The prophet Jeremiah once observed that the leopard never changes its spots. It should come as no surprise, then, that Democrats in Congress remain as hell-bent as ever on passing discredited and ineffective gun control laws.
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© Provided by Washington Examiner Please show them some understanding, though. It’s 2021. This is all they can do. Gun control is now their only remaining substitute for public safety legislation because it is too politically risky with their base to increase police funding. This leaves Democrats vulnerable, especially after a summer in which they vocally supported lawless anti-police riots, hundreds of which included violence, arson, and looting.
In 2020, the U.S. experienced a devastating surge in crimes, including gun crimes. But Democrats have gone so far to the extreme left that they can no longer propose what was once in their standard policy arsenal for dealing with crime: an increase in police funding, putting more officers on the street, etc. Bill Clinton did this and boasted about it for years. Barack Obama at least campaigned on such an increase in funding, paired with reforms.
But today’s Democrats find themselves in a straitjacket. They are left with only the very least effective of all the measures their party historically promotes in times of rising crime: old-fashioned gun control policies that accomplished nothing in the past, which arbitrarily hassle law-abiding gun owners and reduce decent people’s access to firearms, all without doing anything to prevent gun crimes, criminal acquisition of firearms, or mass shootings.
The Democrats’ new gun control measures involve what has become the usual misleading of the public on the issue of background checks. These checks are not a frivolous concern. They help keep guns out of the hands of ineligible felons, the mentally ill, and illegal immigrants. Gun rights organizations first backed them in 1991 in order to prevent the federal government from placing arbitrary delays on gun purchases by people with clean records. But now, Democrats want to reintroduce the arbitrary delays, allowing the FBI to sit on gun-buyers’ applications for weeks or even indefinitely, depending on the circumstances.
As we have noted previously, we remain unaware of any mass shooting this century (or before that) that involved a privately owned gun lawfully sold in a private sale in the 23 states that do not already require background checks for such private transfers.
As for typical gun crimes, there is little reason to believe that this is a major issue there, either. Although 14.5% of all state and federal prisoners are arrested with guns that had been sold or borrowed privately among friends and acquaintances, this bill would affect only a very small subset of that subset. First, many of those sales would have already required background checks under state laws, which may or may not have been followed. These are criminals, after all. In addition, a large if not overwhelming share of these privately sold or borrowed guns were likely transferred by people who knew the character of the recipient and knew exactly what the gun would be used for. People who already supply criminals with guns with a wink and a nod are very unlikely to change their behavior just because there is one additional law they would be breaking.
There is a bipartisan way of increasing background checks that will not put gun owners to new hassle or expense, trample freedoms, or give anti-gun politicians and bureaucrats a way of tracking gun ownership. We have repeatedly advocated for it in this space for almost a decade now. But Democrats don’t want to pass that measure because they still hold forth hope that someday, their efforts will produce a government database containing information on everyone who owns a gun, which will, in turn, help them keep the promise that former Rep. Beto O’Rourke was kind enough to voice out loud: “Hell, yes, we’re going to take your AR-15.”
Democrats’ typical obsession with rifles (which comprise a minuscule 1.5% of guns used in crimes) and with nominally expanding background checks persistently transcends all fact and truth. And over the years, FBI state-level data have consistently debunked the idea that there is a correlation between state gun policy and gun homicide rates. For example, the most recent data, from 2019, show that California, Arizona, and Indiana, states with widely varied gun policies, have almost identical rates of gun homicide. So do Maryland and South Carolina; so do Oklahoma and Illinois; so do Utah and Massachusetts. There is no pattern based on state restrictions on gun ownership or background check requirements.
If Democrats want to improve public safety and atone for their public support of last summer’s violent riots, they should pass a bill helping states and municipalities hire more police. They should provide additional funding so that police forces can hire and retain better-educated police and train them to resort less often to unnecessary force.
Barring that, they should stop playing this dumb little game with law-abiding citizens’ constitutional rights.
DPST's are Dumb - and their nomenklatura is dumber - and ignorant tht their actions have consequences.
So - Defund, disarm and disband Police - and take weapons away from legal law-abiding taxpayers they use for self-protection - and hand them to the illegals.
Oh - what a recipe for a harmonious wonderful state of affairs.
Stupid, criminal DPST nomenklatura.
