More Gun Control Nonsense

So today we hear from the President announcing the results of his colloquium on gun control. He invokes the Newtown shooting and many others as justification for the curtailment of civil liberties involving guns. He essentially said, "THINK OF THE CHILDREN!" and proposed a series of gun control measures. It was pure appeal to emotion and not an appeal to reason. It is the sort of crap that the media and gun control liberals eat up, but infuriates opposition such as the NRA and its members. And while preventing another mass shooting tragedy is a laudable goal, I am not convinced that any of the president's proposals accomplish this. As I said earlier when I critiqued the Feinstein plan, blanket bans are not effective. The reason sounds pithy, but isn't. Namely, that criminals don't follow the laws and don't buy guns legally. Schools, movie theaters, malls and the like are targeted by psychopaths because they are typically "gun free" zones full of easy targets. Unless you do something to better protect these soft targets, you will see more mass shootings.

So what are the president's proposals you ask? They are as follows (note, since he just announced this, not all the details are known at this point):

Some of President Obama's Proposals • Requiring background checks for all gun buyers [needs congressional approval] • Ban certain semiautomatic rifles [needs congressional approval] • Require a 10-round limit on ammunition magazines [needs congressional approval] • Prohibit manufacturing, importation, possession and sale of armor-piercing bullets [needs congressional approval] • New gun trafficking laws with serious penalties [needs congressional approval] • Provide incentives for police departments to hire officers for schools and mental-health counselors [Something the NRA would likely support as it has called for armed guards in every school] • Require federal law enforcement to trace guns recovered in criminal investigations • Direct the Center for Disease Control to conduct research into the causes and prevention of gun violence • Asking Congress to provide $10 million for the CDC to conduct research on gun violence • Launch a national responsible gun ownership program • Nominating B. Todd Jones to be permanent director of the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives [needs Senate confirmation; he is currently acting director] Source: Wall Street Journal So let’s start from the top. Background checks. This proposal is not that bad honestly. If the goal is to get guns out of the hands of psychopaths, then doing some rudimentary background checks to make sure the person trying to buy a gun is not, in fact, a psychopath makes sense. My fear here is implementation. What will the government be monitoring, who will be black listed from buying guns? There is potential here for great abuse depending on how narrowly the government defines the category of people who can and cannot buy guns legally. Next, the ban on certain weapons. I have dealt with this before in the Feinstein bill. Banning guns based on their appearance is silly. It is one thing if these weapons were somehow more effective than standard hunting rifles, but they aren't. All guns are made for one purpose, shooting bullets. While they remain capable of doing this, they are deadly. But then, that's the purpose of a gun. If they fired NERF foam darts, they would be ineffective at their primary goals of hunting, home and personal protection. This is made even more laughable by the following ban on armor piecing rounds, bullets that are ACTUALLY more dangerous. Ten round limit on magazines. This also seems stupid to me. What exactly is the criterion that makes 11 bullets too deadly but 10 OK? The answer? There is none. The purpose is to make it hard for people to shoot a ton of rounds before having to stop and reload. Unfortunately, as recent tragedies have shown, people going on rampages carry multiple magazines, multiple weapons and sometimes (in the case of the CO shooter) bombs as well as guns (though his bombs were used to booby trap his apartment and not in his mass killing spree). So all this ban accomplishes is (assuming the offending clip sizes magically disappear if/when the ban is implemented) making psychopaths carry multiple clips or multiple weapons (things they already do anyway). Amor piercing bullet ban. This makes some sense. While victims of mass shootings typically are not wearing bullet proof vests when they are attacked, the police who respond to the shootings usually are. And while I have no illusions that this will stop the next tragedy from unfolding (because, as I said, victims don’t wear bullet proof clothing) it might help protect law enforcement. Moreover, it is a much harder argument to make that you need full metal jacket armor piercing rounds to hunt with. Possibly for home defense, if you assume someone invading your home will have the foresight to wear a vest… But still, highly unlikely that there is a legitimate reason to pack armor piercing rounds. As I said earlier, this provision is most interesting to me because it belies the idea that certain guns are more deadly than others. Gun trafficking laws. According to the press conference led by Mr. Biden and Mr. Obama, this is aimed at stiffening the penalties on people who buy guns legitimately in order to sell them to criminals. This, when coupled with the federal mandate to track weapons recovered in criminal investigations, seems like solid attempt at keeping guns out of the hands of criminals. The problem here is that we have no details on how this will be accomplished. There is great potential here for infractions to civil liberties and constitutional rights. I will reserve judgment on this until I know more details. Lastly, the incentives to hire more officers, money for the CDC to conduct studies on how to curb gun violence and programs to sponsor national responsible gun ownership. These programs could well be useful, or they could be a big pile of pork barrel spending with no purpose. It really depends on the details of how the President and Vice President plan on implementing these programs. So I will reserve judgment here as well. (Note, I am ignoring the aspect of asking congress to confirm a head to the ATF. Confirmation processes are complex and I know nothing about the person nominated. So I will leave it alone) So where does this leave us? With a whole lot of questions that remain unanswered. I remain skeptical of the assault weapons ban, and I remain fearful of the potential to curtail civil liberties contained in these proposals. The devil, as they say, is in the details. Details we don’t have yet.