I wonder if the Washington Post Editorial Board ever thought “perhaps we should put our #Resist away, stop our Trump Derangement Syndrome, and act like adults, because, if we aren’t unhinged, perhaps we could convince Mr. Trump to deal with issues.” Na.
The public has spoken on gun control. Don’t wait for the White House.
ACTION ON gun-control legislation has stalled in Congress as Republican leaders try to get some sense of what President Trump might support. We have a better idea. Rather than trying to decipher signals from a president who changes his mind by the hour, lawmakers should listen to the public they are elected to represent. Its message in the aftermath of last month’s fatal shooting at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School has been clear: It’s time to end the decades-long stalemate on gun control and enact laws to keep guns from falling into the wrong hands.
Of course, the majority of those laws inhibit law abiding citizens from exercising their 2nd Amendment Rights. Except for one mentioned
Senator Chris Murphy (D-Conn) is among the co-sponsors, along with Sen. John Cornyn (R-Tex.), of a bill that would bring improvements to the National Instant Criminal Background Check System (NICS). The bill, which also enjoys bipartisan support in the House, was introduced after last year’s mass shooting in a rural Texas church showed breakdowns in information being fed to the system. The bill essentially strengthens existing law, and passage should be a no-brainer. The same can be said about legislation banning bump stocks — devices made notorious by the Las Vegas gunman who used them to kill 58 people in the country’s deadliest mass shooting in the modern era.
I personally have no problem with either. Interestingly, it is Democrats who are blocking both, because they are scared that if they pass, Republicans will not do more gun grabbing. Seriously, the WPEB should read their own newspaper, which reported just a few days ago that Democrats, including Murphy, have been downplaying Murphy’s bill (direct link to WaPo piece). I wonder why the WPEB forgot to mention this bit of news?
It is time for Congress to act on these most modest of reforms — and to tackle more ambitious and needed changes. A recent Politico-Morning Consult poll showed that 88 percent of Americans now support universal background checks, 81 percent think a person should be at least 21 to buy a gun, 70 percent favor a ban on high-capacity magazines and 68 percent think assault-style weapons should be banned. If Congress continues to ignore the public’s clamor for reasonable gun-control legislation, voters should use the upcoming midterm elections to reiterate the message.
Yes, we should ban assault style weapons. And they are, because citizens cannot legally possess automatic weapons (unless they qualify for the ATF stamp, and your average citizen won’t get it). High capacity magazines are already banned in California. That didn’t stop the San Bernadino, California shooter (who was also an Islamist). Since many of the mass shootings over the past few years have been committed by by Islamists in the name of Islam, the WPEB should be good with banning Islamists, right?
