Stock Photo: Two rural hillbillies using an AR 15 to shoot at cans of Budweiser. Umm. . . no it isn't, but as ignorant as most commentary about firearms is, I wouldn't be surprised to see that caption.
It's often noted by gun control proponents taht there's a wave of support for new gun control legislation, or evcen pending gun control legislation, following a disaster. But that's part of the very problem.
American legislation isn't parliamentary. That can be frustrating but it also means that as a rule there's enough time that's gone by between a proposal being made to it being enacted, if it is, that it's relatively well though out. This is often not the case with legislation that goes through parliaments, which is unfortunatley often the disaster that proponents of gun control make.
So what tends to occur, is a debate like this:
Gun Control Proponent (GCP): We need to do something to enact common sense gun control!
Gun Owner (GO): Okay, I agree with you.
GCP: Great! That means banning these terrible assault bazookas used by dove hunters, the bastards!
GO: Um, wait just a minute, that doesn't make much sense because. . .
GCP: Stop holding things up, bastard!
GO: Screw you and the horse you road in on, the people who said you wanted to take my .410 were right, you want to take everything.
Or like this:
GCP: After a kiling in Australia that country banned everything down to bb guns and now everyone in Australia is happy and nobody has died even of natural causes since!
GO: Well actually. .
GCP: Shut up. . hater.
GO: Well that's it, you really do want to take my .410.
Or like this:
GCP: The US is the only country in the world that has this sort of bloody rate!
GO: Actually, Finland's, per capita, is nearly as high.
GCP: Finland isn't a real country. And no other country let's its citizens own semi automatic arms!
GO: Actually most do, and some, like Switzerland. . .
GCP: Nobody should own anything, shut up.
And then people wonder why nothing gets done.
Now, I don't mean to suggest that this is all one sided. But to a large extent it is. The press is heavily concentrated on the coasts and heavily urban. Basically, firearms ownership fits into a category of items which the liberal press, and it is a liberal press, doesn't get why you would be interested in and therefore it doesn't approve.
There's lots of things like that, actually. You wouldn't want the same group of people setting NASCAR rules, or rules for outdoor sports, or the like, either. As there's a lot of stuff that is just too rugged for them, and they're not going there. It's one of the very deep problems with our country, as its become so effete that its becoming weak and a rift between the more rural citizenry and the urban citizenry has become massive.
And that spills over to this.
What we know about the recent killing is that the killer used a "bump stock" which allows an AR platform rifle to fire as if its an automatic weapon. Hardly any firearm owner has heard of bump stocks. This is a really rare and peculiar niche item and most firearms owners would be inclined to agree to ban them. They do not appear to have any real legitimate use that can't be foregone.
You would think, therefore, that this could be calmly discussed. But it won't be, as the banners will immediately want to discuss "high powered" military weapons. But because they don't really grasp what they are talking about, that will soon spread to any semi automatic weapons, a class of firearms that has been in existence for over a century.
A wise policy maker, in this circumstance, turns to the knowledgeable and asks for their help. That's not going to occur here. And therefore the press will be baffled about "why nothing gets done".
But perhaps the press would understand it better if there was a suggestion that truth in media be regulated by people who hate newspapers and don't read them.
That'd be bad, of course, but it would make the point.
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This was written yesterday and set up to be auto posted today. Since it was written, Sen. Diane Feinstein has drafted a bill to ban bump stocks.
To her credit, the bill is really short and addresses only that. I'm a lifelong user of firearms and don't favor restrictions as a rule, but on this I'll make an exception. Bump stocks are an end run around the old National Firearms Act and they should be regarded as such.
Feinstein's bill oddly exempts law enforcement agencies, but no law enforcement agency is going to want bump stocks. The design concept alone wouldn't be wise for an agency that would have to reply on the device and law enforcement agencies can already purchase actual automatic and selective fire weapons, new, so it wouldn't be something they'd need or want. For that matter, while there are agencies that do have automatic weapons, most don't and those that do virtually never use them. An exception for agencies here is not wise for a plethora of reasons.
None of which means that my observations above are incorrect, I'll note.
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