On reaching a consensus re mass shootings in the U.S.

Some people who should be allowed to buy a gun are denied; some people who should never be allowed to be in the same room as a gun are approved.

My stance in background checks is the same as my stance on the death penalty: Too flawed to rely on.

 

You should not be allowed or denied gun ownership based on race. By making them state ethnicity, once denied it could be argued that it was racial. If Lei Roi a Chinese got approved and Leroy does not, Leroy gets at attorney and sues for racial discrimination. There should be no ethnic classification needed to own a weapon.

If a person is not a legal citizen they should not be given the rights of those that are. You want to be given the rights if an American citizen, become one. Then we can treat them as such.

 

Background checks are only partially effective, at best. They have zero effect on illegally obtained guns, or guns passed down through families (unless the person registers them, and many do not). If someone committed a violent crime, but was never caught, they can still buy a gun legally. A relative can buy the gun for their family member who has multiple felonies, because background checks don't cover entire families. To name a few easily navigated loopholes.

It seems like a great idea to demand better background checks, but until the flaws in the system are fixed, it won't help much. The main issue is that most of the flaws cannot be fixed. If state and federal agencies don't have a single database that all gun retailers can use to access ALL records nationwide, people slip through the cracks. Extending hold periods? Great, unless someone has cash and knows where to buy one illegally and can arrange it in 15 minutes if needed. Or, they just wait an extra week to buy the gun. You can look on classified ad websites and find countless ads with people wanting to trade whatever they have (furniture, car, weed, etc.) for a gun (aka boom stick, or whatever slang used to get around TOS, and filters). So, again a background check is useless, because there isn't one being done, and someone has an unregistered gun after a quick trade. A thorough background check still does nothing to address guns obtained illegally.

I would suggest putting some sort of identifying chip in a gun, but people would flip out over their privacy being violated, and someone would find a way to get rid of them.

There is no easy answer on how to fix the problem, unfortunately.

 

I think that background checks will partially work, but you would want to audit lots and lots of providers to see if they are actually using them. And even then they might be smart enough to do illegal transactions off the books. So increase the penalty for doing that. It's probably already pretty stringent, but as you mentioned with the Federal form 4473 where lying is a felony, it's hardly ever prosecuted. You would need to make sure that law enforcement is doing its job, and prosecute. I like background checks, but as some other people have mentioned, they can't be the only measure in place. You would also need bans on many types of weapons https://www.feinstein.senate.gov/pu...D1B1D722D5C4AEDAEBB6276AB36.awb-bill-text.pdf and also I like the idea of aggressively prosecuting "straw purchases", where the guy who can pass a background check buys for the guy who can't. In fact I like all the ideas that Congress is supposed to be looking at. Gun debate: Here are the proposals that Congress is considering I just honestly hope they implement all of them.

 

Actually, I think there could be a Constituional problem here. If the non-citizen got into the country legally (s)he is a "person" within the meaning of the Fifth and Fourteenth Amendments--with rights to life, liberty and property that can't be taken away without due process and with "equal protection of the laws" against discrimination

 

The part that doesn't work.

Remember that guy who shot up a church outside of Houston last fall? Yeah, he failed a background check in Texas but was able to purchase a gun in another state because he wasn't in the federal database.

Whatever "part" allows that to happen.

 

Mccabee told me in another thread that it was illegal to buy a gun out of state

I knew I should have fact checked that

I do think we need to make existing gun laws stronger and find a better way to implement them. Just because they don't work now doesnt mean they cant work. Just means we need to do better at enforcing them

 

Well, that's what was reported in the news. I don't know the legal ins and outs of it all. Macabee may be right. Anyway, someone screwed up somewhere. Background checks aren't perfect.

 

I think, and I may be wrong, but I think if you buy a gun out of state you are supposed to have that gun transferred to your home state thru a qualified gun dealer who insures paperwork follows correctly. However he could have easily simply purchased it privately or illegally and just carried it back into Texas.

 

Confirms how I recall it. I haven't bought a gun in years so I didn't know if that was different now. It isn't.

And there is no system to stop drivers crossing state lines to inventory the car for guns. So yeah it happens by the score.

 

Better access to mental health

If we examine other first world nations with lower or non existent rates of mass shootings, we can see the other major difference besides tighter gun controls is much better access to health care

But honestly this one seems more impossible to me than tighter gun control. Equal access to mental healthcare really requires a single payer health care system and I just sadly don't see that happening anytime soon.

Edit: also , I wanted to add - I feel like its too easy to scapegoat the mentally ill when speaking of it in conjunction with mass shootings and we must be careful not to. Not all mentally ill people are violent - the vast majority aren't - and not all people prone to violence are mentally ill.