Not to worry.

New Year’s Eve is inna coupla days, then we’re onto Super Bowl & Academy Awards season. This, too, shall pass, and Americans with the attention span of a gnat will soon forget about 20 little kids killed on a December day shortly before Christmas. After all: gun owners’ 2d Amend “rights” trump *everything,* including your & my rights not to be killed.

And so: on it goes…

I could do just fine without a Second Amendment.

What did it is simple. In the words of a deeply shocked Joe Manchin, this time it involved children. Not adults. Not teens. Children. Little children.

That’s what did it.

Exactly!

You got to strike, while the iron is hot.
Especially now a days!

Indeed. And all the idiot gun nuts who ran out and bought another AR-15 or two or five and 5,000 rounds of ammo are now well situated for the next “rumor” that our legislaturds will pass some type of gun ban. Not gonna happen.

Yes, the violent murder of innocent children sickens me, any senseless death is reprehensible but the fact is that there are already more guns than people in this country. You can try and legislate behavior modification until the cows come home because that is what this boils down to but there will be another slaughter anyway someday.
But hey, if it makes you feel any safer, ban away. It works so well, as the War on drugs has shown us.

My viewpoint changed this year, from “keep laws the way they are” to license people to purchase firearms via a hard to game safety and competence evaluation (no Jim Crow restrictions). No confiscation until crime is committed. Safe storage requirements. No sales of greater than 10 round magazines, buy backs for existing ones at prices that are attractive. Allow use of large capacity magazines at shooting ranges only.

Prohibitions have problems, black markets always arise in response. Making it so insane people have to reload or use their second or third weapon makes it easier on responders.

The poll found that 62 percent of Americans favor banning high-capacity ammunition clips and 51 percent back a ban on so-called “assault rifles,”…

Huh?

A slight majority of Americans do not want assault weapons banned in the aftermath of Newtown according to a USA Today/Gallup poll out Wednesday.

Specifically on an assault weapons ban, 51 percent of respondents were against the measure, while 44 percent said they support it…

You have to ask: how and when did we become such a sick society?

The poll found that 62 percent of Americans favor banning high-capacity ammunition clips and 51 percent back a ban on so-called “assault rifles”

So what? The US doesn’t govern by polls, and those bans didn’t work the last time they were invoked.

The purpose of the law was to ban the sale and importation of certain semi-automatic (one bullet fired per trigger pull) firearms by name, and a wider group of firearms that had an arbitrarily selected list of largely cosmetic features. These features did not affect the rate of fire, accuracy, or range of the firearms impacted. Firearms were determined to be “assault weapons” – a term that was created by the law itself – if it had two or more of the following features:
Semi-automatic rifles able to accept detachable magazines and two or more of the following:
Folding or telescoping stock
Pistol grip
Bayonet mount
Flash suppressor, or threaded barrel designed to accommodate one
Grenade launcher (more precisely, a muzzle device which enables the launching or firing of rifle grenades)

–so who needs a folding stock, bayonet mount, flash suppressor or grenade launcher ?

It was a law passed by lawmakers who desired to “do something,” but who didn’t have the expertise or intelligence to pass a law with any real meaning or measurable impact.

The manufacture of high-capacity magazines was banned after a certain date, so the factories went on three shifts until then and so there were plenty of hi-cap magazines, at a lower price.

Since we beat the native children to death to save on bullets I’m guessing.

@Phoenix Woman
It doesn’t matter that it was children. It matters that they were white.
There’s not talk of banning drones among those stalwarts of all that is good, and they’ve churned through the bodies of many an innocent.

I see this as more indicative of the fact that Americans want simple solutions to complex problems. As a whole, we are loath to take the long view of pretty much anything. It’s easy enough to, when something tragic like the Newtown shooting happens, act as if the problem is a black and white one which can be solved in one fell swoop but that doesn’t make it so. What annoys me the most about the people calling for almost total clampdown on gun ownership in the light of the tragedy is that before the shooting many of them were completely oblivious to the undercurrent of simmering hatred, angst and helplessness lying just beneath the surface in our society- ready to quickly boil over. The declining mental health of our population, the way it has become progressively more incohesive, the militarization of our society, the way government and media push violent retaliation as a tonic for most major social and political problems (War on Drugs, humanitarian interventions that involve widespread bombing campaigns?), the increasing social alienation and withdrawal of great numbers of young people- these topics were, and in most circles still are, conspicuously absent. And yet those calling for a near absolute ban on firearms have the unmitigated gall to claim that their’s is the only morally defensible position in light of the massacre. It’s despicable.

I am all for some new restrictions on firearms such as regular inspections to ensure that owners have probably secured them, mandatory and thorough training on how to properly handle a weapon and how to respect how dangerous one can be or comprehensive background checks for anything other than a single shot rifle or shotgun but acting as if banning them outright is a cure-all and relentlessly attempting to shame anyone is worse than simply wrong, it’s making use of a reprehensible emotional ploy!

For those who think that extremely strict laws governing firearms ownership is going to do much good, don’t just look at Prohibition and the War on Drugs as examples of how flawed this logic is. Understand that as long as these weapons exist, people who want them badly enough will still largely be able to get their hands on them! Considering that the United States is the world’s largest dealer in arms both large and small, assuming that these things are all going to vanish is optimistic at best and disingenuous at worst.

I’m getting this advertisement right next to these comments, along with a photo of a scowling Obama.

OBAMA SAYS,
BAN
GUNS!

WHAT DO YOU SAY?
CLICK HERE TO FIGHT BACK

We rarely agree but in this case I do agree with you. The assault weapon ban was cosmetic and basically was an honor code system since a criminal or someone mentally ill could have easily obtained the conversion kits.

There should be gun regulation(as well as a discussion on mental health) but as usual Congress is going to do nothing to actually resolve the problem in a way that actually addresses the problem from anything other than an all or nothing approach.

And for the record, people like Feinstein are hypocrites. They carry a gun and have armed people for their own personal protection but would deny others their right to feel equally secure in their person as if they are the only one who has ever felt threatened or has to worry about problems like rape, murder or having their possessions taken.