed with an AR-15 who is expecting to die from getting past security. Particularly if that person is wearing body armor.
No.
I'm saying that schools with children have lots of traffic in and out at frequent intervals in the day. Going outside for recess. Going outside for gym ... or across to the gymnasium. Moving between buildings in general. Entering at the start of the school day. Leaving at the end. Maybe the same for the lunch period.
And then there are emergency situations, when everybody needs to get out, ASAP, in an orderly fashion so that nobody is either trampled to death or left behind. This can be a really big deal for our "differently abled" fellow students and staff. Fire. Earthquakes. Seeking shelter during a tornado. Approaching hurricanes. Flooding. Whatever.
One heaviy guarded door is not going to cut it. Not in anything bigger than the "traditional" one room schoolhouse of a couple of centuries ago.
Besides, prison lockdown schools don't mesh with the idea of a "free" society. So only the gun-toting murderers get to be free? What kind of a society is that? Why should we want it?
Don't worry. The GOP isn't serious about single-door schools. They're just misdirecting, so the conversation moves away from gun control long enough that people forget about the latest mass shooting. It seems to be working.
Also, they're proposing absurd and unworkable "solutions" to further people assuming that there's nothing that can be done. Push the "learned helplessness"! It makes it easier when you want to impose the next atrocity.
Americans seem to be moving towards a really medieval attitude where they believe themselves to be totally at the mercy of incomprehensible forces that are beyond their control. Totally the opposite of what we need in a self-governing democracy. And yet, right in line with the current movement of the GQP.
"What kind of a society is that? Why should we want it?
We don't want it. We have it.
And nobody is suggesting "prison lockdown schools". The fact is AFAICT, that school shooters in the past simply walk into schools. They want helpless victims who are trapped. They do not expect to be met with lethal force. We can, at least, change that.
Yes, there are vicissitudes at a school that may make this imperfect. So what? We aren't even seriously trying to protect our kids right now and we can do a whole lot better. Making the perfect the enemy of the good is to not help our kids when, in fact, we can help them.
You seem to think we can make drastic changes to gun numbers or gun ownership. => We can not.
And everyone needs to come to grips with that. Heck, from what I know about Heller and how guns are evaluated for constitutionality, even banning assault weapons likely will not survive challenge.
What we CAN do is give the basic security measures that adults enjoy to every school; have at least a single armed cop (who knows what his job is, unlike the cops in Texas) at the single point of ingress/egress. And take whole thing seriously, which was not done in Texas due to a teacher who didn't lock the back door. And then we learn as we go.
The Sandy Hook murderer shot his way in through a locked door. Connecticut subsequently passed into law bans on high-capacity removable magazines, and enlarged its ban on assault-type weapons; the law was upheld in Federal court.
I don’t know what you are talking about when you reference ‘the basic security measures that adults enjoy’, citing armed guards at a single entrance. How many adults have always worked in such a building?
Court has subsequently reversed those laws in California.
Well argued!
OK....
1. School shooters would not go into classrooms--just shoot at the crowd waiting to get into school.
2. Many schools are campuses, i.e. students have to go between buildings.
3. Schools are underfunded.
Of course, mass shootings are not confined to schools. That is why a holistic approach is needed.
How very provincial. If you travel around the country, you might discover that many schools have campuses with a half-dozen buildings (or more) with open air access to classrooms.
Tom McClintock used to suggest that schools be built with temporary buildings, meaning different small buildings for each class. He probably doesn’t mention that these days.
I never attended a single school except kindergarten that had a single building, and that had an outside playground.
That describes ALL the schools I attended in Hawaii from the mid-50s into the late 60s. Honolulu had a few schools that had A big building with lots of classrooms. By the 60s, even those few Honolulu schools wound up sprouting a lot of overflow single classroom structures. All the classrooms I was in opened directly out into the schoolyard (on Maui), onto open balconies, or wide open ground floor walkways.
There are nearly 100,000 public schools in the US. Please get back to us with a price quote comparing A) the cost of hardening all these schools (we're probably looking at 300,000 full time armed guards, minimum) vs. B) the cost of simply emulating high income country gun safety laws.
I know which option I prefer.
We could always tax assault weapons and ammo to pay for the armed guards.
/s
You are suggesting the largest economy in the world can not afford to protect its schoolkids? Lovely.
Gingerbaker is obviously another troll.
There is no evidence that the presence of armed officers in schools is an effective defense against shootings: https://www.politifact.com/factchecks/2022/may/26/ted-cruz/research-armed-campus-police-do-not-prevent-school/
It can’t protect the with stupid phony-ass “solutions” in the same way that it can’t protect its borders with stupid hate walls.
"Every public venue, every statehouse, every Federal building uses a single ingress past a checkpoint"
This is not even remotely true. Even hyper-secure places like airports have multiple doors, for chrissakes. Even the freaking *Whitehouse* has multiple doors, you fool.
Hey, those are great ideas, Republicans, keep 'em coming. Nothing like bong-hit brainstorming when there's nothing serious at stake, right? Some more ideas:
- Hire little gnomes to stand at schools doorways with trip-ropes.
- Rebuild schools as mazes, so (crazed individuals acting solely from their own delusions that certainly are completely unlike current Republican talking points) can't find the kids.
- Move schoolrooms to the top of tall poles. Armor the floors.
Any more?
“Nothing like bong-hit brainstorming…”
I think we all now know their “solutions” are “key bump” solutions.
lol. +!
The shooter went through a door that was supposed to be locked, but was left ajar. He was intent on killing as many as he could, so he would have found a way in even if the door was locked and shut
We were told that if police were allowed to be tough on crime, violent crime would go down. But it turns out that the police were too afraid of the violent criminals to stop violent crime. So instead, they assaulted parents who wanted to go inside, just to show us who was in power.
Scared of armed people but violent against the unarmed -- where have I seen this before? 🤔
Now, I'm not one to say that ACAB, but you know, the Uvalde police needs to be defunded and rebuilt from the ground up. Wait around long enough and we'll see them using excessive force as if to prove their toughness. You can't fix a culture this broken, driven by superficial values.
Technically, though I am not an expert, the group of people in charge of campus "security" were not the Uvalde police department but were in charge of security for the entire school system, as it were?
The Uvalde Consolidated Independent School District includes at least one high school and who knows how many intermediate schools. References to Arredondo as the chief of police instead of head of school security tends to confuse me, among others, I am certain.
More cops leads to more misdemeanor arrests, not more clearances of serious crimes:
https://slate.com/news-and-politics/2022/04/increased-police-spending-leads-to-more-misdemeanor-arrests.html
But I'll push back a little against blaming the initial officers for not going in immediately. With the Buffalo shooting in mind, they might have presumed the kid's tactical gear was bullet proof--so going in would just be suicidal and could endanger the kids more with cross fire. Of course that's no excuse as to why the tactical team didn't go straight in.
Australia is a Manly country, full of manly virtues, but I suggest we set our goal to what Australia did with their 1996 National Firearms Agreement (NFA) after the Port Arthur mass shooting.
I LOVE all of the following and this is what we must be unafraid to be insisting on:
^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
The principle features of the NFA, as described in a study on the regulatory reform (Ozanne-Smith et al., 2004, pp. 282–283), were as follows:
Ban on importation, ownership, sale, resale, transfer, possession, manufacture, or use of all self-loading center rifles, all self-loading and pump action shotguns, and all self-loading rimfire rifles (some exemptions allowable to primary producers and clay target shooters)
Compensatory buyback scheme through which firearm owners would be paid the market value for prohibited firearms handed in during a 12-month amnesty
Registration of all firearms as part of integrated shooter licensing scheme
Shooter licensing based on requirement to prove “genuine reason” for owning a firearm, including occupational use, demonstrated membership of an authorized target shooting club, or hunting (with proof of permission from a rural landowner)
Licensing scheme based on five categories of firearms, minimum age of 18 years, and criteria for a “fit and proper person”
New license applicant required to undertake accredited training course in firearm safety
As well as license to own a firearm, separate permit required for each purchase of a firearm subject to a 28-day waiting period
Uniform and strict firearm storage requirements
Firearms sales to be conducted only through licensed firearm dealers and all records of sale to be provided to the police
Sale of ammunition only for firearms for which purchaser is licensed and limitations on quantities purchased within time period.
^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
We need to start advocating for such a program right now, Australia has removed more than 650,000 guns from their society and all to good effect.
I refuse to be defeatist in this battle against these instruments of murder.
Best Wishes, Traveller
How about a compromise: the shitlib Democrats get a national gun policy like Australia, & the Real American Republicans get round be as racist as Australians, with the attendant policy?
It's like the Republican idea for fixing your broken leg is to break your other leg to encourage healing, because you're obviously some kind of complainer who needs to focus on his situation and stop expecting someone else to fix it for you.
Well said.
"Hope and pray. It works in churches!¹"
Well I'm sure going to church more often would be a good thing but I can understand people avoid them not wanting to be abused by the pastors!
Amazing how obtuse Republicans can be. Hear about the SBDC report? Hmm?
Forget about regulating guns for a minute. If we can't prevent commercial sales of body armor outside of law enforcement, forget about any new regs on guns.
It's just come out that the murderer was not, in fact, wearing body armor.
Frankly, I can see why the Uvalde police and Texas governor would want to lie about their performance. It was beyond pathetic. "No need to go in and apprehend the shooter -- the kids are all dead, anyway" ... even as children, pretending to be dead, desperately called 911 over and over and over, from the room where the murderer was holed up.
HIndsight...
He was wearing tactical gear, and if they confused that with body armor that is somewhat understandable--especially with the Buffalo shooting fresh in their minds. Going in with only a few men could just be suicidal and little chance of helping the kids in that case.
But they still held off even after having a lot of people there.
The crew that made the kill were there for 35 minutes before being allowed to take action. There was no reason for this and the gunman fired his weapon while they were there and it was known that children inside were still alive.
Also, at close range, police could have used shotguns which could have been aimed at his legs or face.
But imperfect decision making and screw ups are hallmarks of real life shootings.
There was no excuse for not going in once officers in tactical gear were there.
but the kids need body armor for school....
The answer is that the American disease cannot be cured in a day. It took conservatives generations to get us in the current mess and it will likely takes generations of struggle to fix it. We need to argue in favor of repealing the Second Amendment. Walter Shapiro argues convincingly that nothing less will do and that we should begin to make the case for doing that right now and keep pushing it unrelentingly.
My proposal is to repeal the Second Amendment. Then I would ban firearms with detachable magazines and all long guns which hold more than three rounds. There would be a grace period during which the government would buyback firearms after which they would simply be illegal. And I would expand the Supreme Court and make DC a state.
https://newrepublic.com/article/166628/democrats-repeal-second-amendment-guns
Expanding the Supreme Court won't help. I think a better option would be to simply eliminate "Supreme Court Justice" as a permanent position. Instead it could be a rotating bank of federal judges--basically every federal judge at every level would spend 6 months on the Supreme Court every so often. This would reduce the court's power and also make it much more likely to respect precedent.
The US Constitution says so little about the Supreme Court that I expect a change like this could be done by statute. No amendment needed.
I think that’s a possible improvement. I don’t think it’s incompatible with the immediate expansion of the court to include an additional four Democratic justices. No reason not to do both.
One reason not to do both is that lifetime tenure of federal judges (including Justices) is rooted in the constitution, whereas the *number* of judges/Justices is left to Congress.
So the one requires a constitutional amendment, whereas the other just requires legislation.
I don’t think either would require a constitutional amendment. Article III doesn’t require specifically designated or permanent justices. It simply requires that they be Art. III judges and that their pay can’t be reduced.
Apart from that, I don’t see any problem with randomly assigning however many judges to the court for temporary assignments nor would it be improper for a Democratic congress to pass a law assigning all six Republican justices to permanent jobs in a newly created far west north district of Alaska with no staff and an unheated building.
That sounds like a recipe for whimsy, rulings contradicted every year or two.
I think that’s where we are headed in any event. I fully expect (in fact demand) that when liberals have a majority they will overturn this courts absurd decisions.
This might happen sometimes, but I really do think that respect for precedent will end up being a lot more powerful if we don't have a bank of all powerful judges with lifetime appointments. Generally big rulings like Roe v Wade are rare and are built up by years of incremental change. There's never going to be a perfect system, but expanding the court would be its own kind of see-saw, where each time a different party takes power they add and remove justices.
That sounds like a recipe for whimsy, rulings contradicted every year or two
Our courts are beyond politicized at this point. The Supreme Court itself is a defacto third legislative chamber from what I can see. I'd rather have an ineffective, erratic body that the highly effective one (on behalf of right wing causes) we have today.
My preferred long term solution, as it happens is: 1) term limits (call it 14 years); 2) expansion (maybe into the 13-15 range, and I'd gladly consider an even number; 3) a supermajority requirement to overturn in full or in part acts of Congress (to me this would be a long-overdue adjustment to Marbuy, congruent with several other supermajority requirements of our constitution).
Your point 3 is something I hadn't thought of and I agree that would be a great idea.
Term limits I think would only politicize it even more than it is now, particularly when a justice sees his term winding down and wants to leave his grand legacy, and, at 14 years, may still be coasting on youthful enthusiasm.
And I agree with expanding the court. I read somewhere an excellent structural reason for why increasing the number of justices would be entirely appropriate but I can't remember how it went or where I saw it.
A better solution is to make the spreme court include a large number of judges, e.g. all circuit judges, and the current group just a preprocessing committee. The preprocessing will include everything that they do now, and then the full court will vote on it.
Thet cretaes stability, and prevent dependency of the judgment on small numbr of judges.
What is now done as preprocessing (including the"shadow docket") should be done by some rotation. And the whole "preprocessing committee" can also be rotation. The critical isue is the decision is by a large number of people.
That's a good idea.
I'd still like to see some reasonable limits on judicial review of legislative acts. Plenty of democracies do perfectly well without this feature (if you don't like the law, vote in different law-makers!). And, while I personally wouldn't want it jettisoned entirely, I do think careful adjustment and limitation to the scope of judicial review is warranted, and overdue (see comment above).
While I agree that there is no reason for the Second Amendment (more Americans own cars and TVs than own guns, but we don’t need Constitutional justification for those), it would probably be more politically feasible to replace it with a more carefully phrased alternative that would explicitly allow for reasonable controls.
I’m totally with you on functionally-based legal restrictions on guns. The Sandy Hook murderer fired 154 rounds in less than five minutes. There is absolutely no legitimate civilian purpose for owning a weapon capable of that sustained rate of fire. None. Not hunting. Not target shooting. None whatsoever.
So, non-removable, limited-capacity magazines. One round at a time reloading. Smart guns with geolocation-based lockouts? Owner recognition? Smart guns will cost more, and gun nuts will bid up the prices of any ‘dumb’ guns we choose to grandfather, but hey, the Supreme Court held that waiting periods and high travel expenses weren’t an undue burden on the right to end a pregnancy. Oh, and tax the hell out of them.
I appreciate the logic of your argument but I continue to think that Walter Shapiro is right to say that the only meaningful reform is to repeal the Second Amendment. His point is that one a wide range of the issues that are most important to them, didn’t simply take what was achievable in the moment but rather planned for and carried out a generations long struggle which is only now bearing fruit. The idea is to begin laying the groundwork for our own struggle.
The specific measures which you and I are discussing cannot be achieved even though they are very sensible. The reality is that there are not ten Republicans who will vote for them in the senate and only 48 Democratic senators. Similarly, the current Supreme Court would unquestionably strike down any of these proposals which might miraculously be enacted. Indeed, the court is shortly expected to enact the most significant expansion of gun rights since Heller.
Consequently, the path to “moderate” but largely ineffective reforms is not all that much easier than a constitutional amendment and, in any case, has the same starting points. The courts must be expanded, the senate must be expanded, and the filibuster must be eliminated. These are the predicates to repeal and, once those things are accomplished, we will be able to continue to make progress, generation by generation, to curing the American disease.
https://newrepublic.com/article/166628/democrats-repeal-second-amendment-guns
Well, it is going to be a long slog. Maybe one of the tactics we can borrow from the anti-choice movement is to keep passing state laws in the teeth of the Supreme Court’s ill-considered Heller and McDonald decisions, forcing the issue to remain in the public consciousness, and hopefully, normalizing the idea of controlling gun purchases, ownership and handling as we do other dangerous objects and materials.
Yes, clearly a long struggle over many decades. But the first building blocks are clear and will aid the center left agenda and slow the diff towards authoritarianism. We need to expand the courts (especially the Supreme Court), we need to get DC and PR in as states and begin to work towards limiting small states to a single congressperson and senator.
I think, in the very short term, there’s an interesting attack on Heller that’s worth making. If Scalia’s interpretation is correct (which it isn’t) the entire second amendment is one continuous sentence which refers to individual rights of firearms ownership and not to state militias. If that’s so, then there are no conceivable limitations on the ownership of weapons that are constitutional.
So my proposal is a series of lawsuits seeking declaratory judgement about a wide variety of weapons and situations. A lawsuit against prohibitions of firearms being possessed by convicts in prison. A lawsuit to end the ban on weapons in the Supreme Court building. The possibilities are endless and impossible to create principled distinctions from Scalia’s creation of an individual right of limitless firearms ownership
The specific measures which you and I are discussing cannot be achieved even though they are very sensible. The reality is that there are not ten Republicans who will vote for them in the senate and only 48 Democratic senators.
That is reality now. But what about the 2030s? It seems to me getting Democratic control of the political branches and then A) passing national gun control along with B) a court-reform act to make sure it doesn't get overturned C) is a far easier slog than supermajorities in both Congress (2/3rds) and the state legislatures (3/4ths).
I haven't read the Shapiro piece, though, and I shall.
I don’t see things improving for the Democrats anytime soon. We’re very likely seeing the last Democratic president and Senate for the next several generations, if ever. And I doubt whether the party’s passing will make much of a difference or even be noticed.
They have essentially converted themselves into the Washington Generals. As a party, the Democrats no longer matter. After this latest horrific massacre of children, I got a slew of fundraising emails and calls. But no Democratic senators introduced legislation because they went on vacation instead. And Biden says not to worry because he’s going to work with Mitch McConnell and the “reasonable” Republicans to craft something but he’s not sure what but these are good people so, not to worry.
Mass killings are a problem, and those in schools are especially traumatic, but they are only a small fraction of total gun deaths in the US. If the school massacres were eliminated by turning schools into fortresses (it wouldn't work - nothing would stop a gunman from shooting things up when school lets out) the drop in total killings would scarcely be noticeable. Most murders are committed with handguns.
The fake military "assault" weapons are preferred by gun nuts because they are symbolic, but they are not necessary for mass killings. Banning them would also have little effect - there are plenty of other hand guns and rifles that can be and have been used.
Liberals need to face up to what would be necessary to get gun deaths down to civilized levels. It would require near total regulation on all guns.
Liberals need to face up to what would be necessary to get gun deaths down to civilized levels. It would require near total regulation on all guns.
Your phraseology makes it sounds as if effective gun safety regulations are some big mystery. Simply emulating the Massachusetts system (mandatory licensing for all purchases; higher licensing standards for handgun purchases; mandatory gun storage requirements; mandatory safety course; statewide background checks; mandatory resale restrictions and tight controls on private sales; police chief veto on "suitability" grounds for license applicants, etc) on a national-level would trigger a gigantic improvement in public safety. Going a bit beyond the Bay State would enable us to reach a Canada/Australia standard. So yes, a "total regulation on all guns" is what's needed. All guns, after all, are designed to administer deadly force.
We know what works. We don't have to reinvent the wheel.
" It would require near total regulation on all guns."
You say that like it's a bad thing.
I’m OK with incremental improvements. One of the reasons that the Japanese beat up US auto manufacturers for decades was ‘continuous improvement’ - little changes that over time added up to very significant differences in quality. Americans are always looking for big innovations and ignoring the details that could accumulate into real gains.
"Hardening" schools completes the circuit of the "school to prison pipeline."
Conservatives have no serious interest in any subject except the harm they can do. Conservatives are poison shit. The conversation we need to have is why all things are run in the interests of poison shit, and what our attitude toward poison shit should actually be.
The conservative voter is always covered with the security blanket they can imagine insulates them from the bad things that will happen from any conservative thing they vote for, because they can claim to themselves they didn't intend that, where that is actually the sole purpose of everything they vote for.
Another victory for conservatism,
Oklahoma festival ends in a mass shooting — one is dead,
https://www.rawstory.com/mass-shooting-taft-oklahoma/
The real problem here is obviously that not everyone in the crowd was armed or it could have been an even greater victory.
Kevin left one out:
- Lock up all the crazy people who can't be trusted not to abuse their sacred 2nd amendment rights. It worked in Nazi Germany!
I can never understand the arguments that assume the 2nd amendment has to be repealed to make any significant changes in the law. Heller was passed by a 5-4 Supreme Court majority less than 15 years ago. Scalia's reasons for decision were every bit as specious as those right-wingers complained about in Roe. Sensible Americans need to make reversing Heller the same core political objective that Republicans made of reversing Roe.
Somehow, it's ok to ignore the "well regulated" part....unless the well regulated only applies to "those people".
The current makeup of the Supreme Court makes a change in how the 2nd amendment is interpreted very unlikely for the next 30 years or more. I mean unless there's some kind of unfortunate mass shooting event involving nine particular individuals. This is how messed up the institution of the Supreme Court is, by the way. You basically have to hope that certain individuals who wield enormous, unchecked power for life will die at just the right time. I mean imagine a world where Scalia dies in 2014 instead of 2016 and Ginsburg also decides to retire that year. The next 30 years of American history would be completely different. It's absurd.
Thomas and Alito will probably be replaced within the next 15 years, possibly sooner. Democrats need to make commitment to reversing Heller a non-negotiable condition for appointing or confirming any replacements, the way Republicans did for Roe. You're right that it will take time, but if gun violence accelerates, one or more of the Trump-appointed judges may see sense. Gun ownership is presumably not the same visceral issue for Barrett, for example, as abortion.
+1
I was watching the opening episode of Fear the Walking Dead here in Taiwan with my son, who had gone through the Taiwan public school system. He was arguing that, though they didn't make it public, the authorities knew something was going on. His clinching argument was that they had armed guards and metal detectors at the school entrances- why else but a Zombie Apocalypse would yo have that at a high school?
This is also a legacy of "reform" of mental illness. People need arrested and removed quickly from society.
Kevlar backpacks, curved corridors, armed teachers and turning schools into fortress …
This is the ultimate proof of a failed nation
The United States of America, a country uniquely burdened with the dead weight of its past, and therefore powerless either to deal with a danger in its present or to make a better future. The country that likes to describe itself as the land of possibility stands paralysed, apparently unable to make even the smallest change that actually might save the lives of its young.
An inconvenient truth from a Swede
A very inconvenient truth. And I am living proof that you don't need to be in Sweden to see it.
Arm teachers? That is beyond insanity. I saw a cartoon about this yesterday of a doctor telling a patient with cancer that he (the doctor) was going to try to kill the cancer by adding more cancer cells.