“We’re not talking about taking guns away but restricting the availability of some guns and some magazines. A sane approach to an insane problem.”
No, that’s an insane approach to something that is a criminal problem, not a gun problem. We already have over 20,000 gun control laws on the books, not ONE of which EVER prevented a crime from being committed. The mis-called “assault weapon” and standard-capacity magazine ban of which you prate was the law of the land from1994 to 2004, and did nothing to prevent the 1999 school massacre in Littleton, CO. That law was allowed to sunset because everybody recognized that it had not had any measurable effect on crime of any kind during the decade-plus it was in effect.
It doesn’t matter what kind of new law you create (can you think one up that hasn’t already been passed? I doubt it), it runs up against the rock-solid fact that criminals, by definition, do not obey laws. What that means, is that your wonderful new law would ONLY affect all the law-abiding gun owners in the US (somewhere between 30 and 80 million of them), without even inconveniencing a single criminal. That is neither an effective nor a sane approach. And it is also an “infringement” on our rights, as recognized by the Constitution, so it’s not even within Congress’ power (that’s why the 1968 Gun Control Act and the subsequent Brady Act don’t regulate intra-state gun sales between private individuals – they couldn’t stretch the “interstate commerce clause” that far, no matter how hard they tried – it’s also why the 1934 National Firearms Act taxes transfer of full-auto weapons, but does not prohibit their possession by individuals).
“We’re not talking about taking guns away but restricting the availability of some guns and some magazines. A sane approach to an insane problem.”
No, that’s an insane approach to something that is a criminal problem, not a gun problem. We already have over 20,000 gun control laws on the books, not ONE of which EVER prevented a crime from being committed. The mis-called “assault weapon” and standard-capacity magazine ban of which you prate was the law of the land from1994 to 2004, and did nothing to prevent the 1999 school massacre in Littleton, CO. That law was allowed to sunset because everybody recognized that it had not had any measurable effect on crime of any kind during the decade-plus it was in effect.
It doesn’t matter what kind of new law you create (can you think one up that hasn’t already been passed? I doubt it), it runs up against the rock-solid fact that criminals, by definition, do not obey laws. What that means, is that your wonderful new law would ONLY affect all the law-abiding gun owners in the US (somewhere between 30 and 80 million of them), without even inconveniencing a single criminal. That is neither an effective nor a sane approach. And it is also an “infringement” on our rights, as recognized by the Constitution, so it’s not even within Congress’ power (that’s why the 1968 Gun Control Act and the subsequent Brady Act don’t regulate intra-state gun sales between private individuals – they couldn’t stretch the “interstate commerce clause” that far, no matter how hard they tried – it’s also why the 1934 National Firearms Act taxes transfer of full-auto weapons, but does not prohibit their possession by individuals).