It was back in 1964, as a sophomore in college, that I first saw politicians as having an ethos, a way of seeing the world. It struck me that Democrats were idealistic and emotional, whereas Republicans were practical. Practical in the way that for them the ends justified the means. Republicans were the party of business- hard-nosed realists whose gaze always focused on the bottom line.
Now, half a century later, this practical-over-ethical perspective has become even more cynical with the Red Flag idea of turning the focus of the phenomenon of mass shootings from the guns themselves towards the gunmen. The Republicans finally know they have to do something. They can no longer keep their heads in the sand, while their gun lobby rides rough-shod over any attempts to solve gun massacres. So, their solution, or first proposal, is to attempt to turn the ire away from themselves by proposing the minimal possible legislation- Red Flag laws. I say, call their bluff. Even though this is a meaningless step, let it be their first. Then, the second step, after the next few blood baths, will be background checks, registration, or some basic assignment of responsibility. Ultimately, we’ll see that there is no alternative to removing weapons of warfare from private ownership.
So, give them the red flag... it will be the beginning of the end of these senseless crimes of spilling the blood of the innocents in the name of hatred.
Meaningless. Still assault weapons out there.
It's not enough. It's a band aid on a hemorrhage. We must outlaw guns for all but the police and military. The gun violence is caused by the ubiquitous availability of guns.
Inches against a problem requiring miles. Red flag...bump stocks...then after the next one, trigger guards and rifle slings...Too much political money is standing in the way of confronting the real problem...SUPPLY!
2
The only sensible response to the gun massacres is the licensing of assault rifles.
This would not be a violation of the 2nd amendment, and would give society positive control o these weapons. the measure could mimic automobile licensing, every owner identified, with similar requirements for liability insurance coverage, but enforced on a national basis.
2
I have a suggestion. What if we read, embrace, and fully implement the Second Amendment? "A well-regulated militia being necessary to the security of a free State" in each of the 50 free states of the United States of America, let's organize and train skilled gun enthusiasts into state militias. The requirement for private gun ownership would then be dependent on membership in your local, well-regulated state militia.
2
@WhyArts
The well-regulated state militia could then be deployed to counter whatever few terrorist gun attacks may remain in each state.
2
Commenters have said, the Congress has no backbone. It's not backbone that's needed for gun-control laws to pass, it's members putting money before patriotism. We already know the repubs put party before patriotism. We must recognize Republican and Democratic congresspeople who are bought by the National Rifle Association. The NRA is one of the most powerful lobbying forces in this country. This reluctance of some in Congress to produce gun-control laws, using the 2nd Amendment as their shield, is the cover for their support from the NRA, as well as fear of their base, the Trump base. This disability to act by our congress people should be called out, profiling the greedy and cowardly.
It's interesting to note that these same people, preventing gun laws to alleviate the murder and distress of the citizenry, disallow guns in their chambers. Guns are forbidden in The House and The Senate!!!
2
Three things to do:
1. Ban weapons of military mass destruction- i.e. assault weapons.
2. Implement universal background checks
3. Implement extreme risk protection orders-red flags.
All the rest is just idle chit chat designed to distract people until the next crisis lets everyone off the hook once again.
2
"At the White House, Mr. Trump told aides to explore whether he could achieve some gun measure — possibly background checks — through executive action, according to two people briefed on the discussions. However, Mr. Trump expressed a desire to get some form of political concession from his critics in exchange for doing so, according to the people briefed."
In other words, Trump is saying, "Okay fine I'll stop our children from dying. Only if you let me kick out some more Mexicans first."
4
Perhaps some lives would be saved by this law. Republicans are holding their breath, hoping this fear and anger by a growing and younger demography against assault weapon violence will quiet down and forget. Probably will happen but then 45 will return to putting more Americans in danger with his (successful so far) campaign to stoke fear and anger and divide the electorate for republican gain. More mass murder will happen and money chasing republicans will have to pay for their cynical partnership with the nra and gun lobby.
1
For perspective, spend a little time with Google looking into the process the US military goes through before they allow a recruit to "bear" an a rifle.
Why should we civilians be protected as well?
3
The biggest problem in this multiple problem issue is that there are too many guns about and can be obtained illegally and easily. Hindering the rights of Americans for what they might do runs afoul of my core belief and can not be approached in a ham fisted way because when the rights of one is diminished they are diminished for us all.
I don't see a conflict in denying assault rifles for everyone and much stricter limits on hand guns and responsibilities of ownership to include where and how they are kept.
We are hearing a lot of grandstanding from the party in power but in a short time it will fade away as it always does.
The person sitting in the Presidents chair has already demonized Latinos as invaders dope smugglers and so much more. It's Hitler's playbook in the 21st century with thugs and all.
If Trump continues with his usual hateful rhetoric, using words like invasion which apply to something that must be repulsed an enemy or opposition attacks will continue. Americans from the shallow end of the gene pool find a default approval of their thoughts and actions.
I am not optimistic.
Now we can only hope that Democrats in Congress also support Red Flag tests.
2
Rather than endangering the police confiscating weapons from someone dangerous--we should be sending our Senators who refuse to stop putting weapons of mass slaughter into the hands of dangerous people.
55 people were shot in Chicago last weekend. 48 of them survived. Just a normal weekend in the Windy City. No reason to run up red flags on Michigan Avenue or to declare a national emergency or to demand something be done...The Dayton shooter used a 100 round drum clip - see the photo in The Times. That grotesque bit of technology did not warrant a red flag. That "thing" did not just spring forth immaculately, it was conceived, designed, manufactured, field tested and marketed by some enterprising company. No inquiry by The Times into who manufactures such abominations. No naming of names. No curiosity about other inventions in the pipeline to increase the homicidal capacity available to aggrieved nuts....We need lots more Red Flags. But, they need to be flown high and long above the sources of the contraptions that are used to rain carnage on easy targets. Start with the manufacturers of 100 round drum clips, bump stocks and rapid fire death machines.
3
Good luck with that. Congress granted then legal immunity a long time ago.
Red Flag laws will create as many problems, or more, than they solve. While I agree, in principle that some individuals who have said or done some things in the past are more likely to commit serious gun violence in the future, it is also clear that this will be extremely difficult to codify.
In one extreme case you have inaction because the criteria to remove weapons or detain an individual is so bureaucratically tortured that you cannot easily act. In the other extreme case family members or friends could have people locked up on a whim. Neither is good. Finding that middle ground may be difficult to impossible.
Most mentally ill people, from a report I just read, are more likely to be a danger to themselves rather then other people. The ONLY obvious first solution is to get rid of or lock up these high powered, semi and automatic assault weapons, not matter what you call them, so that no one can easily make a quick decision that has fatal consequences.
I have fired rifles and guns. That's great. I don't need them anywhere in my life, nor should most people.
2
A person once told me, in despair, that denial is the American national pastime.
"Vote out republicans!!"
"Vote out Democrats!!"
I can't believe that people still fall for this. The simple fact is: our government has bounced from democrat control, to republican control, to democrat, back to republican, for over one hundred years. The result is... where we are now.
When democrats and republicans argue about the system, they argue over who should control it, not about changing it.
Face it, folks. If you see things as a democrat vs. republican issue then the system has you. Good luck with that.
To quote Eugene Luther Gore Vidal: "There is only one party in the United States, the Property Party … and it has two right wings: Republican and Democrat.”
NB: Speaking of mental illness, as so many now do, remember the classic definition of insanity. Doing the same thing over and over (as for a century) and expecting different results.
https://emcphd.wordpress.com
1
The government affords the solution if all participate seriously. That they do not gives people with wealth and social influence the ability to corrupt the system.
You cannot BandAid a gaping wound. We need comprehensive legislation with a buyback program and ban on weapons of war and massive magazine clips.
Every member House & Senate should visit gunshot survivors at a rehab hospital. Survivors of gun violence can advocate on behalf of every community.
2
Republican demagoguery and cynicism are breathtaking. These post facto attempts to make it seem as though they care for constituents lives, health, and safety are obscene. Of course this guy is going to come out and propose anything, even if it is a law that, as reported elsewhere in today’s NYT, it’s a law that has largely been ineffectual in preventing mass shootings. He doesn’t want to loose, as we say where I come from, that tit of elective office he’s been suckling at!
1
The right to bear arms may be needed by police authorities, and by the military. The right to bear arms may be used by families for their protection. However, it was also used by those who murdered others to satisfy their own twisted view of life. Multiple mental disorders may be at the forefront of these twisted minds. But the right to bear arms is also used by criminals, the mafia, the Mexican Mafia, drug cartels, drug traffickers, street gangs, the "hell angel's" and other motorcycle gangs, rapists, aryan nation racist groups, extremist Islamic Isis, Muslim terrorist groups, skinhead racist groups, KKK, neo nazi groups, and other criminal groups. These criminals will always have weapons legally or illegally.
In the final analysis Constitutional laws don't prevent or make people do things. People will make their own choices whether that choice is constitutional or unconstitutional, whether that choice is decent or indecent, whether that choice is moral or immoral, or whether that choice is right or wrong.
The 6th Commandment says, “Thou shalt not kill.” Exodus 20.13.
Red flag laws are not enough. Ban assault weapons! that is what more and more Americans are demanding. No more thoughts and prayers and red flags. We want assault weapons BANNED. Read our lips: Get assault weapons out of civilian hands, period!
Like the wimps that they are this is wimpy move.
3
Red flag laws are a rational measure which will reduce gun violence if seriously implemented. The objections that it’s some ploy to prevent gun control is illogical. But it does reveal a fear that it will dampen popular support for gun control measures that they think are needed.
Why let people die or be maimed by preventing a measure directed at keeping potential shooters from guns that they can get easily?
Eliminate guns from nearly all and don’t worry about who would likely use one. That is the strategy.
In America there are people who put Guns up there Next to Jesus. Whenever Assualt weapon ban comes up people and the NRA Cry "They want to take away our guns" Let's face it we are a Violent culture. Banning assualt weapons will not stop violent acts, but it will stop being able to get off so many rounds in a minute. I'm not against people hunting or owning guns in there home for protection. Why do we need to be packing to buy milk? even in the old west there were towns that had laws No guns in town. No were in the World do we have this love for guns. People with mental health problems are all over the world, but this keeps happening in the U.S. Will it take a family member of those in Congress to fall victom to such incedents for them to see things need to Change?
2
We have to be careful of the "just do something" mentality. What it can lead to is things being done that have no great, if any, impact.
This leads to a "pat ourselves on the back" mentality and a false sense of doing something meaningful. It also makes is harder for the next gun restriction bill, one that really MIGHT make a difference, because you will have opposition saying things like "you just passed, x, y and x, we don't need any more restrictions."
Red Flag laws, full background checks, very good ideas but in reality these should only be part of some kind of real solution that is much more comprehensive.
Red Flag laws also are best for spur of the moment things, they are not great for folks that are planners. Buy a gun, report it stolen, someone red flags you and you simply say "I don't have that gun, I reported it stolen."
1
Most gun deaths are suicides. This measure is most likely to affect gun deaths which are suicides. Suicides are preceded by long suffering mental health issues or short term extremely poor health issues. Bit are readily identifiable and the risk of harming self with any guns Hugh.
It is not hard to identify people at higher risk for suicide. Predicting who, is not.
Big data turns a transposition into gibberish.
Politicians and their miniscule legal haggling. After two massacres in less than 24 hours they MIGHT pass a law denying guns to those posing an ‘imminent’ danger. That seems like a huge loophole to prove a danger is ‘imminent’.
It’s over one year ago since the Charlottesville shooting and I’m still listening to reports that prosecutors will have a hard time with a ‘domestic terrorism’ charge because there’s nothing on the books that makes it a crime. What on earth have politicans been doing all this time? Make it a crime. Put aside the priorities campaigning, the Thanksgiving, Christmas, August recessess and hightail it back to Washington to give domestic terrorism the crime category it warrants.
1
Red flags. Animal cruelty. Then hunting. Hunting is a form of animal cruelty. Not saying all hunters are potential serial killers. But hunting seems to desentitize people to gun violence in general and may contribute to the atmosphere that enables gun violence against humans.
Re: Red Flag Gun Control Law.
It likely won't matter what Congress does. The Supreme Court is sure to hold such prior restraint unconstitutional (5 to 4). It clearly doesn't comport with the 2nd, 4th and 5th articles of the Bill of Rights, which we presume Dems would be happy to scrap, and Reps are unlikely to have read.
1
This is the saddest, most infuriating development yet. This is the 20 years in the making solution that Republicans may possibly rally around? A law to “take guns from those who pose an imminent danger”. Should such a piece of fluff pass, don’t think for one second that NRA lawyers won’t be hedging word ‘imminent’ to their advantage.
4
What is it going to take to get these people to shake off their fear of the NRA and start acting like representatives of the people? How can there be any controversy about whether assault weapons should be sold to anyone who happens to want one? Assault weapons are meant to assault people. The name says it all.
We should limit the amount of ammunition and/or track it or require license for bullet purchases/usages. Let people keep their weapons and try to limit their usage to ranges and such.
No one needs 1000 rounds of ammunition for an AR-15.
18
@kz US firearm-owners have many billions of rounds of ammunition. Control of anything so abundant and concealable is foredoomed.
Those, who wish to maintain their expertise - which expertise is perishable - likely expend several hundred rounds in a single afternoon.
By-the-way, background checks are a consumer fraud, that dwarfs the crimes by Bernie Madoff, the financial swindler. Only 62 Federal prosecutions followed 76,142 denials (in 2010) of purchase applicants. For the data see, Regional Justice Information Service, "Enforcement of the Brady Act, 2010", 2012, p. 7 https://www.ncjrs.gov/pdffiles1/bjs/grants/239272.pdf .
A Government Accountability Office (GAO) Report (No. 18-440, Sept., 2018) shows that of 112,090 denials by FBI screeners, only 12,710 were sent for "investigation". Of that number only 12 resulted in prosecutions!!!!
Plainly, far more than 12 denials were fully justified. It is a Federal felony for a "prohibited person" to possess or to try to acquire any firearm. Such a small number of prosecutions shows that Federal authorities do little about stopping those, who seek to obtain firearms, despite being legally barred from firearm ownership.
If Federal prosecutors pursued all correctly denied, there would be no time to prosecute other Federal crimes.
Ask me how I know this!
1
Has anyone actually done scientific and statistical studies of these mass shootings to see what measures would have prevented them? How many actually used assault weapons? How many of the shooters would have raised "red flags" with someone who could act on that information? How did the shooters acquire their weapons? Without answers to these questions we have no hope of preventing further tragedies. The CDC is prohibited from this research - is anyone else pursuing it?
This bill is stupid and will not save lives. The Republican senate must think the American public is populated by ignoramuses. The shootings will continue unabated as long as these weapons of war continue to be sold and the Republicans will continue to line their pockets with bribes from the NRA and munitions while our children die in the streets.
We the American people sayN0 to this fake law. We say NO to guns and yes to REAL gun control laws.
5
@Grandma
This legislation does not impede ban legislation. Voting against gun regulation is insane.
Our only hope is that the NRA crooks have lined their own pockets with the money that they would normally use as bribes for the GOP. It is much easier for Republicans to do the right thing when they are not getting paid.
Red Flag laws are useful as part of a package of gun laws that include background checks, assault rifle bans s and limits on magazine ammunition. The problem here is it is being used politically for cover now that the gun problem has become so exacerbated, it can no longer be ignored by the majority of the public.
These politicians want their money from the NRA and gun manufacturers, while at the same time saying "Look, I did something" in order to placate the public. The problem had to become so bad and reelection time looming before the gun lobby gave them permission to enact Red Flag laws to give senators some cover., but it is not enough These senators who put dollars before the lives of our fellow country people are an embarrassment to our country.
3
Red flag alerting opens yet another pandora’s box of distractions, and passes the buck of responsibility.
Assault weapon manufacturing for civilian purchase is the main issue. War weapons should not be available to civilians in any society.
60
Yes. People in the tens of millions who have these semi-auto rifles that are not suitable for military use but look like ones that are, which they have owned and used for up to fifty years and who have been reliably keeping them from being used in gun violence very successfully, are going to have an epiphany so they see it all from your perspective, that they are enabling mass murderers.
@speaktruth topower Correct! I endorse the NYT's suggestion yesterday that Walmart boycott Wells Fargo; who supplies the money for assault weapon gun manufacturers and logistic distribution into this country.
2
@speaktruth topower Not so. The biggest murderers in the 20th Century were not criminals or terrorists. The biggest murderers: evil officials. Some 50,000,000 - including millions of children - were murdered in at least eight major genocides.
Some 800,000 Rwandans were jurdered in just 119 days (7 April - 19 July). Few explain how so many were murdered so quickly.
Unlike the Nazis, the Rwandan murderers did not set-up murder facilities. Instead, village-level murder squads - with machetes and nail-studded clubs - targeted those of Tutsi ethnicity and murdered them on the spot.
The victims were defenseless, because Belgium bequeathed to Rwanda a "gun control" regime. Rwanda enacted its own "gun control" law, Decree-Law No. 12/79, 7 May 1979 published in the Journal Officiel (Official Journal), 1 June 1979, pp. 343-346, in French and Kinyarwanda. This law remains in force, as amended by Law No. 13/2000, 14 June 2000.
The Tutsis had been targeted in prior years. But because they could not get permits to acquire firearms, they were helpless when murder squads arrived.
A "fortunate" few, with cash on them, sometimes could pay a murderer to expend a bullet. Those without cash were slashed and/or had limbs hacked-off. Many, who had taken refuge in churches or schools, were incinerated when these buildings were set ablaze.
Behind "gun control's" dazzling facade - the false promise of "safe streets" - is a nasty reality: mountains of corpses.
1
Do white supremacists know that any American citizen--all ethnicities, can also easily get an Assault Rifle in America? I feel like America is headed for Civil War II.
3
That is their sincere hope because they have been planning for this and stockpiling weapons for generations to take the country back from the "mongrel" races.
2
This bill is absolutely worthless! Who does the Republican senate think they are kidding? Americans want gun control. We want assault rifles abolished along with the NRA. Hand guns should be in the hands of policemen only and rifles should used only in hunting season by those who actually are licensed to hunt.
This nonsense bill only shows how well paid off the Republicans are paid off by shooters. Other countries have sensible gun laws and we know that. Furthermore we want that!
1
Instead of addressing the real issue, the GOP is turning to informing and profiling to target another marginalized group--the mentally ill. They do so because their white nationalist base and NRA backers wield the tyranny of the minority over a party that has gleefully abandoned any kind of moral compass to march lock step with an incompetent and authoritarian president. Lack of access to assault weapons is strongly correlated to a decrease in mass shootings. Access to assault weapons is strongly correlated to an increase in mass shootings., Let's address the elephant in the room instead of stigmatizing yet another vulnerable population.
1
Grants? -- "Senator Lindsey Graham, Republican of South Carolina, has already proposed legislation that would offer federal grants to states to help them enact and enforce red flag laws, also known as “extreme risk protection orders."
Excuse me? == Now Graham wants to give State legislators (who are already being paid by taxpayers) federal grants (also to be paid by taxpayers) to "help them" enact and enforce red flag laws? --
Just how many ways can republicans think of to keep paying for things 2 and 3 times over?
ALL legislators already receive a salary, pensions, months of vacation time every year, ad infinitum. Would be really a novelty if they'd all just decide to do the jobs they're already being paid for.
Grants, my foot!
To people focused on banning the "assault" rifle, please read the following analysis from this newspaper 5 years ago:
"The Assault Weapon Myth"
https://www.nytimes.com/2014/09/14/sunday-review/the-assault-weapon-myth.html
For those who won't bother to inform themselves with one click, here is an abstract:
"[I]n the 10 years since the previous [assault weapon] ban lapsed, even gun control advocates acknowledge a larger truth: The law that barred the sale of assault weapons from 1994 to 2004 made little difference.
"It turns out that big, scary military rifles don’t kill the vast majority of the 11,000 Americans murdered with guns each year. Little handguns do.
"Handguns were used in more than 80 percent of gun murders each year, but gun control advocates had failed to interest enough of the public in a handgun ban. Handguns were the weapons most likely to kill you, but they were associated by the public with self-defense. (In 2008, the Supreme Court said there was a constitutional right to keep a loaded handgun at home for self-defense.)"
-----
Meaning we accept murder, we just object to wholesale murder.
Stop focusing on the tool. Look at who we are.
Violence is how we "solve" problems.
A nation that bombs and invades other nations at will shall never find peace at home.
Work on who we are and why we are that way - not what we use to destroy each other.
In a frightened, enraged nation, outside of a duel, the choice of weapons is irrelevant.
https://emcphd.wordpress.com
3
@Rev. E. M. Camarena, PhD The US does not do nearly enough to oust murderous regimes. While President Trump confronts China - which pursues a quiet genocide against the Uighurs, the Muslim natives of Xinjiang Province - he does so to get a better trade deal.
President Trump talks with Kim Jong-Un, North Korea's murderous dictator.
President Trump does not put a price on the head of Myanmar's top military commander, who organizes a genocide against the Rohingya, Bengali speaking Muslims long resident in Myanmar.
President Trump does not put a price on the heads of the drug thugs, who smuggle fentanyl, an opioid so lethal that just two milligrams (.0007 ounce) can be a lethal dose. Drug thugs have murdered far more Americans, that all criminals - common and organized. We should hunt drug thugs as diligently as we hunted Osama bin-Laden.
The sad truth: in most countries, those in charge think they have a complete right to do whatever they want to the residents. So, such rulers won't lift a finger against like-minded rulers of other countries.
Only Americans care, and we don't care enough.
We cannot depend upon our current slate of elected officials to take care of this problem. Any solution they arrive at will be beyond inadequate. They have had years and years and years of witnessing the consequences of their inactions and inadequate solutions to the gun problem in this country. I am going to be watching and listening to the next group of wannabe leaders to see where they stand on the issue of gun control and safety in this country and the ideas they bring to the table. And then, I am going to vote.
The state of Washington has passed Extreme Risk Protection Order, which is the name for what some are calling "red flag" laws. This law is effective in suicide deaths and domestic violence cases - which can be precursors to mass shootings. Earlier this year, new age restrictions requiring you to be 21 years old to purchase an assault rifle went into effect in our state. The new requirements include enhanced background checks for semi-automatic assault rifles and 10-day waiting periods to purchase those weapons, and requirement that gun owners safely store their firearms. This new legislation came about by popular vote.
Our congress is also stuck in the past or the pockets but the people know what they want and need once they are given the information. We need many regulations to address this enormous issue and better communication between city, county, state and federal authorities, research ( federal government funded institutions such as CDC and NIH are not allowed to research gun violence which has become a national health crisis) and education. We are starting local but aim for national with groups like Alliance for Gun Safety and Safe and Sane Skagit.
17
This is a rational way to begin controlling guns so that those known to be at risk of committing violence don’t have access to guns. Like background checks it targets the danger posed by the people who are likely to misuse guns in society. That is people using them to do harm wrongfully. It will have measurable success if implemented because it directly affects the people who commit the violence.
The weakness lies in the amount of guns possessed and by who being unknown in our country. The only way to address that would be a registry of all guns that is accurate and complete.
@Casual Observer...A Federal Registry of Firearms would be great. It would be interesting to know how many liberals, socialists and Democrats have weapons, how many weapons and what kind of weapons.
Of course they back it, it will invade our privacy even more. they love violating the 4th amendments right to privacy, that's the one been going around since 911 "if you see something, say something".
Helps cause distrust and divides us; their goal.
If they're going to do this, they need to unseal juvie records if there's a "Red Flag" that's how al lot of these over T'd men get going: early.
If a teenager can be tried in a court of law as an adult, his juvie record sure ought to be fair game. Right?
Not all of us own firearms in this country but the NRA and munitions manufacturers would like more of us to own their deadly weapons and bullets. Fear mongering has made the weapons industry billions of dollars. Billions. To all of the gun loving, you can pry my guns from my cold dead hands folks, keep your weapons. You keep telling us it is not guns that kill people, it is the people who pull the trigger that kill people. Alright then. Let the rest of us peace loving, secure individuals who dont feel the need to pack a gun in every corner of the house and car have our safe spaces. You can have your guns. We will buy you all a huge island, transport you there with every single one of your weapons and ammunition and let you all live together in your gun culture. The rest of us have had enough of this idiocy.
1
@Homer
AND the NRA is being closely investigated for channeling Russian $$$ to the Trump campaign. They are nearly bankrupt, yet have "non-profit" status.
The NRA is in real trouble
You understand the problem, half of it. What you don’t see is anyone like yourself having any reason to own and keep a gun for any reason that you can imagine. That worries you so much that you just cannot believe that gun owners could be mature and responsible people.
Mistrust is the heart of our problem.
A bunch of republicans better retire because the RFL just like HLS FISA courts will be abused and you know it, Trump and all republicans that vote this will not get my vote, communist light vs democratic communism, the NRA is toast as a long time member I’m done with the NRA.
1
This Red Flag Law already exists in New York, Washington, Oregon and California.
Suddenly Liberals think it is worthless.
3
The states you mention all have relatively low rates of gun suicide and domestic homicide — but not because of red flag laws. They have regulations that slow down gun purchases, and their percentage of households with firearms is well below the rates in the ‘suicide belt’ of the Intermountain states.
15
No, Dr. John, not worthless, just kind of besides the point compared to the biggest issue: the guns. It’s almost entirely about the guns, Dr. John: their easy availability, their lethality beyond anything that’s reasonable for hunting, sport or self-defense, their large-capacity magazines, their ammunition that’s specifically designed to shred as much tissue and bone as possible, and especially their sheer numbers. So many guns in this country. So, sure, let’s look at mental health and criminal histories, but let’s not pretend that’s addressing the primary and obvious problems here.
25
It’s *comparatively* worthless. Passing this legislation instead of the comprehensive gun reform House bills is political calculation at its worst.
14
What about the "well regulated militia?" What does it mean? Can we get some information this? Why isn't it a key part of understanding the 2nd Amendment?
1
It really does not matter, does it? The amendment is intended to prevent government confiscation of arms from citizens so that militias would be possible to be formed without the government’s control. The important thing to consider is that the amendment did not apply to the states and local governments until the fourteenth amendment extended the Bill of Rights to the states.
@Barrie Grenell: The courts have issued reams of decisions on that point.
Start here:
www.supremecourt.gov/opinions/07pdf/07-290.pdf
DISTRICT OF COLUMBIA ET AL. v. HELLER
2008
https://emcphd.wordpress.com
1
Trump in WH: "Mental illness and hatred pulls the trigger, not the gun."
Without the gun, there would be no trigger to pull.
3
This is anon-solution to escape the reality that shootings, like hackings of your private information, does not have a solution. would "thoughts and prayers" or these "red flag" laws have prevented the two most recent shootings (or has a school or Walmart been desecrated again as I write this? from happening? No! They were both"surprise" killers. There are 392,273,257 UNREGISTERED firearms in the US. That's almost 400 million guns. The USA has 46 percent of the entire global stock of 857 million civilian firearms. How ya gonna find the "bad gun owner" needle in that huge haystack?
2
This is simple. There is no acceptable reason to own an assault rifle. Anyone who would own an assault rifle is a person who should not own an assault rifle.
6
OK, limit access to easy methods of mass mayhem, but that's not the answer. That's only a mitigation. People still have access to vehicles, pressure cookers, fertilizer and diesel fuel. What we truly need is to reduce the frustration people seem to feel, at their inability to make a difference. This hate and anger is born of frustration. We need to teach our children, as parents and in the schools, how to bring about change, and the optimism that it is possible. Social change never comes easy, but it never comes from violence. It comes from using the tools available to us, and from hard work and perseverance. Rosa Parks didn't get a gun. Martin Luther King didn't get a bomb. JFK didn't resort to violence. We have to change the mentality of the entitled, instant gratification, easy solution generations, and teach, nurture, that we do have power, and we can exercise that power. Sometimes in subtle ways, often very slowly, but it can be done. Go out and campaign. Get signatures, drum up votes. Maybe you won't win this time, or the next, but you will make change happen. Not with a gun. Not with a bomb. But we do need to control Congress. All of us, and all of them.
"red flag powers" are exactly the sort of loss of freedom's these mooks claim to be trying to protect with their guns!
Fact is if they prohibited guns that no one needs even in the most dangerous of places, there is no need to pass laws that give authority to take someone's freedom based on the opinion of another.
Who decides there is an issue at all to begin with? There has to be an initial contact and that contact has to be vetted first before the subject they are pointing at is looked at.
How are we going to detect people harassing others? Police seem purpose selected for lack of sophistication and simple mindedness.
It is fairly easy these days to wind someone up to make them angry then point at them as if they are naturally and always angry, not reacting to a stimuli. Then build on it when they react angrily to having that assumption imposed on them. Anger is normal. Reading minds is not only not normal it is impossible. And of course the people who "count" will never be affected by these laws which will be used to make money and otherwise abuse the poor and powerless.
1
This “Ex-“ NRA member knows it is way past time for a comprehensive “ Gun Safety” Bill that requires every gun-buyer and owner to complete a gun safety course with testing and licensing along with psychological evaluations. Plus mandatory gun owners insurance , with each state regulating the preceding at a GSB (Gun Safety Bureau.) It will reduce gun murders significantly over time.
2
I guess it is some minimal progress that the Republicans are actually talking about wanting to pass any gun legislation at all. But I doubt it will have any teeth.
As far as I’m concerned anyone who wants to purchase a military style assault weapon and a high capacity magazine is a red flag. No one needs such a thing, not even for “personal defense”. And what kind of truly sane person actually wants these items? So they can pretend to be Rambo? So they can fire sprays of bullets crazily all over the place and feel like they are gunning people down? Red flag right there. I have heard people claim they are fun to shoot and since they think they are mentally stable feel justified in owning these items. I guess it’s the equivalent of children feeling it’s fun to throw rocks at glass windows while totally ignoring all consequences of their “fun”.
So what? Some people might think it’s fun to drive Formula 1 race cars on the public roads but that is not allowed. Some people think it’s fun to play super loud music after quiet hours in apartment buildings, but that usually isn’t allowed. Any truly mature and sane person would, by now, see that these weapons are too dangerous to be legal and wouldn’t want one.
Purchasing a military style assault rifle or high capacity magazine is a big red flag. Therefore, they shouldn’t be legal.
What a joke! Seriously? You're going to rely on neighbours denouncing neighbours to curtail mass killings while still allowing anyone who can walk and chew gum the right to buy a semi-automatic assault rifle and a 100 round magazine? Setting aside the natural tendency toward apathy in America, of those who will "red flag" a neighbour, how many will do so out of spite or petty jealousy? How long do you think it will be before police storm a "red flagged" home, shoot and kill two or three family members before discovering there were no guns on the premises? Look around for God's sake! Every other nation of the G8 has fixed this....the solutions are so obvious it's getting too sad to watch you walking around blindly ignoring them. At least admit you prefer a little political theatre rather than actually deal with a problem and face the political consequences rather than surrender to more carnage.
51
@Meusbellum
For African Americans, the chances are even much less that neighbors will tell on neighbors. 911 calls to African American homes often ends in disaster.
7
@Meusbellum
Sir, our gun control problems are a result of corruption in our government. The NRA, the gun lobbyists have contributed HUGE sums of cash to many of our politicians in Washington to keep guns and ammunition in the publics hands. It’s about the money. Always the money. We in America know we have a deeply sick gun problem here. Mitch McConnell is blocking the House of Representative’s gun legislation passed several months ago in the House of Reps. Mitch McConnell is a criminal as the Senate’s majority leader and bought off by the gun lobbyists.
8
The every other country has solved this problem complaint is irrelevant. None of them ever had a problem like ours. American gun owners are not live versions of video game characters but that is exactly how they are depicted, they are like Americans who don’t own guns. They do not harm nor threaten others any more than those who don’t have guns. They keep them safely. But we don’t have effective ways to identify those who might nor to separate them from their guns. Given the huge number of guns and gun owners, that creates the basis for all the gun violence which we experience.
Elimination of guns given our experience with guns, and our legal system requiring individual liberties that the government must respect, is an unlikely to work way to solve the problem. Red flag laws, background checks, registration and licensing are the most feasible means to address the gun violence problem.
2
This is the least they an do.
1
"ban on military-style assault weapons and high-capacity magazines, which directly fuel mass shootings. "
Save American lives. Red flag bill does not!
2
Mass murders have been and will continue to be committed with other kinds of guns. This idea that one kind of gun is needed for mass murders and would prevent them if unavailable is nonsense. When people are in great numbers and concentrated, that is the situation that allows for mass murders. Most guns can be shot frequently enough over short periods of time to make many victims. Anyway, the killer is the determinant of dangerousness, not the kind of gun he shoots. Anyone shot to death or maimed is a a loss for everyone.
1
Of course the Republicans want this - it’s useless and it will delay discussion and action upon the REAL issue - GUNS. How easy it is to try to claim concern to loyal idiots when they know they can still keep their arsenals of assault weapons.
Trump is pulling his periodic “poor me” whining act and doing everything possible to support the gun lobby that owns him. WATCH WHAT HE DOESN’T DO - he won’t commit to anything that’s meaningful in gun control. He WILL distract until the news cycle drops THESE slaughters, ad Infiniti’s. He’s focused on 2020, his ego, and little else - certainly not the welfare of Americans.
2
Red flags with the names of politicians who congratulate themselves with this band aid should be a warning to vote against them.
1
We shall see if the recent killings, due to the unrestricted, and abusive, availability of guns, especially lethal by the use of assault type rifles, will have an impact on republicans, who "lock, stock and barrel' sold their soul to the highest bidder, the NRA, all while prostituting themselves to keep NRA donations coming...to preserve their unrepresentative. undeserved, and miserable seat in Congress (as of now, self-serving!). Do they have to be blind to the mayhem, and all the suffering inflicted, until they themselves are affected? Give us a break and do your job, legislate and do people's command: universal background checks and the elimination of military style weapons. Nothing short of that will do.
So Trump thinks this El Paso shooter was mentally ill... OK, let's go with that.
NOTE TO FBI INVESTIGATORS AND U.S. PROSECUTORS: Please schedule the shooter for a mental health exam ASAP to determine his sanity, both before the Walmart shootings and after. Please also make that report public ASAP.
If the shooter is found LEGALLY SANE and in his right mind before and after the shootings, will Trump go before the cameras and STILL call him mentally ill?
Will Trump admit he was WRONG, that the shootings were NOT about mental illness?
Sounds like a prisoner lawsuit for defamation and libel to me.
Poetic justice.
As a Canadian, just crossing the border raises a red flag with me. I like America, but I am on guard, always, which is a shame. Guns are not a part of my culture and they frighten me.
2
Not a good idea to punish or reject behavior that is at least a step in the right direction.
Both parties have to stop this all-or-nothing mentality--the Republicans are far worse, plus they don't want constructive Democratic bills to pass because they don't want Democrats getting credit for good things.
Red flag laws may well not be sufficient to deter mass shootings, but if they help prevent suicides (which involve more than half of gun deaths). then the result is positive. I would hope they also help prevent domestic violence homicides. See: https://everytownresearch.org/reports/guns-violence-women-americas-uniquely-lethal-domestic-violence-problem/
The time to act on gun legislation is now, while these horrific incidents are fresh in Americans' minds and while the bad-for-our-nation's-health NRA is in disarray.
Columbine killer Eric Harris' parents had no idea that their son was amassing guns to kill as many students and adults possible. As did Dylan Klebold. Red Flag laws would have not saved the 13 people who they gunned down.
1
"Red flag" laws and "assault weapon" bans are utterly worthless when it comes to reducing the daily 93 firearms deaths and 300 grievous maimings for life in this country. The only way to meaningfully reduce those numbers is to ban all semiautomatic firearms, as Australia did.
Here is an example of how ineffective a ban is on "assault weapons": There is a nice little semiautomatic rabbit gun, the Ruger 10/22 that has a ten-shot magazine. But you can purchase a fifty-shot magazine, and probably higher capacity, meaning fifty shots as fast as you can pull the trigger, and a .22 bullet will kill a person as surely as it will a rabbit.
As another example, the shooters in the Long Island Railroad and Virginia Tech massacres used semiautomatic 9mm pistols with fifteen-shot magazines -- not "assault weapons". What if the only pistols available in America were six-shot revolvers?
I have written to my Senators and my Congressman and told them to follow Australia's example and introduce legislation to ban all semiautomatic firearms in this country. If you can write a comment in the NYTimes comment section, you can write your Senators and Congressmen as well.
42
@NorthernVirginia The down-side to "gun control" is genocide. In the 20th Century, "gun control" laws promoted - but did not cause - at least eight major genocides. A couple of examples follow:
Germany enacted "gun control" on 13 April 1928 (Reichsgesetzblatt, 1928, Teil 1, pp. 143-7), before the Nazis took power. The goal: to curb fights between Nazi Party and Communist Party thugs.
When the Nazis lawfully took office in 1933, they found in police stations, lists of firearm-owners. Plainly the Nazis seized firearms from those whom they hated, of whom Jews were only one group.
Disarming Jews wasn't decisive: Jews were only one percent of Germans. The disarming of the many other Germans, who hated the Nazis, quickly gave the Nazis an iron grip.
The Nazis were not then wildly popular. They won 43.9% of the vote in an election held on 5 March 1933, even with Nazi party thugs having terrorized other parties' candidates. The Nazis had to form a coalition, which had only a slim majority in the Reichstag (parliament).
By at once disarming their foes, the Nazis stifled any resistance. By 1938, Nazi successes - e.g., the seizure of Austria and a revived economy - made the Nazis truly popular.
The Nazis murdered some 13,000,000 of whom some 6,000,000 were Jews (of whom 1,500,000 were children) and 750,000 Gypsies (Roma).
In short, "gun control" seems attractive: a (false) promise of safe streets. Behind "gun control's" shiny façade is a nasty reality: mountains of corpses.
4
Nobody's saying Americans cannot have guns. I am saying that Americans should not have semiautomatic firearms.
You can have all of the lever-action, bolt-action, and pump-action firearms and revolvers that you want. Arm yourself to the teeth with them. But no semiautomatic firearms. They make the difference between a tragic shooting and a wholesale massacre.
As for the danger of oppressive governments, write Congress. Get involved. Ours is a government of your family members, your neighbors, and your fellow citizens, not some murky tyrants that seize power in backroom skullduggery.
6
@NorthernVirginia You are correct, there are many non-AR weapons that will cause damage and death in a short amount of time. However, I don't think there is any way the US will go towards a full ban on semi-autos. MAYBE we see a ban on AR types and 10+ clips, but I don't see if going beyond that.
This is also needle in a haystack when you talk about mass shootings. How many mass shootings as a percentage of semi-autos out there? Minuscule percentage.
And then we have the gangs and their illegal stashes.
And the dark web and black market and smuggling from other countries.
It's a complex problem with no simple solution and will involve a multi-pronged, extremely expensive effort to really cut down on US gun violence, deaths and injuries.
Remember, we have suicides, gang violence, non-gang criminal violence, drug violence, hunting accidents, home accidents, anger shootings, mass shooters and various flavors of each of these with different characteristics.
And to make any real dent you must go after the non-lawbiding, illegal gun users. Create federal-state task forces and target the 100 top violent areas in the US.
Raids, increased police presence, stop and frisk, mandatory increased jail time added on for anyone possessing a gun during a crime, increased border and port security to prevent smuggling guns in, etc. Confiscate and destroy.
I will not let them take my guns or I will sue for my rights,the government wants to take our guns so they can control us, first it will be the second amendment than they will silent us taking our first amendment away.we must stand up and fight
@Devon
What "right" do you have to own an assault weapon? Do you also have a "right" to own a machine gun? An anti-aircraft missile? A tank?
The line has to be drawn somewhere, and weapons that are designed to kill as many people as possible in the shortest amount of time have no place in civilian life.
If you're so paranoid about the American government taking away your freedom through common-sense gun control, go visit a therapist, not a gun store.
4
If you are, in fact, a real person, try talking to someone you know who has the opposite view about the guns. The Senate does have some very bad people, but they are trying to take away your vote while scaring you that you need the guns. Your vote and freedom from death by violence are much more important to your safety.
— A friend
2
@Devon, you could use a friend. From your posting, I got the feeling you are feeling scared and in need of reassurance. Please reach out and let someone know how they can help you...before you sink further away.
1
Red flag law at least a start, but is far from enough. Ban assault weapons and offer a buy back program. Must have universal background checks and lower magazine size. Republicans are not doing near enough to keep my family protected and safe. I'm terrified for my grown children and grandchildren. These mass shootings happen anywhere. Contact your congressional representatives now and demand change and if they won't, tell them you will vote them out for a Democrat. This is the tipping point. America allows weapons of war to anyone. Assault weapons are lurking everywhere. DO SOMETHING.
I called my Republican rep. I told him (well, his aide) that it's not enough. Red flag laws are not enough.
The Dayton shooter killed 9 people in less than 1 minute. What red flag law was going to stop him?
Certain juvenile crimes should carry over into adulthood - you threaten to shoot up your school? Lose right to ever purchase a gun.
But more than that, these assault-style weapons cannot be in the hands of regular civilians. We need a buyback program and then charge violators with federal imprisonment.
We all obviously take certain risks just going about our day to day. Car accidents, plane accidents, and sure mugging and housebreaking.
But to allow these sorts of guns to proliferate as we have is to allow the US to turn into a war zone. It allows for monstrous violence and now we ALL worry about it happening anywhere and everywhere.
Sometimes I don't think about it. Sometimes I have to will myself not to think about it.
Why is Congress allowing us to live in fear?
Right-wing pundits like Sean Hannity suggest a solution of placing armed guards in every school, mall and places where folks gather. They fail to note that the Dayton shooter killed 9 and wounded 27 in 30 seconds so similar slaughters would be able to happen even if armed guards exist everywhere and could respond that quickly.
Ban military-style assault weapons and accessories that allow any weapon to function like an automatic gun. Those weapons and accessories are intended for quickly killing lots of people on the battlefield and are never needed by citizens.
Long rifles and shotguns are safely used by hunters. Shotguns are best for home defense. No American needs military-style assault weapons.
1
The Red Flag bill a nice little first step, and I'm in favor, but the biggest issue is why any civilian needs an automatic or semi-automatic weapon. I assume the answer is because owners enjoy them. I know there's a fringe that feels they're necessary to protect against the government. The second reason (essentially letting citizens arm against the army and police) is a terrible on its face, so let's get back to enjoyment.
Given the results of the widespread carnage due to these weapons, safety outweighs enjoyment, but it doesn't have to be an either/or. There could be secure gun ranges where people could fire automatic weapons at targets in a safe way to their hearts' content. If people felt proud about owning them, they could continue to own them: they'd just have to stay locked up at the range but be available for regular use there. This would allow people to enjoy and own them without endangering everyone else.
The insanity of keeping weapons available for fun that are killing people regularly and endangering everyone is what our legislators, particularly Massacre Mitch, have to acknowledge. Any legislator or politician not willing to get military weapons off the streets is not serious about ending these regular mass killings, and we no longer want to hear their insincere prayers for the victims. Help solve the problem and avoid the helpless sympathy,
2
The problem here is picking who will decide whether a given individual poses an imminent danger. Dictatorships use the charge that someone is psychologically sick to incarcerate critics of the dictator.
It is very difficult to find the real threat, who might just as well keep out of sight while planning his/her terror. To take away rights from anyone who has ever consulted a psychiatrist (or other mental health professional) is also misleading and likely to miss the real threat.
More effective is getting rid of the military hardware, the weapons that kill "en masse "---large number of lives snuffed out in seconds without having to reload.
Where sufficient evidence of being a threat exists, no doubt that a weapon should be kept out of hand. For that the background check would help. The Red Flag laws seem to go too far.
1
How will the Red Flag Bills deal with "Due Process" a Constitutionally protected right? And will there be any criminal penalties for unfounded accusations (I suggest 25 years minimum mandatory sentence)?
4
@Joseph Edelen
And how shall the pain of separation from the human slaughter device be measured?
"Under intense pressure". The only pressure congressional republicans feel is from the nra and trump over re-election. There are so many guns and laws in circulation now. We can work on the body count anytime. Stay out of Texas. Pick good battles. I would rather see congress help dreamers in limbo or ease the craziness at the border.
Of course, this is all a ruse and not even a band-aid to staunch our national tragic bloodletting. The finger that pulls the trigger in mass public shootings almost always obtains their weapons legally, complete with background checks. And what weapons do they purchase? Assault style rifles with a high rate of fire and high capacity magazines. As both the police and the assailant knows, seconds count. The built in delay of a police officer having to react is enough time to kill multiples of innocent people. Yes, the finger pulls the trigger, but the weapon of choice creates the massacre. It's the gun and we all know it. Some say it loudly and the rest won't say it at all.
2
Since the NRA-funded Republicans and Trump are considering this "solution," there is reason for great suspicion. There is no guarantee that relatives and friends will make such a report, or even spot the potential for violence. And on the other hand, they might make a report for a vindictive reason. Anyone who has seen Judge Judy likely has seen an episode where a friend or relative call the police or apply for a restraining order for a vindictive reason.
By contract, banning assault weapons and high capacity magazines, making background checks universal, and other measures, will have a wide-reaching impact.
1
Eliminating guns in anyone’s possession so that no one may use them. That would be far easier than removing those known to be at risk from accessing them?
There are so many legitimate and helpful NY Times contributors and so few congress persons with legitimate and helpful suggestions!
"Red Flag" gun control means "find a scapegoat" or a "potential bad guy" to be red-flagged but it does not mean control actual guns! The plan should begin with the gun not the Red Flag. REAL GUN CONTROL means passing laws that restrict the types of guns that can be purchased and determine the legitimacy of the purchaser. It is not helpful to lump the two proposed actions together because it will be easy for our legislators to single out a potential bad guy and stop there, but not so easy to pass a law that looks like an infringement on gun ownership.
So where should we start? May I suggest that every word, every phrase of the Second Amendment be given a Supreme Court definition appropriate to our nation as it now stands, post American Revolution, and let us stop any confusion. Only then will a gun control law or gun restriction law be passed.
"Red flag" legislation is merely paper over gaping cracks on a wall. It would not have stopped either of these weekend killings, or most of the other 250 mass shootings so far this year. Besides, once a gun is returned to a flagged individual, there's a chance they would accelerate their kill plans, albeit more discreetly.
Republicans will pass this law and take credit for taking action, but the law will not significantly deter mass shootings, unfortunately. NRA still wins.
2
We should enforce the first clause of the Second Amendment and require the states to create citizen militias where anyone who has or wants to have firearms must join, be screened, evaluated, trained, qualified, and certified on particular weapons. In addition there will be regular drills, inspections of the personal arsenals, as well as re-qualification. Finally, you cannot purchase a weapon or ammunition unless you are part of the militia and are certified on that particular weapon and ammunition type.
Since the NRA loves to cite Switzerland they should not complain because the Swiss have a similar system where just about everyone is in the army and have to do the same things I mentioned.
The close association will quickly make others aware of members displaying questionable behavior that calls for an intervention. No more huge private arsenals presided over by loners.
Oh yes, seeing as they are part of the state government they can be called into service at times of an emergency.
Is this too much to ask in exchange for being allowed to have the power of life and death over others?
Almost all proposed "red flag" laws share two lethal defects. First, they don't ensure that a person accused of being a threat, should be entitled to prompt reimbursement from public funds, of his or her attorney's fees and costs.
Government agencies have "bottomless" pockets. So, for the average person - who does not have tens of thousands handy - a "red flag" order means they never get back their firearms and lose forever their civil right to be armed, even though they may never have done anything "wrong".
To level the playing field, a "red flag" law must provide for prompt reimbursement from public funds (tax-dollars), of an accused person's attorney's fees and costs, at that attorney's usual hourly rate.
Public defenders rarely have enough time to prepare properly and only rarely can pay experts, almost always needed if someone's mental condition is in question.
Reimbursement must occur within 30 days of an invoice's submission. Failing payment within the allowed 30 days, a 50% penalty should apply. Failure then to pay should be deemed "contempt of Court".
Second, "red flag" laws must contain a "right of private action". If someone lies to a Court, and by perjury obtains a "red flag" order, the person targeted by the order must have the right to hire an attorney - empowered by the "red flag" law, to file criminal charges against the perjurer - should a prosecutor decline to do so. Perjurers are rarely prosecuted.
With these upgrades, "red flag" laws might be fair.
I wonder how many gun store owners are nervous about telling would be purchasers that they (merchant) cannot sell them anything if a background check comes back negatively? I am an ardent supporter of gun safety/control. The devil is always in the details.
Problem: take half a loaf and no more, or go for more. If "red flag" laws are passed, Republicans will say, "problem fixed" and go home. The problem, of course, will not be fixed, but Republicans will claim to have done what can be done. Or comprehensive laws should be proposed and made the campaign plank which they should be. Accept the charge of "weaponizing" the slain as the best way to fight for gun control. Every Democrat should simply show pictures of his or her Republican opponent with assault rifles and demand what action against the instruments of mass shootings they will take. The question for any incumbent opponent is why he or she has not taken any action and why any promise to take action should be believed. How many "soft targets" in the suburbs are sites targeted by white nationalists and other domestic terrorists. Trump runs on unjustified fears; Democrats ought to run on justified fears.
Red Flag. Too little. Too late. A Republican token effort.
4
What a joke. What a scam.
Anyone one with a modicum of integrity or moral courage knows that's that the principle problem with this epidemic is high-powered guns and assault weapons in the hands of civilians.
While politicians and pundits (sic!) historically wring their hands about the consequences of Iran developing nuclear weapons or underwriting terrorism, the US government (under the guise of its republican legislators) and its underwriters (gun manufacturers and their boot lickers), they sanction comparable terror within our own fearful and ignorant borders.
1
Here’s an idea for the GOP: instead of “thoughts and prayers” try “prayers and thoughts”. God is probably mad because he’s getting second billing and that’s why there is no progress on gun safety in America.
1
I hope this passes, I am red-flagging Mrs. Pelosi the day it does.
Just reading through the NYT top stories this morning. Drowning deaths in Rockaway. 737 plane crash families. Boxing deaths...All very sad but relatively rare occurrences with relatively few deaths. Thousands of innocent victims yearly from guns, and we collectively scratch our heads and wonder what could possibly be done. Seems odd to me.
2
"Hi, Uncle Bob," Jamie said as he walked by Bob's pickup truck. "Hey, that's a nice deer you got there."
"Yeah, thanks," Bob replied. "I was lucky this morning."
"Cool," Jamie said then paused. "Hey, Uncle Bob, what's with the Trump 2020 sticker?"
"Oh, you know, just wanted to let people know who I'm voting for."
"Oh, okay. Well, see you around, Uncle Bob."
"Sure. Take care, Jamie. Tell your dad I said hello."
"Sure thing, Uncle Bob."
------------------------
"Hello, Sheriff's Office," a voice on the phone said. "How can I help you?"
"I want to make a Red Flag report," Jamie said.
"I'm listening," the voice said.
"My Uncle Bob," Jamie said. "He's gone a little nuts."
"Do you think he's a danger to himself or others?"
"Well, yeah. I mean he's got these guns and he's always talking about how he wants to kill people and stuff."
"That's serious. We'll get a court order and get those guns out of his hands. What kind of guns does he have?"
"He has a 30-30 and a twelve gauge that I know of. But, he could have an assault rifle. Who knows what kind of guns a Trump supporter might have?"
"Yes, well, don't worry. He won't have those guns much longer."
"Uncle Bob won't have to go to jail will he?"
"No. All we'll do is take his guns. We won't do anything else."
"Oh, okay. Well, thank you, officer," Jamie smirked as he hung up the phone. That would show Uncle Bob what a Trump supporter deserved.
2
Nothing will get done with McConnell in the way. I don't trust the GOP
2
sooooo, who decides what persons to re-flag? how does a person find out if he or she is red-flagged? is there an appeal process for those who feel they should not be red-flagged? is there a time limit for how long a person remains red-flagged? who tracks the red-flagged people and how is the information distributed? asking for a friend......
2
Dayton's glaring statistic, 9 dead, 27 in the hospital in the hands of one man in 30 seconds. Folks it is not politics to remove these sort of weapons from civilians, it is common sense and our Senate's patriotic duty.
4
Republicans should be able to understand and enact these five common sense gun safety controls that came out of a previous series of mass shootings (e.g. Parkland school, Las Vegas ... sadly the list grows longer):
• Mandatory wait period,
• Universal background checks on all gun sales (including private shows and second-hand exchanges),
• Minimum 21 years old to purchase all firearms (like alcohol),
• Ban sales of semi-automatic military style weapons (long hunting rifles, shotguns and pistols are unaffected)
• Ban gun accessories that mimic automatic weapons (e.g. bump stocks, high-capacity magazines)
The 2nd Amendment has been regulated for improved public safety since the 1930's when "Tommy" guns were banned after organized crime adopted the World War I submachine guns for armed violence and murder.
Shotguns are best for home defense. Long rifles and shotguns are safely used by hunters. Sometimes concealed carry permits for pistols are warranted if citizens prove their life is threatened. Military style weapons are for the war/combat, not for Main Street USA.
2
The GOP will decide that it is liberals who show red flags. They will use it politically to harass their opponents. This regardless of whether the liberal even intends to buy a gun. It will be used like a voter ID law on steroids.
1
This is a good start. Now all the Democrats have to do is go along with the "red flags" bill. So much can be accomplished when people compromise. Now it is the turn of the Republicans to agree to a background checks bill. These are necessary to keep our citizens safe and prevent more carnage from occurring. We must stop the division in our country that it tearing us apart.
13
@KMW Background checks are a consumer fraud, that dwarfs the crimes by Bernie Madoff, the financial swindler. Only 62 Federal prosecutions followed 76,142 denials (in 2010) of purchase applicants. For the data see, Regional Justice Information Service, "Enforcement of the Brady Act, 2010", 2012, p. 7 https://www.ncjrs.gov/pdffiles1/bjs/grants/239272.pdf .
A Government Accountability Office (GAO) Report (No. 18-440, Sept., 2018) shows that of 112,090 denials by FBI screeners, only 12,710 were sent for "investigation". Of that number only 12 resulted in prosecutions!!!!
Plainly, far more than 12 denials were fully justified. It is a Federal felony for a "prohibited person" to possess or to try to acquire any firearm. Such a small number of prosecutions shows that Federal authorities do little about stopping those, who seek to acquire firearms, while being prohibited.
If Federal prosecutors went after all those properly denied, there's not be time to prosecute any other Federal crimes. This lack of prosecutorial capacity makes background checks - already futile because there are some 402,000,000 firearms in the US (excluding military items) - a waste of time.
3
Much too little
Much too late
Denial of responsibility and complicity by allowing the assault weapons ban to expire and refusal to address any legislation by democrats for a decade
Republicans promote domestic terrorism by their unwillingness to do their job. They should vote in all bills proposed so their constituents really know where they stand.
You can make trite let’s work together, just roll over and accept the crumbs we give you comments but those days are over and we are working on nothing but voter registration now.
5
@KMW What a joke! Seriously? You're going to rely on neighbors denouncing neighbors to curtail mass killings while still allowing anyone who can walk and chew gum the right to buy a semi-automatic assault rifle and a 100 round magazine complete with body armor and silencers?
Setting aside the natural tendency toward apathy in America, of those who will "red flag" a neighbor, how many will do so out of spite or petty jealousy? ….or do so out of racism! How long do you think it will be before police storm a "red flagged" home, shoot and kill two or three family members before discovering there were no guns on the premises? Look around for God's sake! Every other nation of the G8 has fixed this....the solutions are so obvious it's getting too sad to watch congress walking around blindly ignoring them.
4
Seriously if you want gun control laws vote Republicans out of the senate. They are the ones fooling around with people's lives. These types of weapons should be banned. Look how easy it was for the prime minister in New Zealand to ban those types of assault weapons after one mass shooting. We had two within half a day of each other and still arguing over red flag laws. It's the military-type guns that kill people. Red flag means nothing. Those weapons have no place in a civil society. They belong in the military. New York state banned them but the federal government and many red states can't?
2
This is a women's issue. More than half of all women in America killed by guns are murdered by their partners or exes.
2
If GOP supports it, be suspicious. Red flag is useful for suicidal persons, useful in domestic disputes where someone is in danger. It can save some lives in those cases. For mass killers, those who secretly plot their evil deed, who plan well, whose families are usually clueless to their intent and who strike unexpectedly, red flag will not help. How can it? It works best when those around a dangerous person are aware of the potential danger. Furthermore, it depends on the assessment by judges and that can be a hit or miss decision. What's needed is much more comprehensive than red flag. If Republicans will support, red flag, that's good, but their doing so reflects the very limited effect it will have on gun rights.
1
This is worse than nothing. All it does is allow Republicans to pretend to do something, and continue to avoid any meaningful gun control.
3
Red flag is to solving the gun violence issue as Obamacare is to comprehensive healthcare reform.
It'll be the same--and apologies for this comparison--Bataan death march to nowhere. Oh? You mean we can't predict who will go bonkers with an AR? Sometimes, they arise from nowhere? Sometimes, those who had concerns said "Yep, not surprised," but they never acted on their concerns? All of this is true. Someone shows you a mass shooting on a first date and you don't call anyone? Would a red flag law have made a difference?
Here's what could make a difference: An end to assault rifles and handguns outside licensed shooting ranges. No one needs these weapons in every day life unless you are a cop or a criminal. We've seen, in recent days, that a good guy with a gun doesn't trump a bad guy with a gun who has a head start.
Repeal the Second Amendment. Only then, when guns aren't considered a birthright, can we begin to enact sensible things that will keep everyone safe. I've met folks who own handguns and assault rifles who are regular people--some are friends--and they wouldn't object to banning such weapons outside shooting ranges.
Why is this so difficult?
1
Just a small band-aid to give republicans political cover. It won't work, they can run, but they can't hide. These gun slaughters splash blood all over their bought and paid for hands. That party is dead, and we citizens should bury it at the next election.
3
Nothing short of an assault rifle ban is acceptable. Don't piecemeal this. No one needs an assault rifle. Get out from under the NRA's thumb and fulfill the number one job of any government, protect your people.
2
Does anybody actually believe there could be a Red Flag Police Force running around snatching guns from imminent suicides and self-proclaimed terrorists? Fantasy land!
3
Seizure is an important first step (if it passes) that can bring us closer to making sure anyone who threatens violence cannot procure a gun in the first place.
We can reliably predict that if Red Flag becomes law, we'll see big racial disparities in those who present an "imminent danger." It'll be used as a law enforcement tool to disarm minorities, IMO.
3
That’s why the laws must be well written and according to the same set of criteria.
Anyway, the biggest demand for the most restrictive laws upon guns come from communities that suffer the most gun violence. Those are where most complaints of discriminatory and over policing policing arise, too. Removing guns from teens who carry and angry people who are going off frequently would be a good thing.
This Times article https://nyti.ms/2hODjP5 makes it clear that our gun problem requires, "Setting a higher bar for securing and keeping a license, for selling guns, and for the types of guns that can be owned." If we want to solve the problem, that's what we need to do. That's totally different from "Red Flag" laws.
On another note, all through the Obama presidency, my friends and neighbors were terrified that, "Democrats were coming to take their guns away. Obama is coming to take your guns!" Now it's OK for Republicans to do it? What gives? It's like the brand name of the political party is the only thing that matters.
Red Flag laws are the lowest of low-hanging fruit. Just follow the money.
Once the gun manufacturers have sold the gun, it doesn’t hurt that it may be temporarily confiscated. They’ve already made their money from the sale of the gun. The bump-stock ban has similar dynamics; banning them doesn’t take anything away from gun manufacturers’ bottom lines.
Every positive step helps, but the real challenge will be when a proposed law reduces potential gun sales.
3
Guns are not addictive substances, which are sold to substance abusers. There is an attitude among a lot of people that any who own guns not are right in the head.
In states that already don't have them, they will enact something weak for the sole purpose of pretending to care. Just like any other law or regulation, they will ignore them whenever they please. Courtney Irby, in Lakeland Fla gave the police her husbands guns when he was ordered not to have any and the police arrested HER. I'm aware of the whole story but it is just indicative of how serious the issue of A Man And His Guns are. Men are so frail.
2
Interesting how Republicans want to restrict legitimate medical procedures like abortion but don't want any restrictions on guns.
We have more regulations on licensing our cars than we do on guns. What's wrong with licensing and registering guns? As for background checks, why have exceptions? A background check is a background check. Everyone wanting a gun ought to submit to a check. We have more personal info floating around the Internet but we don't want our guns registered nor do we want any checks.
Something else we must insist on is strict control on ammunition.
Still think we ought to repeal the second amendment and start all over with this gun nonsense.
2
Try to take away an assault weapon from someone who does not want to give it up, who has been red flagged as dangerous by his family, what could possibly go wrong?
How many police officers are going to be in danger as a result of this backwards policy?
The goal should be keeping military weapons out of the hands of violent dangerous people in the first place. UNIVERSAL BACKGROUND CHECKS! Assault weapons ban, and clip capacity limits, MUST follow.
3
You realize that what you are saying is that police will have to use assault teams to remove those guns from all the people who don’t want to give them up? Do you think that that is to be expected as a kind of scenario to expect?
I think that a few may do that but nearly all will follow the law when they are told. The biggest problem will be getting all of the guns. Hiding some will probably occur where the guns possessed are not all known to authorities.
A good intention and a token of legislation in the right direction, nut don't expect anything to change. Such legislation will do little if anything to prevent the all too common occurrence of these crimes. The problem is much, much bigger than this. It is that your country, unlike every other, embraces guns as part of your entitlement and somehow, and we don't understand how, you believe the right to own them is necessary for the pursuit of life liberty and the pursuit of happiness.
Bottom line - if we want these shootings to stop then ban these assault weapons all together.
4
Maybe term limits for congress would help Politicians vote the way their donors want them to rather than the way their constituents want Politicians do what they need to do to get re- elected If they couldn’t get re- elected maybe they would feel free to vote for what is best for the country rather than for themselves It is only the republican congresspeople who are not seeking re- election who are speaking honestly about trump
3
The only reason Gov DeWine and Rep Turner changing their minds on gun control. Was because Gov DeWine was shouted down when he appeared in Dayton Sunday night. Rep Turner was also not given any respect either when he spoke. I suspect their recent change on gun control position. Is only because they want to get re-elected.
Former Gov Kasich attempted to get a Red Flag law passed before he left office. Only to have the Ohio Republican controlled state government refuse to vote on it.
I suspect the same thing will happen with this attempt.
Their changes in positions are just a dog and pony show.
4
The purpose of government is to protect its people. Our government has failed us.
3
It seems to me, that since they are not keeping the guns out of these peoples hands now, saying they will make a "red flag" rule is just a bandaid.
RedFlag is supposed to stop people who have “extreme risk” can’t get a gun.
This idea implies that our law enforcement doesn’t already have a systemic bias towards allowing these men & boys to keep their arms. Law enforcement already doesn’t remove the guns from people who shouldn’t have them. And what about those who end up with family member’s weapons; they didn’t buy them, but they have access to them.
What these people do have is assault weapons, designed for the sole purpose of killing groups of people.
People mowers.
This is a tactic, trying to give the illusion of doing something, while still doing nothing.
All these open carry wack jobs that are playing their Wild West fantasies in public need to look at the history of the “wild west”, most towns back then required that guns be surrendered to law enforcement at the town’s border. Open carry was not acceptable in the 1800s, why should it be now?
1
Republicans getting behind "red flag" laws is like Trump saying white supremacy should be condemned: way too little, way too late. They have decades of blood on their hands. As with Trump, it is not the time to negotiate, or bargain, or look for common ground. Vote them out of office and get down to the serious business or repairing the damage they have done to our country.
1
It’s the assault weapons and the large-capacity magazines (and now drums). Ban them immediately.
1
If I were Democrats, I'd take this opportunity to pass the GOP proposed legislation and then keep pushing for more. This is a matter of political kinetic energy.
1
There is no ambiguity in that report!!!
I read it - it says
"The findings in this report reaffirm the value of gun violence prevention policies that address the circumstances that frequently underly mass shootings."
To me that's a pretty clear statement that gun control measures, including Red Flag Laws, are effective.
The GOP looks for any chance to blame these shootings on mental illness (rather than guns), but will do nothing to spend the money necessary to provide adequate mental health resources. They also will do nothing to reign in the pharmaceutical and insurance industry to make critical but expensive mental health meds affordable.
The "red flag" law would be incrementalism at its finest. GOP feels like it will give the public the sense that they are serious about the problem, but it will not anger the NRA.
GOP does not have the integrity nor the guts to stand up against corporations (and the gun-corporations lobbying organization, the NRA) or Trump.
We seem to forget that mass shootings have happened for more than 4 years. It is that "forget the past" syndrome again.
Even if the Repulicans and Democrats pass a unanimous Bill, none of the Democrats in congress or running for President are fit to be my President. I will not need to waste time watching useless debates.
Red Flag laws will be shot down by the courts before they ever take effect. Beside the HIPAA violations, something the Bush and Obama administration's could not find a work around for, being on the red flag flag list will be used for all sort of other actions, like denieing employment, renting an apartment and volunteer work. Secret lists would be a denial of due process. There is not an accredited psychiatrist in the world that will tell you they can predict behavior before an action has been taken. Just ban assault rifles, period.
4
Did anyone contact anyone prior to the shooters that they felt either of these men posed an imminent threat? While, it may help in some cases, or prevent cases of individual killings...the simple fact is assault-style weapons enables mass casualties.
1
I'm really tired of this country being run by one man - Mitch McConnell. He bases every decision on maintaining his own power.
5
It is simply not enough.
This will do nothing.
More massacres will happen and once again, the press will report how the so call "red flag bill" (if it even passes) would not have prevented the next mass shooting.
1
Of course it gains support from Republicans. They know it is completely unenforceable, 1) because of free speech; 2) a person has to actually commit a crime before any action can be taken agains them. This is why Republicans are all for this paper tiger bill.
I am glad they are open to trying something, but the red flag laws give me a few concerns. First of all, we are tying these mass shootings to mental illness and I'm not sure that there is such a link. Secondly, if someone is a danger to themselves or others are you only gong to take away their guns? Are we not going to get the person treatment as well? I can tell you from personal experience with a family member who suffers from a serious mental illness, that what we need is to make it easier for families to get their loved one's treatment. Taking their guns away is great, but it needs to be followed up with treatment, and treatment that is made mandatory with regular follow ups.
It's frustrating to live in a country that is so ignorant. It's the millions of guns that are the problem. Yes, we need to address the problems of the mentally ill, but that calls for treatment.
1
republicans are holding americans hostage by not passing effective gun control legislation.
1
If these 'red flag' restrictions only come into play when a relative or someone else notifies police that a person may pose a threat, what of the person who shows no signs of mental disturbance or threat? A lot of these shooters seem to be loners often estranged from family and with few friends. Who is to notice when something might be wrong? Sure, these laws might help when a person actually tells a family member that they intend to harm others, but how many do that, as opposed to just doing it? Most family members of these recent shooters say they had no idea what he was planning. Relying on the perpetrators themselves to alert someone to their plans is a pretty flimsy attempt at protecting the public.
2
I guess I'll take red flag laws, but it's just a small drop in a river of problems that underlie the proliferating mass shootings. Do all of the following and more:
.close all background check loopholes and make updates in the databases a priority
.ban all assault/military style guns and any peripherals that would transform rifles or handguns into such
.even as a standalone issue, mental health needs to be on a treatment par with any physical illness or condition, including hospitals, therapy sessions for as long as patient needs...no bureaucratic caps
.Treat domestic groups that threaten violence as we do any foreign terrorist group/individuals
Add to this some kindness toward one another in these very stressful times. Maybe then the country could begin to heal.
1
I'm fine with Red Flag laws but I would feel much better if they were the start to a systemic review of our relationship with weapons of war in a civilian society supposedly at peace. I cannot understand why elected members of the GOP fail to see the relationship between violent public rhetoric and violent public acts. If they do indeed see the connection and are keeping mum for political reasons, then they give us sufficient political (not to mention moral) reason to vote them out.
I must be missing something here. Someone buys a gun. Then it's up to relatives or friends to notice a change in his demeanor and report him to the police. That's assuming they even know he's a gun owner. That's the way I read it. It can't be right. Help.
1
Congress should pass no laws that expose citizens to guns that they and other public officials are protected from. For example if open carry is lawful in public then it should be lawful on the floor in Congress, indeed lawful in all government offices including the Supreme Court. If automatic assault rifles are legal then they should be legal everywhere. Why should Congress and public officials have special protections from the havoc that they foist onto the general public. Perhaps we would see real gun legislation that benefits society when law makers are incentivized to protect themselves.
3
The first thing that should be done is repealing the law that prevents the Center for Disease Control from monitoring gun deaths and injuries. Then repeal the Republican law that prevents the ATF from tracking guns. Forever.
Only the politicians owned by the gun lobby would oppose these common sense changes.
1
Don't oppose greater funding for mental health, but this is a distraction. Other countries have video games, hatred, the internet and mental health issues, but they don't have regular mass shootings. Hmm, wonder what the difference could be? About health care it's been said, it's the prices; about mass shootings we need to realize it's the guns.
Red flag laws should be enacted. There have been times when people have provided warning, nothing was done, and people died. However it should not be the only thing we do.
One, because the type of people who would qualify for red flag warnings are too often the kind of people who use fear and intimidation as part of their tactics and people who deal with them may be afraid to altert authorities. What happens to those who warned if the authorities respond with "You are over concerned. He's OK." and don't take his guns? They will be asking themselves if they will be treated the same as a woman who claims she has been assaulted.
The other is that all too often the warnings, if there are any, are contained within a like-minded group and there will be no report and a good stand-up law abiding citizen goes about his business of meticulous planning without anyone noticing. It is better to make the crime almost impossible by eliminating the means.
Unless the unholy alliance between the political class and the NRA is broken effectively under the public pressure, as to be seen now, or under shame due to the recurring gun violence there's little hope to the optimistic about the effective gun control regime in the trigger happy society of the US.
Any movement in the Senate towards stiffer regulations is welcome. Thank you, GOP, for showing signs of concern. "The world's greatest deliberative body" is now open for deliberation. I'm encouraged.
Don't be fooled by this. This "red flag" idea is a red herring. It's a small step to make it appear like Republicans are really doing something. It's just a feel-good ploy to appear like they have given in on this issue.
Let's do this. Reenact the assault weapons ban. Background checks. And let's go further. The government has a buy-back program for a detailed list of assault weapons. Assault rifle owners have 6 months for the program. After that, it's a felony to own/possess one.
Now that's the real change America needs.
3
it is just a ploy for the 2020 election by GOP. we need a complete package of gun control not just piecemeal solution. the package should include red flag, background, AR ban, high power magazine, etc. at the end it should include strategy of amending 2nd amendments so that it rises above self-defense to government defense for all. gun right is not a birth right but saving life is the birth right.
1
And who is going to look for red flags? Who decides what is and what isn't a red flag? How will this keep assault weapons from falling into the wrong hands at a gun show? This is so impractical as to be useless.
Selling assault weapons need not only be banned but also removed from households. Give people the choice of buybacks or go to a local shooting range where the guns are stored and use is limited to those grounds. You can walk through the airport in Atlanta with an assault rifle, you just can't venture through security. Consider the ratio of thousands of people using the airport on a daily basis and a law protecting one individual's rights to carry that gun among them. Does that make any sense? Look to New Zealand and realize how ineffectual our lawmakers have been. McConnell doesn't want to miss any time campaigning. His power to sit on bills freezes the function of the government. It is a slap in the face to all citizens that he used tombstones with his opponents names as a campaign ploy over the weekend, how morally and ethically vacant can the man be?
2
Sorry, I am cynical. Gabby Giffords was one of them and she was shot 8 years ago. We, as voters, need to let those opposed to gun safety/ control legislation will be voted out in 2020.
1
Just ban assault weapons. For a start. Easy.
4
Much simpler to remove guns from people taking mind altering drugs, like the ones psychiatrists prescribe, than setting a precedent of the government taking away people's rights if they think you do not deserve them.
Red flag laws are just a cover for politicians who want to look like they are doing something about gun violence. Ban assault weapons and large-capacity magazines with no grandfather clause.
6
Let's call these 'red flag' bills what they really are 'false flag' bills to distract and give cover to Republicans who have blood on their hands by allowing assault weapons to be sold without the necessary universal background checks along with large ammunition cartridges.These bills would not have prevented the carnage in El Paso nor in Dayton. They are a sham fig leaf like the 2nd amendment for Republicans to hide behind while they rake in the campaign donations from the N.R.A. and the gun manufacturers while their constituents are laid to rest.
9
Despite the fact that a vast number of people own and use guns with care, and that those who don’t are uncommon and mostly identifiable, the popular concern expressed in the media is how anyone can trust anyone who owns such dangerous devices. Surely anyone who owns a gun that can be used to shoot a bunch of bullets must have that gun to be able to shoot a lot of people with those bullets. Fear of what is not understood that also frightens.
1
@Casual Observer
I've found that people who have guns use them to kill living beings. That is sufficient reason for me to not only not trust them, but to dislike them. Even hate them.
I only hope that when the drastic drop in tourism from other countries who are now warning their citizens not to travel here due to potential gun violence happens that the companies and states that lose business will pressure these politicians to do something. Otherwise I have little hope for any real change.
2
Two major dangers have once again converged and led to mass shootings: violent bigotry in the form of white nationalism, stoked from the White House, and uncontrolled access to firearms, including mass killing weapons, i.e., assault-type military rifles.
The demand to "Do Something" has led to some interest, even among Republicans, in "red flag" legislation--beginning with Ohio governor Mike De Wine's capitulation to an irate Ohio crowd. But "red flag" legislation is more the appearance of doing something in order to avoid doing anything meaningful and substantial. In other words, "red flag" laws are a deflection, not really a response to mass shootings.
And a second deflection: Trump supporters have calculatingly chosen to talk about the most minimal kind of gun legislation possible, in order to deflect attention from the steady drumbeat of violence, hate, and racism coming out of President Trump's mouth.
The problem is both violent racism encouraged by the President along with a gun culture bought and paid for by the NRA.
9
Are they kidding? Two assault rifle attacks within one weekend and they can't bring themselves to abandon NRA contributions in favor of saving American lives? All when the vast majority of Americans want to ban assault rifles! The problem with America is democracy, at least in its current form. Our political structure is corrupt to its core.
3
“Red flag” laws serve a certain purpose, one of which appears to be allowing Republicans to appear to take mass murder seriously while avoiding legislation banning assault weapons.
5
Insanity is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting a different result.
Insanity is allowing assault rifles to be readily available in our country.
All lawmakers who want to use some twisted version of the second amendment to allow it are insane. A bunch of money hungry lawmakers allowing even one death from these type of weapons is insanity. You want money let’s get some wealthy donations that far exceed the NRA and donate to every senator twice what the NRA was giving them to get this done.
If that doesn’t work I suggest everyone go out and buy a few assault rifles. If it’s legal it can’t be insane. Right?
1
Which begs the question: how are they going to determine who is a danger? Is this "Minority report" for guns?
1
As long as large amounts of $$ contributed to politicians this will never end as long as Republicans control the Senate. It's no secrete that The Republicans & Trump are beholden to the NRA.
2
Trump's unwillingness to sign a bill unless he gets something in return is pathetic. Sometimes presidents help their country, what a concept! Without getting to blame immigrants, terrorize them further, or transact other business. The American people want the American president to uphold our basic rights to life. We want our tax dollars used to protect us from domestic terrorists and weapons of war. And so what if Trump doesn't sign? Send it back to Congress, and let's see how deep the NRA's pockets are. Why is the NRA a tax-exempt organization anyway?
4
Assuming this comes to pass, I guess it took two mass shootings in one day to do the trick not the killing of 20 children at the Conn. school.
Very similar to the St Valentine Day massacre. Killings were going on for yrs. including innocent civilians but the St. Valentine Day incident was the final straw.
2
Apparently the Red Flag Law is the only Legislative bill that the NRA will not fight, thereby giving the Republicans cover.
Why does anyone need an Assault Weapon? I think this is the question that the press should ask Trump and Mitch McConnell.
Instead they get away with the Mental Illness and violent video explanation.
Are we going to have to live with this massacre madness?
3
@Jean
The people who need assault weapons need them to feel they belong. When, quite obviously, they don't.
Demonizing people with mental illness is no solution.
Frankly, I think that hardline gun owners suffer from a kind of mental illness that will never be diagnosed — paranoia, the need to overcome lack of self esteem, and a sociopathic unwillingness to give up their obsession with deadly weapons for the greater safety of all.
Gun bans work, as has repeatedly been proven all pver the world. And they are the only measure that saves a truly significant number of lives.
3
@Jerry Engelbach
Pretty soon, without doubt, there will be a universal list of the mentally ill. Accessible by all government agencies in every country. Open for viewing by all medical personnel, social service workers, educational institutions, employers and real estate professionals. And so on. From toddler age, our thoughts will be recorded and filed. This should take care of our problems.
2
If you want effective gun control laws the solution is simple. Vote republicans out of office.
1
Finally, Republicans are literally running for cover from the epidemic of gun massacres they let have loose upon America. But, where are the Democrats? Where's the outrage! Where's the demand for an emergency session of Congress to pass the gun control legislation sitting on Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell's desk? Where's the demand that hate speech is a crime and Donald Trump is guilty of it? Where's the Congressional Democratic Hispanic Caucus demanding Trump be impeached for the El Paso massacre, crimes against Hispanic immigrants, and threats to their Hispanic colleague, Alexandra Ocasio-Cortez? With Trump inciting white supremacists to murderous actions, their Hispanic constituents now fearful for their very lives, it's finally time for the Democrats to unite and demand the real gun regulation that bans assault weapons, limits the size of ammunition clips, and requires real universal background checks. It's time to embrace the "rule of law" against the "rule of the lawless." It's time to end the "American carnage" and to save American lives!
1
"Throw the dog a bone" politics. No, more like "pretend to throw the dog a bone so the dog runs away, comes back and wonders, what happened to that bone!" politics.
1
And as the Republicans did the last time, the bill will languish in the Senate until the latest round of domestic terrrorism fades from view, and then relegate it to the trash bin.
2
Please start every article about what the GOP may or may not do blah blah blah with the fact that the Democrats in Congress have passed a bill after bill after bill after bill regarding gun control but every single one is stopped in the Senate every single one! So without emphasizing the complete criminal in action of the GOP I cannot read any article in good faith about what they are or are not doing. They are a total criminal joke at this point so stop trying to legitimize their actions or should I say in actions! It’s too late!
5
And who defines "imminent danger?" Anyone who disagrees with DT? Except of course his rabid, gun toting, white supremacist supporters, especially if he loses in 2020 and declares the election fraudulent and won't leave office. I thought the GOP was screaming not too long ago how Obama will take everyone's guns?
“...orders allowing police to temporarily confiscate firearms from a person deemed by a judge as posing a risk of violence.”
Just exactly HOW will this be done? As an MD I don’t want non-medical people determining who deserves a red flag!
How many thousands of times have we heard AFTER a mass shooting: "He was a nice guy! Quiet, helped others in the neighborhood! Last guy we ever expected to do something!”
Folks who are schizophrenic and off their meds may run outside naked yelling about seeing things but they are more likely to be injured than to injure someone else.
What are these congress people looking for EXACTLY. I’ve seen guns removed from a home where the dad beat up his family, then was hospitalized 2 days, then sent back home and had his long rifles and hand guns returned to him.
There is NO WAY that you can diagnose 100 million people to see if they would be dangerous and should have guns removed.
Non-medical people don’t have a clue how this would be enacted. It’s a ridiculous “nothing” that can never be used!
The people on Gab and 8chan are publishing horrific hatred online everyday. The man who killed the people in the Tree of Life synagogue was tweeting every day how we should kill all Jews. No one stopped him.
Freedom of speech is going to run headlong into internet accounts PLUS Trump writes hatred every day (His butler wrote daily he wanted to lynch ALL the Obamas outside their “White Mosque.” Nothing done.
I’m angry! Ban assault rifles NOW!
5
You want more effective gun laws? Vote OUT McConnell and his NRA backed cronies come 2020.
1
We the People are through this fraud Republicans. Your new found "religion" is a poor substitute for real.action against the problem of automatic weapons and large magazines.
Question to the hunters and sportsmen whom opposed gun control.
Do you need an AR-15 to go hunting?
Do you need an AR-15 to go to your shooting club?
Parent: Oh my god, this room is a mess!
Child: I'll pick up this one sock here.
Congress: Well, alright, then. Problem solved.
3
As expected, a woefully inadequate response by a gutless Congress
2
Trump will have to set up gun exchanges and confiscation tables at his next and every rally. Those faithful minions of the despicable Americans he loves and love him will line up faithfully with no hesitation. And the red hats can fly the the red flag. Seems to be a good place to begin to find crazy people with guns.
It's too late.
Best advice is to make sure your affairs are in order, buy term life insurance to cover your family, and hope for the best when you go to buy a quart of milk at the Walmart.
And when the shooter raises his "altered hunting rifle" and takes aim, you can take comfort at how it's "just a normal rifle that only looks like a weapon of war"....as you get your head blown off.
We are no longer constituents to our leaders who we vote into office.
Look into your mirror. You and I are now considered "soft targets".
Well I guess that's a kinder and gentler label that collateral damage to keep that NRA money flowing.
I am shocked that the GOP is now singing the Democrat song..."It's video games"....Remember Tipper Gore ( Dem) who blamed song lyrics in the 80's ?
1
Too little too late. Some brave person in the Congress should offer a bill to revoke the Second Amendment that has been utterly distorted by fascists on the Supreme Court who knowingly deleted “A well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State” and only enforced “the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed.”
Nonsense! Quit picking around the edges and go straight to the number one issue-assault rifles. Weapons of mass destruction.
The have only one purpose-to kill people. Get rid of them!
1
Why now - why is this the tipping point? Why not Sandy Hook? Because these are red states?
It's a start I suppose.
But force had to be used. Extreme force.
The republicans had to have their nose's rubbed in the mayhem in order to get them to do their jobs.
After how many died?
It is up to the Democrats to hold the republicans by the scruffs of their necks force them to act with comprehensive and expansive gun control initiatives.
Anything less would be another reason to dicker while people continue to die.
1
At least 46 people were shot in Chicago over the weekend, including seven who were killed
Updated on: August 5, 2019 / 3:04 PM / CBS News
Guess this would be on Obamas back.
a bandaid on cancer.
1
Stupid, stupid, stupid! It's looking in the rear-view mirror.
Look back at the trail of shootings, starting with Columbine.
Was there any advance indication, in the form of action, words, or attitude that the perpetrator was about to commit a violent act? Perfectly clear, after the fact. Not so much prior.
The potential for mis-application of these types of laws is great.
The answer to the problem is simple, if politically difficult.
Ban high capacity magazines and assault style weapons.
Only military...state and national guard members may have them. That would satisfy the founders' reason for the second amendment.
Create a buy-back program, with a 1 year period. After that, if you posses such a weapon, make it a felony with an automatic 5 year prison term, no negotiated reductions allowed.
The GOP favors strict constructionists....and the founders' concept of weapons were muzzle loading rifles with a firing rate of perhaps one round per minute. They could allow those and ban everything else.
I jest, of course. But limiting assault style rifles to military organizations would satisfy the second amendment that our founders added to the constitution. That was done out of fear that the federal government might try to take over a state by force.
I will never cease to be amazed by Republicans' utter contempt for all Americans. "Red flag" laws are nothing other than patronizingly trying to appear to address the horrendous issue at hand - White supremacist-based domestic terrorism - while not offending NRA supporters. Do Republicans think that we're all stupid? Instead of politically gaming this problem maybe they could actually try to solve it. Do something, indeed.
2
The idiots you so happily elected will now bend over during their "prayers" and start looking for ways to do nothing while making it look like they are doing something. Wait a little while. There will be another slaughter and the game will go on and on and on . . . . . The USA government does not respect or have any interest in human life.
1
I get it. They shoot,we ask questions later.
Shortly after the El Paso shooting, I read a comment that emphasized the part of the 2nd Amendment that reads, "A well-regulated militia...". The writer went on to briefly discuss what "well-regulated" and "militia" meant. Dictionary.com defines a militia as "a body of citizens enrolled for military service, and called out periodically for drill but serving full time only in emergencies". We no longer have anything like that in the US in any official capacity, so it could be argued that the 2nd Amendment is meaningless. Additionally, it could be argued that "well-regulated" means knowing which citizens could be called on and what kinds of firearms they possess, thus leading directly to some sort of firearm registry.
Advocates of a broad 2nd Amendment seem to ignore the parts of the Amendment on which their favored phrase is based. It's basically an if-then statement: IF a well-regulated militia is needed, THEN the right to bear arms shouldn't be infringed upon.
If we do need a citizen militia, then it certainly must be well-regulated, which currently is emphatically not the case.
10
The Republicans are in the pockets of the gun manufacturers lobby and their proxy, the NRA. They only care about sales. Red Flag laws are not a threat to their profits because the guns have already been sold. But it looks superficially like the Republicans are taken action.
Red Flag laws are a good idea, but shouldn't be confused with a real compromise, like the overwhelmingly popular universal background checks, The NRA and gun makers still oppose universal background checks because they would cut into sales.
9
A Red Flag Law fits into the Republican milieu because its another demonization of a segment of our population. As part of a comprehensive background check, a red flag should be raised if evidence of mental and emotional instability becomes evident. But, to pass a law that puts such a spotlight on people suffering life with such conditions is just another way of finding a scapegoat to explain away deeper social problems.
11
Of course, something needs to be done.
But not something that is done in a moment of great strife.
The reason previous attempts to curb this sort of violence have failed is because when things calm down - folks realize some of their solutions won't amount to much.
What I read in the story is no study proves that background checks will actually help prevent these types of incidents.
What does help is identifying a pattern of violent, suicidal or other anti social behavior and then barring that individual access to firearms.
And identifying these behaviors is largely responsibility of family members and in cases of these young men - parents.
As quoted in the story, the mother of that Florida shooter had called authorities to restrain her son. Or for that matter the mother in Connecticut - knowing her son had issues - still allowed him access to guns.
So, these red flag legislations might help - but we are putting responsibility on law enforcement when responsibility really lies with families.
I can imagine law suits arising from these red flag laws where police are held liable for NOT confiscating guns.
Finally, I again plead with many folks commenting below - your political grievances against this POTUS have no place in this dialog.
@Neil
There's a mass shooting almost every day. There is never a moment that is not one of great strife. The 'now is not the time to discuss this' line is simply a way of ignoring the issue. If it's a question of time passing, let's ignore the latest shootings and talk about Sandy Hook, or Columbine. Or what would you consider a moment that is not one of great strife?
Every state already has gun control laws, and this is a state matter, not a federal matter.
There is no legitimate rationale for suggesting that the federal government can be trusted to subjectively - yet accurately - determine who is an actual risk.
Such a process cannot be protected from politicization, or unconstitutional deprivstion of as fundemental right.
And it won't stop people like the Dayton shooter, an avowed leftist who - because of his properly aligned political convictions - would be allowed to pass through the seive by the same people trying to curtail the rights of conservatives.
@Objectivist I'm stunned by your statement: "Such a process cannot be protected from politicization, or unconstitutional deprivstion of as fundemental right. And it won't stop people like the Dayton shooter, an avowed leftist who - because of his properly aligned political convictions - would be allowed to pass through the seive by the same people trying to curtail the rights of conservatives." Since when is owning a gun something only conservatives want to do? Since when is the desire to live in a society that values freedom from terrorism and the right to live over the right to own weapons of war something only democrats want? I come from a rural community with plenty of people who identify as Democrat who own guns, hunt, fish, host "game dinners" and prepare and put up much of their own meat. My family included. None of us would ever consider carrying our guns into the public space because we get how uncomfortable we will make the public by doing that, and we also understand that is a pointless exercise. The "leftist" Dayton shooter killed 9 people in about 30 seconds before the police killed him.
None of us think that the answer to this gun violence is an armed police state, something Hannity is now advocating. And none of us think political affiliation gives any mass murderers a pass. Do you?
@Ann Lenhardt
"And none of us think political affiliation gives any mass murderers a pass. Do you?"
Depends on where you look and how closely you follow the pronoiuncements of today's progressive left.
Take, for example, this quote from Sen. Erenie Chambers from Nebraska:
"Nobody from ISIS ever terrorized us as a people as the police do us daily. If I was going to carry a weapon, it wouldn't be against you, it wouldn't be against these people who come here that I might have a dispute with. Mine would be for the police," Chambers said. "And if I carried a gun I'd want to shoot him first and then ask questions later, like they say the cop ought to do."
So, to answer your question: Yes, I think that an uncomfortably large percentage of today's radical left wing progressive Democrats would condone violence in the name of their ideology.
Passing a red flag law may be the very least that can be done outside of the usual nothing, but it’s a welcome alternative to what Sean Hannity has in mind. Hannity is calling for armed guards in “every hall of every mall” and school and place of worship, essentially every public space. Never mind that the Dayton shooter killed 9 people in less than a minute before he was killed by armed police. Never mind that the El Paso shooter killed 20 people in a state that has open carry laws and is more friendly to gun culture than most states. The
constant assertion that more guns, more armed civilians, more open carry freedoms and more armed guards will fix our problem, which is rooted in the fact that the US has 5% of the world’s population and 42% of the world’s guns, is ludicrous. We already have way more guns than people. Hannity’s new answer is that we need to create a police state to protect ourselves from ourselves. I guess we can call that the Hannity Continued Insanity Plan. No thanks.
5
I strongly disagree.
Mass shootings will stop when assault style guns are no longer available for civilian purchase.
My right to seek freedom, liberty is violated by the manufacture and marketing of these weapons.
Really when you parse out all the recent history and this legislative idea it boils down to a twist on an old economic maxim: nothing cures high prices like high prices. In the case of gun violence nothing starts to cure gun violence like mass killings in mainstream stores like Walmart.
When you think about it the church the majority of Americans worship at is Costco (Walmart is a close second). The only way a critical mass of anti-gun, anti-mass murder sentiment can accrue is with more violence threatening, more statistically significant shoppers in greater numbers. Children (as in Sandy Hook), schools, post offices, various church, synagogue, and mosque killings haven't done the trick. Walmart causes a stir, both shoppers and Wall Street take note and say "no, no, not there." We have fear now in the real churches we frequent.
This is not to say the repulsion is wrong. The alternative of reasoning, leading to curtailment of the pleasure of long guns in firing ranges is too much. Rational discussion and moves towards biologically sustainable mind sets is bad for quarterly profits. Simple saying “we all should eat well, reproduce wisely, and encourage a culture that does these things” is the bottom line. Owning and shooting a gun when it isn’t required for food is biologically nonsensical, but highly profitable and pleasureful for awhile longer. The cost will make us go.
3
Let me get this straight. Republicans might be willing to pass a law enabling "the government to come and take your guns," supposedly the nightmare fear of the paranoid Second Amendment crowd, but balks at universal background checks.
Evidently, what's truly at stake is not some notion of Liberty, some vaunted Freedom of the Individual from the reach of the tyrannical State, but that total gun and ammo sales might be diminished by any additional impediments to impulse buying. Not Liberty but Profit is what must be protected at all costs, paid of course in dead bodies everywhere. Good to know which master the GOP serves. It's not Constitutional Principle and it's not The People.
2
GOP support for “red flag” laws is a tactic of diversion. It’s a common strategy: embrace and divert. The goal is to make it look like you’re doing something to take the wind out of the other side’s sails. It’s part of the guns/tobacco/pollution/fossil fuel playbook and it’s all about keeping the cash flowing. People should not be so gullible as to be satisfied by such half measures.
5
This bill is too little, too late. 270 million guns in a nation of 328 million men, women, and children. It is treating a symptom, not the root cause. But then no one ever accused a politician of finding the root cause of a problem and then offering a solution. As an engineer, if I would have treated the systems I created and maintained, I would have been fired quickly for this kind of thinking.
2
Of course, something needs to be done.
But not something that is done in a moment of great strife.
The reason previous attempts to curb this sort of violence have failed is because when things calm down - folks realize some of their solutions won't amount to much.
What I read in the story is no study proves that background checks will actually help prevent these types of incidents.
What does help is identifying a pattern of violent, suicidal or other anti social behavior and then barring that individual access to firearms.
And identifying these behaviors is largely responsibility of family members and in cases of these young men - parents.
As quoted in the story, the mother of that Florida shooter had called authorities to restrain her son. Or for that matter the mother in Connecticut - knowing her son had issues - still allowed him access to guns.
So, these red flag legislations might help - but we are putting responsibility on law enforcement when responsibility really lies with families.
I can imagine law suits arising from these red flag laws where police are held liable for NOT confiscating guns.
Finally, I again plead with many folks commenting below - your political grievances against this POTUS have no place in this dialog.
Changing gun control laws and curing mental illness are both pretty complicated, and will take time. One immediate solution, however, is: Trump must resign.
2
Red Flag Laws are not the answer. They are a veil for the Republicans to hide behind. They would not have prevented any of the mass murders of last week and probably none ever.
We need to ban assault weapons and high capacity magazines for all firearms.
We need uniform, national gun control laws preventing people from crossing state lines to buy guns.
We need background checks on every sale or transfer of a firearm.
Carry permits must be limited to people who can prove a need. Eliminate "shall issue" language from carry permit laws.
We need to limit the purchase of ammunition. You get ten cartridges with your hunting license or purchase of a gun and you can buy as much as you want at a federally licensed shooting range, but you cannot take it home.
We need significant, mandatory jail sentences for illegal possession of a firearm.
These are all reasonable controls. They do not prevent anyone from owning a gun for personal protection.
Failing this, we need to repeal the 2nd Amendment and renegotiate gun ownership in the USA.
3
@Paul Langer
How do you "prove a need" for a gun? A note from your attacker?
The need to address gun violence is not guided by any kind of serious thinking. The feelings are sincere and the desire to achieve safety from harm done by murderous people is serious. But it’s controlled by apprehensions as to what makes up real threats and what to do about it.
It reminds me of what happened after the attacks of Al Qaeda on September 11, 2001. Many people thought that to save ourselves our liberties would all have to become privileges which society should make conditional upon risks to public safety. Really, people thought that.
The need to protect ourselves from people who are likely to do harm with guns is an existential need but it is not a reasonable justification to remove guns from people who aren’t likely to threaten anyone. That reaction is the dread of what cannot be anticipated but can be imagined. It’s like jailing people because you don’t know that they are not a threat.
No gun makes people shoot other people. No gun is safe in the hands of anyone determined to harm others. An efficient firearm that allows a half dozen to be shot before reloading is not a safe one because it does not allow three dozen shots before requiring reloading. Magazines that are useful are replaceable in seconds regardless of capacities. No firearm that requires a squeeze to discharge each bullet fires any faster than any other. The semi-automatics reload faster and were not developed for spewing bullets to kill people in battle as seems to be imagined.
@Casual Observer
On the other hand, there is no reason to not remove guns from the people who aren't likely to threaten anyone. The idea that if one is armed he or she can defend against an attacker is as sane as believing that praying to a god will save one from the deluge.
The so-called "Red Flag" proposal is window dressing the gun issue. A gun should never get in the hands of some people in the first place. After-the-fact action to take a gun away is clearly inadequate. Chasing down someone in possession of a gun who should not have will be more costly in lives and expenditures than banning ownership in the first place.
If we are to meaningfully move to shield the public from our obvious level of gun danger, then universal background checks must be part of any law. Sales of all guns of war must also be banned. Machine guns are not toys nor usable for hunting.
As well, all gun owners should be held to a strict liability standard. Should a gun owner fail to keep the gun and ammo safely stored or transfer a gun to others without a background check (even to someone as a gift or inheritance) and if that gun is used to injure or kill others, then the original owner (or estate) would be liable for all damages. Sloppy ownership is just as dangerous as mental incompetence.
Time is up for Republicans who cry about the Second Amendment only because they were paid to do so by the gun lobby. That's not representation. It's corruption.
3
All people are held to a strict liability standard when they do anything that a reasonable person understands may cause harm to others or damage to property. It applies especially to handling firearms. It’s the first thing impressed upon anyone trained in their use.
According to news reports: "It was just 32 seconds from the first shot to the last shot. In that time, a 24-year-old gunman with an AR-15-style assault rifle and a 100-round drum magazine was able to kill nine people and wound 27 others on a crowded street in Dayton, Ohio early Sunday."
36 casualties in 32 seconds.
Incredibly brave, highly trained police were at the ready. They were the very definition of the "good guy with a gun" the NRA keeps telling us about.
And yet, 36 casualties in 32 seconds.
4
@A Nobody
And would one or two of those wounds in the crowd have been caused by a bullet from one of the good guy's guns?
VOTE the Senate Republican out of office. This is the only solution to protecting this country from itself.
8
In Germany, we have quite strict rules on guns and weapons in general. And yet we have had quite a few shootings with plenty of dead people. In Switzerland, you have barely any restrictions on guns (every soldier keeps his gun after service) and yet they barely had any shootings.
Maybe it's not the laws, maybe one should look out for other measures....
1
It is a myth that Switzerland has unfettered gun possession, When a rifle is stored at a home, the owner has under gone a psychological review, intensive training, and most ammunition is stored outside of the home. Weapons not authorized and sanctioned by the government are restricted and confiscated,
"Red Flag" gun control is nothing more than a sop by the Republican Party to avoid dealing with the issue of white nationalist shooters using military weapons to mow down innocent American citizens (in El Paso TX and Dayton OH a couple of days ago). The root problem of our American democracy is gun culture (death by guns), unknown in other countries of the world. The Second Amendment to our Constitution is a cancer on our democracy. A "red flag" bandaid on gun-buyers' mental fitness won't cure the cancer.
Time to amend the Constitution, so it reflects democracy's goodness instead of the evil caused by mankind against America's good citizens. Senate Leader Mitch McConnell, the president's Kentucky go-to man, didn't recall the Congress from their summer camp vacation to deal with our ravaged democracy now. Meanwhile, president Trump will fly in to Texas and Ohio today to meet with city leaders and mourn the murder of their innocent citizens.
We await Donald Trump's visits to Texas and Ohio, and his screed (on his ubiquitous teleprompter). Wondering if his words and actions will soothe the angry right and help heal the slaughter of innocent people in the most recent mass-shootings?
1
Well folks, after years and years of doing everything you could keep a conversation about real gun control from happening your allies are about to take the first step towards actually taking your guns away.
“Red flag” indeed.
I wonder who will be first on the list, Ms. Jane?
Ya all hear that? Klink, clank...another can being kicked down the road.
Of course the GOP is behind this. First, it defends the gun industry and the NRA. Further, the laws, if passed will immediately be challenged in court. Injunctions will be issued and the entire "solution" will rest comfortably in the legal system for years. Given the makeup of the Supreme court, they will most likely be found to be unconstitutional. Go back to go, do not collect $200.
5
The GOP once again abdicating its responsibility to human life in favor of the gun lobby.
7
"Red flag" laws are a scam, a way for legislators to present themselves as having taken action, while continuing to obey the gun lobby. Given that there is no way to know who would commit a mass shooting, laws taking guns from those who would would have no affect.
15
No, they are not a scam. They are a way to remove guns from people who are not able to handle guns safely or are inclined to do harm with them. The military and police do so when people in their organizations cannot be trusted. It’s no more of a sham than preventing a drunk from driving or a child playing with fire.
1
Knowing the future as a standard for determining how to live means not ever doing anything of any kind. We can only imagine the future we cannot know it.
We do not know whether while driving at high speed in traffic, someone may suddenly drive into us and cause us to die in a fatal crash because they are drunk, distracted, or crazy. We know that the risk cannot be anticipated except in a much larger context, and that is unlikely enough to happen to any particular person while it will to some. Gun violence is like that. It does happen to some but the chances of it happening without any warning to any of us is unlikely.
Dealing with the likely is reasonable behavior and responsible. Dealing with the unlikely can produce unreasonable behaviors.
@Casual Observer
Recently, police with guns have shot innocent people. Drunks are on the road every hour of the day. Kids play with fire in every corner under adult noses. Who can know when someone is "inclined to do harm" with a gun?
The "Heller" ruling by the Supreme Court does make allowances for restricting access to certain weapons. It does seem that ninety percent of our citizens want far more restrictions than the vocal minority and the gun makers and gun sellers want. We have a politician problem.
3
Too little and too late. Red flag legislation is just being put there to show that something was done and prevent real change. Next time this would happen they can just say we told you legislation was pointless.
What is really needed are extensive background checks and full assault weapon ban with not a blacklist for models or makes but instead a pre-approved list of allowed makes and models so that people cannot tweak banned models to flaunt the ban.
May be I am dreaming though. Nothing good gets past the congress these days.
9
a well regulated militia...
an individual is not a militia so where does this supposed right to bear arms even derive its constitutional basis?
Committing MASS murder requires something that kills a lot of people QUICKLY.
Sale, possession or ownership of an assault weapon has to be a crime with stiff penalties.
“Pre-crime”, red-flag laws will give govt more power over innocent people, take away other freedoms and can easily be mis-used by police to target communities of color.
Technology constantly evolves include assault rifles. Future advances in weapons technology will make today's assault rifle appear quaint. How about robotic, remote controlled, or flying drone machine guns? Will it be argued that a citizen has the right to own their own personal programmable flying robotic machine gun capable of instantly firing 1000s of smart bullets in all directions. Will it be argued once the technology is perfected that citizens have inherent right to own laser guns, or personal nano-nuclear guns?
6
The time has come. For better or worse, any hope of preserving the fundamental protections provided by the Bill of Rights may require that it's defenders compromise with the powerful segments of our citizenry that have been terrorized by the accelerating trends of political violence. Our democracy is nearing its breaking point. Further intransigence on the part of Senate Republicans, refusing to acknowledge the need to enact aggressive, universal background checks as a prerequisite for all firearms transfers is self-defeating, posing an existential threat to the broader democratic traditions that hold us together as a nation. This compromise, along with nation-wide adoption of "red flag" laws would provide a real opportunity to reverse the increasing rate of political violence at the hands of our real enemies, violent political extremists, bigots and the mentally unbalanced. Continued delay will inevitably result in serious weakening of our national unity and lead to the destruction of the freedoms that preserve our democracy, already threatened by the forces of authoritarianism.
1
He was too busy to talk with El Paso representative Veronica Escobar when she requested a phone conversation.
It would not have taken longer than one of his tweets.
He had time to play a few rounds of golf on the weekend after the massacre and for a tarmac interview wherein he looked remarkably refreshed after his golfing.
Perhaps if he thought women sometimes also played golf he could have had a Lindsey Graham style session with Veronica. Maybe only two rounds would have sufficed to give them time for him to chat (in the unlikely proposition that she could get a word in edgewise.) "Too busy" was the excuse to avoid the phone call with a spokeswoman for the traumatised American city.
I guess that beats bone spurs. But if you are going to be a coward... It is strange that he claimed he would have gone to the rescue unarmed into the Parkland shooting while it was happening, but lacks the courage to face a woman's phone call.
Oh that's right he doesn't like them talking back. He might have not wanted to hear anything about kids in cages unexpectedly either. Poor Donald. Everything is so unfair.
17
Assuming there will be robust due process, how would anyone know that a target would have surrendered all firearms? And after surrendering, and let us say all firearms, what is to prevent the target acquiring firearms post surrendering?
Of course, some might say, if one life is saved, the measure is worth trying. Well, if we really want to save more than one life, and possibly up to 35,000 lives per year, we would limit the speed of vehicles to 25 miles per hour. Certainly, the thousands of vehicular deaths each year are not mostly driven my malice, but still, lives would be saved at 25 miles per hour.
I am not advocating 25 miles per hour, but I am simply pointing that we have agreed to accept 35, 000 deaths per year for the added convenience of speed, and that the if-it-saves-one-life mantra is selectively embraced.
All well and good, but before you can drive you need to be.licensed, you need to be treated and.you need.to carry appropriate levels in insurance
1
@Steve Brown
False equivalence and pure sophistry Steve. With that argument you are providing a classic example of a privation fallacy. That is a fallacy of relative privation (also known as "appeal to worse problems" or "not as bad as") – dismissing an argument or complaint due to the existence of more important problems in the world, regardless of whether those problems bear relevance to the initial argument. First World problems are a subset of this fallacy.
2
@Bob Guthrie: Thanks for your thoughts.
It is easy to find a fallacy to fit any argument a person puts forth, but citing a fallacy does not have to reduce the power of the argument. Part of my point was that if someone is going accept some policy because it could save one life, then I believe it is reasonable to ask if the person would accept some other policy because it too could save one life.
Society does not implement many policies that could save a life here and there, because the cost to do so would be money/ liberty/convenience high. We could, for example, decree that all passenger airplanes undergo a complete inspection after each flight. Some lives would be saved, but the cost would be high.
For Republicans, "Red Flag" is a Red Herring. Glad these malefactors are beginning to come around to even this small little patch of a law. However, their doing so, to me, seems really an attempt to shift the blame from their own slavish devotion to guns and the NRA to the seriously deranged instead of any systematic attempt to deal with the right wing violence that they have aided and abetted with their policies and their monster president.
8
While there is certainly a place for red flag laws that allow the police to temporarily confiscate firearms from a person deemed by a judge as posing a risk of violence, that measure has very little to do with the issue of preventing mass shootings. And this is because in virtually all cases of mass shootings the shooter goes out and buys his weapon and ammo for the specific purpose of using it in his planned shooting.
And so while there were some cases where the shooter was heard saying things that may have raised red flags, those statements were usually made before they finalized their plans for a mass shooting. Once they decide to carry out their plan and buy their weapons and ammo they all tend to keep their plans to themselves. More importantly the proposed red flag rules do not block the person in question from buying guns.
And so since most mass shooters get their weapons for the purpose of using them in their attack, and because even in cases where a person's guns have been confiscated they can simply get new ones, this new proposal is not likely to make a bit of a difference.
2
“Siri, what’s the absolute LEAST I can do while giving the appearance that I’m doing something?”
17
What we really need is red flag legislation for Mitch McConnell and any other Republican who is evil enough to put his campaign contributions before the lives and safety of the American people.
8
Let's not forget that our "president" signed legislation allowing the mentally ill to be able to buy guns. The hypocrisy is stunning to say the least.
10
So, will the same system that deems people of color a danger when they frighten heavily-armed officers also decide whether they should be allowed to own guns? And does anyone seriously believe that a system that glorifies military service will deny a "hero" the right to own guns? And will attorneys be on hand to protect the rights of those wealthy enough to afford them?
Will enforcement make "us" safer, or just become another way to attack marginalized groups?
3
This is a joke.
Does anyone really think that any of these bills will pass once special interest calls in their markers?
Human lives are expendable- at least according to Trump and his Republican base.
We have become a violent country and are on the verge of losing control -
The safety of citizens can no longer be guaranteed.
How much lower can we go as a people?
4
@dog lover
We became a country through violence. Nothing new here.
Well, it's a start. A band aid on a hemorraging wound. This law would not have stopped the two shooters this weekend. How many families of mass murderers had 'no idea' what they were up to? Lastly the Toledo shooter got his gun on line, drove his sister to the scene and in 30 seconds, 30 seconds, did the damage he did. Make no mistake, we will be back in this exact spot very, very soon. Sorry to tell you , Republicans, but someone needs to be the parent that says 'Sorry, gun owners, but we need to restrict gun sales'.
4
this is absolutely not enough. We need full background checks, there are bills on the floor. Assault weapons were banned from 1994 to 2004. The law was allowed to expire. Not even voted on.
5
So much friction for so little warmth
1
This shows the shallow soul of the GOP. Though I did see a Republican house member, Mike Turner, is in agreement with Democrats on the ban of semi-automatic weapons because his daughter was across the street in Dayton. He now realizes weapons of war are for our well-trained military. GOP needs to just say they are on our streets so gun manufacturers make money off the fear spewed by the NRA.
If these lawmakers want to respect our law enforcement, then get these weapons off the street and stop the sale of the ammunition. Police can’t keep us safe against these weapons. My Senator, Pat Toomey, is on board with this red flag, this is a band aid. So embarrassing while our fellow Americans bury their loved ones. This would take time and effort and many more will die on our streets. Carry your tourniquet and know your exits and vote vote vote !
6
"Congressional Republicans...are coalescing around legislation to help law enforcement take guns from those who pose an imminent danger — a measure that, if signed into law, would be the most significant gun control legislation enacted in 20 years."
Window dressing. Easily challenged in court; in general and on an individual basis, on privacy grounds and freedom of speech grounds.
Who decides if someone is a danger?
"My neighbor doesn't like me and he owns a gun. I feel threatened." Is that enough?
Will prescriptions for anti-depressants be automatically forwarded to local police to check against gun registration data banks?
Any red flag legislation is really a red herring; a way for Republicans to appear to be doing something about gun violence.
3
Trump/GOP DOJ overruled:
- Obama's regulation that added all those getting Social Security mental health benefits to the national database prohibiting gun purchase.
- DOJ removed fugitives with active warrants from the national database prohibiting gun purchases
- Allowed hunting on federal lands
-Took Army Corps of Engineers to allow loaded weapons on federal lands overturning their current ban
So why just a Red Flag rule and not a reversal of all of the above AND a ban on assault weapons.
The GOP has actively increased the danger to citizens.
3
How much political courage does it take to support serious gun control legislation when any poll taken shows a minimum of 60% of the nation is in favor of getting military style weapons off the street? Across the board, Democrats and Republican voters. And those polls were before the two most recent massacres. Red flag laws and state restrictions are not the answer and the Congressmen proposing that know it. Seriously, right now, if you cannot put the safety of the people of this nation above the PACs and lobbyists and party pressures to do the right thing, you need to leave political office.
2
The biggest question I feel is this: Why do we have people, mostly young and almost exclusively male, committing these heinous crimes? Are the origins some combinations of despair, disconnectedness, lack of empathy, emotional immaturity, xenophobia...which then manifest as racism and basically just plain hatred? Once we have an understanding of making of these people, How do we prevent our society from making more of them? How do we, as a nation, encourage a courteous, inclusive, and humane culture? Other nations have a very different national mindset. I have no answers. Sigh.
3
You conveniently left out one inescapable fact in your description of the majority of perpetraiters in America...the word "white" and all that it instantly implies based on our nation's history and a not uncommon sense of entitlement that seems so threatening to too many of those of that color.
Legislators can easily understand that being a member of a white supremacist group, and posting wishes of death, or extreme hatred toward non-whites, is not mental illnes. It's a deeply held belief system, similar to that of any profound religious belief. Neither logic nor counseling will change it. Facts don't form their foundation, just fervent belief.
Any one of these haters, without a history of violence, could easily pass a red flag barrier. A background check in which internet history is reviewed would be far more effective (not their porn history, just hate sites).
While the Republicans love donations from the NRA, and from the many donors with a traditional country-western lifestyle that includes hunting and NRA membership, with other countries issuing warnings not to travel to the U.S. because you could get shot, it's time to get serious about preventing gun violence.
A huge step would be to make all campaigns and elections government-funded, and remove rich influencers.
But, given that won't happen immediately, gun buyers must submit to background checks, and all automatic weapons (weapons of war) and their magazines must be made illegal. Their only purpose is to kill as many people possible.
The U.S. has had 261 mass shootings this year (4 or more shot, not including killer). Over 32,000 gun deaths last year.
Congress is wading in blood caused by their greed for donor dollars. They should be outraged at these murders, and move to stop them.
5
The red flag for most would be owning a gun because they are afraid.
2
It's really very simple. What's more important? The Gun Lobby or Peoples' Lives? That's it on a nutshell. Everything else is humbug.
6
In theory, this idea is not bad, though it is still plainly insufficient, seeing as how nearl anyone can own a gun.
If it is enacted, just wait and see how those who want to purchase guns and are not permitted to do so because of mental problems or crime records will go before court, protesting that their "civil rights" are being curtailed. This legislation will only lead to swarms of trials, but no gun restrictions. I call it one big smoke screen.
2
All gun shops in the USA do an FBI check with paperwork for any purchase, I was in a gun store this week.
The mental health issue has been stymied by the ACLU, which has flooded millions of dollars of lobbying to prevent ANY background check into mental health issues, saying it is a privacy issue.
Writing to the ACLU may be a better approach to getting things changed, they're one of the biggest detriments to knowing if a 'challenged' or unstable person decides to buy a gun.
2
@cedar,
The mental health issue is a distraction.
It demonizes people with mental illness while doing virtually nothing to prevent over 30,000 firearm deaths every year, almost all not by assault-tupe weapons, but by handguns.
Why do you want a gun?
Are you out in the wilderness and your horse gets injured, and you may have to shoot the horse? Or there are snakes? Or grizzly bears? Or do you make cash deposits at a bank regularly at 2 am? Or do you live in a seriously dangerous neighborhood? Probably none of these apply to you.
Or do you want a gun in your car so if someone cuts you off, you can brandish your weapon and/or shoot them? Or do you need a gun lying around the house so your kid can find it and blow their face off or their friend's face off? Or maybe you want to accidentally kill your teenager when he/she comes home unexpectedly from college and is mistaken as an intruder? Or you want to kill yourself? Or you have an argument with your spouse and impulsively decide to shoot each other? These possibilities are far more likely.
The mentally ill are being unfairly stigmatized by politicians who are not looking for real solutions to America's gun problems. People who are mentally ill typically acknowledge that they have an illness and are therefore far less likely than anyone in the general population to instigate a mass shooting. Trump and his Republicans are cowards who are targeting them because they cannot properly defend themselves.
You want to go after the "mentally ill"? How many gun owners are on antidepressants? Take their guns away and see how they react. Then it gets real, doesn't it?
6
Red flag laws are a joke.
Ask any abused family member ever threatened by guns.
There are no data banks kept.
It is all local enforcement.
The abuser can pick up the guns if charges are dropped or case has been closed.
This isn’t a constitutional amendment to cure the problem.
And we have a million plus guns floating around.
Laws won’t help in our immediate future if ever.
2
The concept is "dereliction of duty." The position of an elected official is to protect the public from danger so that we can live in a civilized society.
The public does not care if this or that Party passes laws that protect us from massacres.
It behooves both Parties to put aside differences. McConnell provides a daily example of dereliction of duty, interested only in protecting his political party. The president has only one ethical value: the self-serving promotion of himself.
But if this red flag concept is the only thing that can go through in this political climate, then get it done. And give police dedicated money to get weapons out of the hands of deranged individuals.
But the concept that it is only deranged individuals who turn their weapons to automatic is completely corrupt. Many Americans are even more fascinated by gun culture than they are of cars. Therein lies the real danger.
While any law is better than nothing, these so-called "red flag" laws would have done nothing to deter a shooter like the one in Las Vegas where no one who knew the man saw it coming. Once passed, such a law will certainly firmly close off the opportunity for any other gun control laws as far as the GOP is concerned, so large magazines and high powered assault rifles, whose only purpose is to kill lots of people fast, will be here to stay.
I am not anti-gun. Though it is certainly not my thing, I get that people enjoy hunting and gun collecting. I am less convinced that having a gun truly protects people. That said, I think something is truly wrong with a country which cannot outlaw guns whose main purpose is to kill innocent strangers whether out of a fit of rage, derangement or twisted ideology.
1
Why don’t Republicans also suggest repealing the Protection of Lawful Commerce in Arms Act, which protects gun manufacturers from liability when their assault weapons are used to kill people? States can then pass strict liability laws that impose liability on weapons manufacturers when their weapons are used to kill people - this would essentially switch the burden of background checks to the manufacturers who have profited off of all this murder or it will kill the industry. This would actually solve the issue.
1
Why not background checks to prevent guns from ending up in the hands of some of these dangerous people? Is the GOP trying to ensure the gun makers are able to make their money before worrying about public safety? As always, thanks for nothing, GOP.
A lot of motion with no movement. Red Flag laws do nothing to protect those who own guns and suffer illnesses, side effects from medications or moments of rage. Establishing effective legislation within the confines of the NRA interpretation of laws is not workable and does not protect the nation from mass shootings.
1
Red flag laws and background checks will have incidental, minor impact on our problem of gun violence control. They make the politicians feel good and allow then to suggest that they are serious about gun violence. If they are serious, then ban assault weapons and large-capacity magazine with no grandfather clauses.
1
Re: Red Flag Law
Is there a remedy/penalty for intentional false reports?
How are gun owners supposed to remedy intentionally false reports?
(I'm thinking that the wait for litigation will equal the time
for disposing immigration asylum claims.
?Another broken system?)
If someone alerts police, and if the police agree with the concerned citizen, the police chief might convince a judge to confiscate firearms. At that point the subject might have his guns confiscated, if he hasn't already stashed them.
Convoluted solution.
1) ban semiautomatic weapons
2) liability insurance for gun ownership
3) back ground checks for all gun sales
4) waiting period for all gun purchases
Ironic, no? The very thing that Republicans claim to fear, they are coming to take our guns without due process, is what they are proposing. Because it's better than stopping people from having high power high capacity weapons in the first place?
Don't get me wrong such a law has its place and should be part of a comprehensive approach but I can see it going wrong in two ways. One being "Nah, Jim Bob is a good ol' boy, he'll be alright" and the other taking guns on pretext and not getting them back. Let's hope such laws help stop those with guns who a danger to others. And better background checks. But there have been many capable of passing background checks who then with cold precision killed.
Wouldn't it be better to keep the weapons from people in the first place?
They will do every complicated move to avoid the simple reality of removing assault weapons from being available. How many past mass shooters would have had a red flag? They will prevent crime by predicting it. Good luck.
The GOP is more interested in limiting our Freedom of Speech, and the Right to Assembly than they are in saving our lives.
1
@Tom
Limiting voting rights seems to be a big concern.
Red Flag laws are NOT the solution! Teachers with guns are NOT the solution! What is needed are comprehensive background checks, 10 day waiting period, licensing of gun ownership and a permanent ban on AR-15, AK-47 and military style weapons.
Additionally, ammunition sales should be restricted. I seriously doubt sportsmen actually require hollow point or armor piercing rounds for deer hunting. Any hunter that requires these rounds isn't a very good hunter in the first place.
NO ONE NEEDS access to semi-automatic machine guns or machine pistols using 20, 30 more cartridge magazines outside the military. It is not rocket science. The fact these items are manufactured by Colt and others is no justification for owning them. The 2nd amendment is an 18th-century addition to the US Constitution. It is redundant and dangerous in the 21st century.
If a journey of a thousand miles begins with a single law enacted, then so be it. Let us hope that it is not the only step taken, that it is only the beginning of a journey which most people deem sensible. In a nutshell, these are longer waiting periods with more thorough background checks, bans on assault weapons and limited magazine capacities.
I support the 2nd Amendment, but not what we have now. Everyone can own a gun or a hundred, but not the types of weapons we're seeing much too often today. Let's tweak the law, not abolish guns.
5
red flag gun control bills = red herrings
The gun lobby in the United States is so powerful that politicians of all affiliations seem afraid to go too far, too fast.
Gun regulation will have to go step-by-step, embedded in compromise.
But surely the first steps can establish greater safeguards against mass killings than simply passing red flag laws that provide minute returns in the face of a gigantic problem.
6
There is no common bond on assault guns, citizens who want to own such weapons do so for their own vanity. Where were all the bearers of arms during the assaults on their lives. The ran and hid like every citizen did.
No one expects them to be heroes. Weapons of war should not be in the hands of private citizens. Ban them immediately....compensate their foolish owners if you must....but we know our brave congress and president value the donated dollars than the lives of our citizens.
Red flag? Fig leaf is more like it.
14
The first "red flags' should be those who attend Trump rallies, especially with their children.
25
Red Flag laws... more nothing .. in fact for different reasons it's worse than nothing.
10
The press needs to stop sanitizing the coverage of these mass-murders and show, in graphic detail, the results of the NRA/GOP's intransigence on gun-control.
"Red Flag"? How about showing the ocean of blood the Republicans have helped unleash in this country?
17
This would literally be a joke, nobody who has committed a mass murder would have been prevented.
4
This is the same as we got after Sandy Hook. The GOP will talk the talk, but they'll slow walk until public sentiment abates. Then they'll let it die.
If massacring children doesn't change things, nothing will.
13
So, the Republicans "are coming for your guns"! Good. Now it should also be acceptable for Democrats to do the same.
4
It is now or never. Kindly tap up this momentum and pass the Bill. For self protection, one need not require assault rifles and automatic rifles. Stop selling such weapons to civilians and recall all such weapons that have been sold so far.
I suggest that all civilians possessing guns/pistols/rifles or any such weapon, should undergo periodic mental fitness certificate. A person who may be mentally stable now, may not be the same later, due to various reasons.
Let not another life be lost due to the failure on the part of the government to enact laws to protect the citizens.
4
The Republicans have stuck their finger in the wind and cynically crafted the most minimal response to give the appearance of caring about public opinion. The only red flag they know is the one they’re constantly waving at the NRA to say Hey, Look at me, I’m doing your bidding, show me the money. Their red flag is a green light to vote every last one out of office.
10
Red flag = not enough. Real gun reform now.
6
"No person shall ... be deprived of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law" who needs the 5th amendment or the 2nd. Can the 1st be far behind? Let's throw out the entire bill of rights... What did James Madison know anyway?
Tell that to your 36,000 fellow citizens that are deprived of life each year by guns. Or would you rather see the continual misinterpretation of the Second Amendment in order to allow manufacturers sell more guns irrespective of the consequences?
No other developed country in the world has a gun fetish like the US, nor do they suffer gun deaths at anything close to the levels seen there. If you want bear arms join the army or the national guard, the latter being the modern-day “well regulated militia”.
14
Anything is better than nothing but this won’t do much It has to be that no one can have these guns that are used in war and these bullets that are used in war Take them all away from every civilian - If you are not part of a well regulated militia the second amendment does not apply to you
5
No, no, no. These laws sound good in theory but they rest on the willingness of spouses and family members to report someone in their midst for the threat of violence with a gun in their possession.
Such efforts represent an ominous turn toward deflecting responsibility for gun violence acts from lawmakers to weak or powerless in a household..
One can only imagine the anger of someone who realizes his guns are being taken away because a family spy who has betrayed him. my guess is that people eill shrink from making such a report for whst may be a well-founded fear of retribution.
8
These atrocities require not only strict gun control, but also universal healthcare: including both mental healthcare to prevent future shooters, and comprehensive healthcare to treat the many victims in both the short and long term.
4
It’s ludicrous that anyone at all would oppose background checks. It’s absolutely bonkers. Unless you’re making money on gun sales, I guess.
8
@LisaLisa
Democrats in the Senate opposed background checks after Sandy Hook.
The Republicans yet again disappoint. There is no recognition that assault weapons have no place in society. There is no recognition that prevention (as in universal background checks) is more proactive than detection (as in red flag). There is no recognition that countless precious lives have been lost to well-armed domestic terrorists. If there is a single issue on which they should lose their seat, it is this.
8
Law enforcement professionals will tell you that a semiautomatic rifle is not a good choice for home defense. Given that, such weapons have two realistic legitimate uses: target shooting and hunting. Both of these activities are recreational. Why are we putting recreation ahead of life and safety?
5
Not enough. Besides, the gun debate ended in this country when nothing changed after the slaughter of 20 young children in Sandy Hook.
14
It is not John Thune that you need to convince. It is the man standing behind him in the photo.
2
This is Lucy, Charlie Brown and the football.
6
This captures the insanity of the United States of America:
"background checks bill failed in 2013 after 26 children...were gunned down at Sandy Hook...red flag laws may be the only gun-related measure that could squeeze through"
It's no wonder Trump is President. Leader of the free world? The notion is preposterous in 2019.
5
Not banning the gun which slaughtered 9 people in 30 seconds is inexcusable. Avoiding background checks too.
The "red flag" rhetoric is itself a red flag, an election year ploy. After the next slaughter, the GOP will then bark, "See, new laws don't work!"
The madness won't end unless we vote the fools out.
11
Most of these mass murderers have spouted their hatred on like-minded sites. Anyone who says threatening or hateful things on line should be arrested. FBI undercover agents should populate these sites and make arrests before these people go to the next step of killing.
Additionally, 1. Background check, mandatory registration and mandatory safety class for every gun purchase. 2. Ban assault weapons and institute a govt. buyback program over 1 year. Anyone holding one after that will be arrested. Ban clips over 4 bullets. 3. Add sensors to every gun so that they will not work if anyone else tries to shoot it (i.e., children).
Publish names of politicians who vote against these basic changes.
5
It's comical to see the party of gun violence, the GOP, put a little bandaid on a gunshot wound. A "Red Flag" bill is a perfect way they can APPEAR to address the issue without really doing so. This is all foolishness, since nothing of substance will pass the Senate or our"Stable Genius."
7
Disclaimer: I'm a Democrat and have never owned a gun, and did not grow up around guns. My family immigrated from Italy and would never allow guns. They saw the Mafia gun down people in the streets and they knew about gun violence!!
Americans will never give up their guns. Certainly not so long as the street gangs and criminals have them. Biden suggests a buy-back program which is good...but he's only going to get superfluous guns and guns from die-hard gun haters. I can tell you most of my friends, who have guns for protection or hunting are not going to participate.
The military-style weapons should be illegal. I've heard that hunters use them...well, too bad. They should not be using them.
How do we get the guns from gangs and criminals? I don't know, but people are not going to even be tempted to surrender all their guns until that's solved.
How about this for all those cowardly Republicans "searching for some steps that are meaningful": You do the all the right things to protect innocent, law-abiding people and restore our freedom to lead normal lives, or you get sent packing in the next election.
3
The man who killed 58 in Las Vegas had minor financial problems, was taking anti depressants, and did not have a good relationship with his family. Sounds, in varying degrees, like a lot of people. He had no official 'psychiatric' problems.
He was able to buy the weapons, ammo, and bump stocks necessary for his actions.
Under the 'Red Flag' laws, an individual with the exact profile as the Vegas killer could buy the same items that he used.
6
@CD Good point. That's why mental healthcare is not enough: guns must be overall reduced in number. A red flag law will simply discourage those on the edge from seeking counseling, fearing that it will result in a ban on their gun ownership.
2
Assault rifles should never be sold to the general public. Assault rifles should be restricted to the military and police SWAT teams only. End of story.
5
Red flag bills are a useless sop thrown out by Republicans
There are too many guns and too many assault weapons.
Suggesting that these shooters can all be identified in advance is pie in the sky.
What is needed, is universal, rigorous back ground check and the banning of assault weapons. Even this will take decades to be effective.
Immediately hate speech should be declared illegal, especially from the leader of this country who has the loudest voice.
5
Is there someone out there who can rationally explain why any citizen outside of the military and, perhaps, certain specialized police units has lawful need of a semi-automatic? They're useless for hunting purposes as well as for the defense of one's home (unless the gun's owner is anticipating a home invasion staged by the Russian army or by a Mexican drug cartel!). Target practice? You can rent such a weapon at the practice range. Come on, folks, is there something I'm missing?
8
@Dr. John. I've never heard of a revolver that could hold 50 or more rounds at a time. A person with a revolver cannot generally fire as rapidly as can a person with an AK47 or an AR15.
2
@Dr. John
You appear to be some kind of gun lobby apologist yet you inaccurately state revolvers as semi automatic: they are not. Yes there are semi-automatic pistols but gun control need start SOMEWHERE and your logic, if you one could call it that, is that its impossible to categorize guns so don’t even try is specious.
Why don’t you tell me why when the previous assault rife ban was in force, we did not have these mass shootings on a regular basis.
If u refuse such a ban and/or one of high capacity magazines following a buy back period, I propose a $50 or so deposit on every bullet cartridge which would be refunded upon discharge.
Will this stop folks who charge their own cartridges from having an arsenal at their disposal, no, but again its a start and would reduce the likelihood of a large percentage of the population from doing so
Gun control laws need not be perfect to be effective.
This Republican regime is anathema to the will and security of the people it swore to protect and defend. It has repeatedly subverted the letter and spirit of the Constitution. It is repeatedly violating the social contract. It is therefore null and void and illegitimate.
4
Why do civilians have unrestricted access to military-grade assault rifles? Because it lines the pockets of the GOP and it increases their political fortunes. And it will remain that way as long as people continue to vote for those who couldn't care less if they were slaughtered en masse tomorrow afternoon by a homicidal maniac with an AK-47.
The biggest "red flag" out there is the incessant intransigence of the modern GOP when it comes to reasonable gun legislation, while the citizens of this country are being mass-murdered on a daily basis. And it's safe to say that this will continue, ad-infinitum, as long as the GOP remains in power.
Want to end the slaughter? Then stop voting Republican.
4
This is really darkly funny. Not everyone will recall this, but the reason "universal background checks" are considered the best you can even ask for now - instead of, say, and assault weapons ban or gun registration - is that they at some point "pick[ed] up momentum with G.O.P. in congress"! Without a doubt, this utterly toothless (and simultaneously easily abused - I guarantee if it were passed it would be used to issue injunctions against people of colour living in alleged gang territory) "red flag" business will go nowhere in the end and become the new "best democrats dare ask for" baseline. But I'm sure one day that football won't be pulled!
1
I intend to send snail-mail to as many U.S. Congress representatives as I can write to with the following proposal:
Dear Representative/Senator,
Will you agree to live on the same terms as the rest of your constituency in the U.S.? In other words, please take action to remove the significant and armed security details at your congressional offices, and show solidarity with your fellow American citizens, whom you represent, by taking your chances on becoming a victim of a random act of violence from a fellow citizen who is exercising his or her 2d Amendment rights to bear arms (and use them) as we have witnessed in El Paso and Dayton?
What is not good for the goose should be equally not good for the gander. I am urging you to live and work on an equal footing with your constituents.
Do you think there will be any takers of this suggestion from any of the representatives in this current session of the U.S. Congress?
1
Commenters have said, the Congress has no backbone. It's not backbone that's needed for gun-control laws to pass, it's calling out the greed and corruption in our government. It's recognizing Republican and Democratic congresspeople who are bought by the National Rifle Association. The NRA is one of the most powerful lobbying forces in this country. This reluctance of some in Congress to produce gun-control laws, using the 2nd Amendment as their shield, is the cover for their support from the NRA, as well as fear of their base, the Trump base. This "reluctance" to act by these people should be called out,
profiling the greedy and cowardly.
It's interesting to note that these same people, preventing gun laws to alleviate the murder and distress of the citizenry, disallow guns in their chambers. Guns are forbidden in The House and The Senate!!!
4
How do we make Mitch McConnell listen? Boycott Kentucky. Going to the Kentucky Derby? Don't. Have business in Louisville? Take it elsewhere. Taking a road trip this summer? Circumvent the state. He's up for reelection next year. He'll listen.
3
Red flag laws are barely a half way measure of real gun control.
People here in Europe are astounded at the gun obsession in America and the resultant mass murders.
They are also skeptical that Americans will ever successfully deal with gun violence.
5
Just window dressing. Until we rid ourselves of the Second Amendment we will always have a problem with guns.
1
Red Flag laws would be a band-aid on a very large wound.
Assault weapons ban is the answer. Of course I don't know how you would round up the huge number of these weapons already in the country.
A person's rights should end where the other man's nose begins.
To presume to identify would-be shooters is a pretty silly notion as so many could go undetected.
I suspect that the vast majority of Americans don't have or want assault weapons. If they are hunters, this would destroy their prey and if they want protection in their home, a simple pistol would suffice.
2
Looking at the situation from over here in Europe one has to ask if the Republican party people are mad, or just so in thrall to the nastiest, most cynical forces in US society - like Trump and family - that they neither care about nor consider that it hurts their political standing one bit.
But what does that say too about the people who support them?
8
If they don’t pass sensible gun laws and ban weapons that don’t belong in civil society, the families of the victims of gun violence should sue the occupier of the Presidency for his hateful rhetoric and all other politicians for their failure to protect Americans. Nothing else is working. Hit them where it hurts. Their pocketbooks.
2
For years, I was married to man with anger issues and many guns--handguns and rifles.
He constantly threatened to blow his own head off, to blow up the block of houses that we lived on with his canister of gun powder, and, finally, to kill me when I decided to leave.
I never told a soul. Not family, not friends, not the neighbors whose lives were in danger.
The idea that I would go to the authorities to have his precious guns taken from him under this Red Flag Act is RIDICULOUS. Imagine how long that process might take and how ANGRY he would be. How could the charges even be proven, since any intelligent person would use guile to hide his true intent.
The danger the family would face.
This might work for someone suicidal, perhaps, with no anger issues.
But for some, guns provide a backbone and sense of strength otherwise lacking.
Taking away their guns would threaten them.
They would strike out to keep these weapons, most
certainly at the family or friends who went to the authorities.
I am frightened just thinking about it.
9
The DSM-V [The Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders – 5th Edition - American Psychiatric Association, 2013] lists hoarding as a mental disorder, and includes “excessive acquisition” as a tell tale symptom. So, when these new provisions take effect, it’s only reasonable that someone amassing an arsenal of guns or ammunition would be subject to legal intervention and psychological evaluation. I’m seeing some potential, here.
As long as the NRA -- a private interest group with no legal standing -- holds sway over the GOP, nothing will be done. People will continue to die.
What is wrong with the USA? The rest of us don't have this problem. It's obvious that gun ownership is the problem. Just look at the statistics.
Gun owners love their guns. Too bad. Their guns have no purpose other than to allow them to swagger around like it's the Wild West. It's all for show. Until someone goes off the rails. Then it's deadly. And yet, with all those guns out there, none of the good guys are shooting the shooters, which shoots down the main argument for having all those guns in the first place.
3
Some form of a watered down red flag bill or a weak bakground check bill will pass. The politicians will fall over each other praising themselves for a bipartisan solution. Another mass shooting will occur and the same politicians will be pointing fingers and blaming each other again. And life, if you are not a statistic, will go on.
2
Think clearly. Our initial focus should should be banning rapid fire weapons and large capacity cartridges. This needs immediate action to stop the massacres. The other issues, although very important, distract us from what would be the vital task of putting these very deadly weapons in the hands of anyone.
2
Whatever happened to the old stand-by - the ever reliable 'thoughts and prayers'. Probably more effective than such piecemeal measures (with the horses miles away from that darn barn) . . .
2
This is NOT enough! Is this a first step, or is it really all they have to offer? Red Flag laws would not have stopped any of the shooting in the past two weeks, would they?
This just seems like a bluff...like window dressing. It's something they can do that they know will have little to no effect (how do they determine who they can take the guns back from?, and isn't this law going to face a court challenge because it's one thing to disallow people from buying certain weapons, but another to take people's property away from them and violate their right to bear arms), but they can claim they are "doing something".
1
We are US citizens currently traveling in Europe.
After hearing about the “recent” shootings, my 10-year-old son has asked if we can reconsider returning to the US. I have highlighted “recent” as we are continually facing massacres in the US.
My son has been practicing “active shooter” drills in his school since he was 4 years of age (after the unbelievable massacre at Sandy Hook).
What happened to our children’s rights to “Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.”
Please tell me what should I say to my innocent child.
6
When a man can walk down the street legally dressed in protective armor, an assault rifle with 250 rounds of ammunition and we are at the mercy of him deciding whether or not to pull the trigger on a group of citizens, then the laws of society have failed us.
There is no way a person can be protected in pubic by the police or even gun carrying citizens when the killing can be done in 30 seconds or less.
We need an assault weapons and ammunition ban by presidential executive order. Of course, zero chance of the Supreme Court helping to protect innocent people from bloodshed as long as they value gun rights over human lives and safety.
9
Red flag laws should be an important step forward, but they only work for a subset of gun violence. And they are no panacea even where indicated. They’ll probably deter some who are mentally ill and have temporarily gone off the deep end, but even total elimination of gun violence by such folks still leaves 96-97% of the carnage untouched.
Court orders may also deter those with violent tempers who threaten their partners. But some men will only be further enraged and can bring other weapons or just fists to bear. Those who are drug addicts can often buy stolen guns from the same folks who supply their habit, and some 200,000 stolen guns are available each year. A social worker I know had a client who was killed outside the courthouse right after getting a restraining order.
And what about the toll from suicides? From accidents in the home? From right wing extremists and incels? From those on terrorist watch lists? From those who are too immature but silently aggrieved? Or those judged by Social Security as too incapacitated to manage their own affairs?
There’s lots of work to do if we’re serious about reducing gun violence. Especially if we’re intent on maintaining 400 million publicly held firearms. I seriously doubt it’s possible without mostly eliminating private gun ownership and strictly controlling sporting gun use, but I guess scientific studies will give us the best answers. If the CDC is allowed to study gun violence.
2
Sure, let’s pass this and then in ten years and a couple thousand more dead we can pass real meaningful legislation. This is a ‘not my problem, but I’ll probably be out of office in a decade’ policy.
2
This commenter wisely suggests:
"We need to normalize the idea that the second amendment should be repealed ... the burden of proof ... should be on those seeking to acquire guns. That's how it is in the vast majority of civilized nations."
Another commenter asks, rhetorically:
"Why can we NOT ban military style assault weapons?"
The answer is simple:
What strikes you (and me) as a "reasonable restriction" strikes gun-lovers as an "infringement" on the Second Amendment-guaranteed "right to bear arms," and the US Supreme Court agreed in Heller with the gun-lovers. Since then, lower courts just cite Heller and shrug, and the US Supreme Court doesn't reverse Heller: it's the law of the land.
That's why.
Mass killings (Newtown, for example) usually are followed by a period of anguished "something should be done," but that period inevitably passes, as gun-lovers know it will.
This time it's only slightly different: Americans blame Trump and the Republicans, and argue for new laws that really won't have much effect. But it makes many people feel better, and that's something. Nonetheless, this period will pass too, as gun-lovers know it will.
Americans tend to feel that every problem has a solution -- we need only to identify it and implement it. But I don't see a solution to this very serious problem -- short of repealing the Second Amendment. That isn't going to happen any time soon, but it should.
1
The electorate must demand real and significant gun law reform and must insist that any person running for political office on any level must stand first and foremost upon that platform. The media has a role to play in keeping the public focused on that goal and in moving public opinion toward that direction. The electorate must not be distracted by the machinations of the powerful influences who feel otherwise. This is the only way for us to effect change and I think if we accomplish this achievable goal many other progressive issues will follow. In my opinion it seems clear that the people perpetrating this sort of thing have been radicalised in much the same way as religious extremists and I believe in this matter the current president of the United States of America is complicit.
Mr. Mulvaney can’t have it both ways. White nationalists are a large portion of the current president’s base. He speaks and acts in ways which send a clear signal he is there for them. It’s his only way to maintain his base. While it is true he didn’t cause these things, his complicity is undeniable. He is both an outcome of a pathology or a symptom if you will and an enabler and encourager of that pathology.
It’s unconscionable that a person entrusted with the leadership of the nation would behave in such a fashion. I believe it is a symptom of terminal illness.
3
I think the entire debate could be made less political if we simply agreed that owning a firearm should in the minimum involve the same process and responsibilities as owning a car.
Take a driver's license test---> Take a safe handling of weapons test.
Buy collision insurance--> Buy mandatory insurance which will immediately price out 19 year old violent males.
Register car and renew every year--> register every weapon with state/ national regulatory body
Go through the DMV to sell a car including all documentation--> Go through a firearm regulatory body to sell weapons in the used market.
If we accept that owning a car can involve all these steps why not for owning guns?
8
The truth is that the red flag’s procedure (a way for Republicans to say they did something) will not work. Too many automatic weapons around. Also, the need for a judge's order makes the procedure ineffective (a man who knows he has to appear before a judge may even decide to point his weapon immediately at others). The only solution is an absolute ban. And must for the record: we have video games in Europe, but we don't have weapons.
2
In other words, a handful of "party above country" GOP members of Congress have seen the writing on the wall and have opted for a new doctrine of "party above country, but self-preservation above all."
1
I am in favor of inserting the word “small” to the second amendment. The right to keep and bear small arms would make it easier for government to define just what those arms are, and to preclude legal civilian ownership of those arms which do not fit into that category. However, there always will be illegal ownership of such weapons.
It also is impossible to prevent the making of explosive devices with everyday materials. There is a likelihood that there will be increased domestic terrorist use of explosive devices if deadly firearms are more difficult to obtain.
These crimes of lethal mass violence should be tried by military tribunals, and the path to execution should be swift.
What I read here are hysterical, political comments on these tragedies. Congress and the state legislatures should move quickly to restore the original intent of the second amendment: to protect civilian ownership of single shot muskets and pistols, along with swords. Of course, licensing revolvers and automatics of similar capability, along with hunting rifles, further refines that original intent to realistic specifications.
1
These red-flag laws seem like such a minimal thing to do. The thoughts and prayers of legislation.
19
Scientists have detected faint signs of shame still existing in the GOP. It’s too soon to know for sure. Only time will tell.
10
@Kurt The GOPers USED to shy away in fear of stuff like this.
Finally, Trump shows up and refuses to take a single insult quietly and your side doesn't know what to think.
It's a fair bet the Right will nominate more Trump-like responders in the upcoming decades.
1
“I could stand in the middle of Fifth Avenue and shoot somebody and I wouldn’t lose any voters, okay?”
The President of the United States is a red flag.
44
Not nearly enough. Responsible governance demands that elected representatives go on record about universal background checks overwhelmingly supported by the public. If Mitch McConnell precludes a record vote it's proof he's both anti-public safety and anti-democracy.
3
Are we safe? How do we know when is the next one going to take place and where? If there is no control then how is this madness going to stop?
Didn’t Trump take pride in grounded Boing737 MAX due to the deadly crashes that cost lives? How is this any different? Why wouldn’t there be any action taken to stop the guns that are responsible for taking lives?
I am scared. How do I know something bad like this will not happen next time I am at the mall, or at a restaurant or in the cinema hall? Who is doing what to protect me and my close ones from the next shooter? If you are a gun owner - how can you promise me that your gun will not be responsible for any nonsensical killings?
7
I have no difficulty believing the Republicans would finally agree to gun control legislation called "Red Flag" laws.
1
Nothing will happen; our elected officials have no courage. Their notion of "Freedom" buttressed by the rhetoric of the NRA means that we must tolerate these deaths.
At this point that "Freedom" is pretty abstract...one has to imagine a highly dystopian world that requires guns to save us, to offset our current world where people and children are being slaughtered on a regular basis.
6
Reminder: Within a month of Trump being in office, the GOP having majority rule in congress struck down a sensible Obama administration rule designed to stop people with severe mental problems from buying guns contending that the Second Amendment rights of these troubled, disabled individuals have to be the prime concern. This is years after blaming shooting on mental health issues without a shred of proof.
Link to the NYT article about it: https://www.nytimes.com/2017/02/15/opinion/congress-says-let-the-mentally-ill-buy-guns.html
The rule would have required the Social Security Administration to add about 75K people, currently on disability support, to the national background check database and deny them gun purchases. These individuals suffer schizophrenia, psychotic disorders and other problems to such an extent that they are unable to manage their financial affairs and other basic tasks without help.
The GOP always say this/that bill wouldn't have helped this/that shooting, yet McConnell refuses to bring the House bill that would close the 'Charleston loophole' to the floor for a vote. And while banning assault weapons (if they can be defined correctly) as well as limiting mag rounds may not stop shootings, it would absolutely lessen the loss of life and number wounded.
Republicans wouldn't even be considering this 'red flag' band-aid disguised as action if the Presidential election wasn't next year. They need to be voted out so change can finally happen.
9
I still haven't seen a straightforward explanation of how any gun legislation, short of the outright banning of guns, would've stopped either massacre. Mental illness in families are often ignored. The ex-girlfriend and mother of the Dayton shooter knew he was mentally ill and dangerous and normalized his behavior and moved on. That's what most people do. No law will changed that. Personally, I don't care if all guns are banned. I'm not a gun owner and don't get the appeal. Moreover, I'm very aware of the increase in suicides in gun owning homes. But passing laws in the name of "doing something" without proof that they would do anything, only angers law abiding gun owners and adds to a false sense of security that makes no one safer.
4
This is probably the most difficult post I've ever made on the New York Times forum or anywhere else.
I beg America, especially my conservative friends, please support strong gun laws. I write this is a former gun owner, who bought my firearms and rifles legally, all paperwork completed, everything properly registered. I was a law-abiding, good citizen, at least that's what it looked like with all the background checks and if anyone has looked at my professional life.
unfortunately, after a life shattering event in my life, I developed a serious drug problem. no background check would have picked that up because all mental health records are a hodgepodge through various different providers and HIPAA regulations do not allow disclosure in most cases. there was no way that anyone except maybe some of my close associates could know how dangerous having that handgun was to me.
eventually that day came. The police came to address some issue and I didn't want them coming in.
being white and middle class in the Republican suburbs I wasn't killed. I've faced numerous serious weapons charges, assault on police with deadly weapon, armed criminal action. because I could afford the best attorneys, in the end I did a lot less time than most and I've completed my parole and I will not and should not ever own a gun, thus my 2nd amendment rights are not absolute nor should they be for anyone. with constitutional rights comes responsibilities and rules are appropriate.
35
When the nation is swimming in firearms token gestures are better than nothing but will not stop never ending bloodshed of innocent people. Guns are a scourge on the nation and it eill take drastic measures to make it safe. Stop gun sales NOW. Nobody outside of law enforcement needs a gun.
2
Fundamentally, this is about 'outsourcing' the problem to local authorities. That absolves vulnerable GOP House Members and Senators.
It is sad, bad and not good; but - it is still acceptable.
States which want to be strict and save more 'lives'; they can do that. Let the recalcitrant Red States be lax until the public pressure builds as more bodies start to pile. At least Blue States can save more lives meanwhile.
Any law, any regulation which saves even one single life - all that is worth.
Let us 'needle the thread' for the Second Amendment. Let Congress start 'kicking the can' to State Legislatures, Local Policing and Judicial authorities via these 'Red Flag' laws.
Who said Democracy works beautifully? If Congress kicks the can to Local Authorities and makes them to do the hard choices; so be the case.
We Americans are ready to 'take' anything which stops / reduces gun killings.
1
While I am not opposed to the red flag concept, at this moment in time it sounds like a whole lot of nothing that really serves to take pressure off Republicans without compromising their standing with the NRA.
5
Red flag laws only paper over the real problem, the NRAs commanding power over our lawmakers. Republicans will tout this as a win, and the NRA will still turn in a profit, because the potential dangerous citizen will have already purchased a gun.
Money over the safety of American citizens? Election wins over the protection of innocent lives? Republicans only vouch for the value of human lives when it is convenient for their pro-life rhetoric. Enough already.
3
I just had to see what daughter Ivanka was up to and if she had anything profound to say since her father can't articulate a single sentence on her own.
Well, well....on social media because the entire T-rump family seems unable to have a humanly conversation with real citizens Ivanka social media page says, "As we grieve over the evil mass shootings in El Paso and Dayton, let us not overlook that Chicago experienced its deadliest weekend of the year.
With 7 dead and 52 wounded near a playground in the Windy City - and little national outrage or media coverage - we must not become numb to the violence faced by inner city communities every day". Now, what's the faux blonde pretending to be a diplomat with no clue in the world about the chaos her father has caused. NY Times, please call out daughter Ivanka for hiding and not doing anything about her deranged father.
11
Red flag gun control = Red herring gun control
5
My advice to the Democrats is to push for whatever the Republicans, in a moment of self-preservation, will accept. Take their word and force them to pass that incremental improvement.
But also remind the public of what the Republicans are resisting, and when doing so, include the consistent polling that shows the public is in favor of closing background check loopholes, is generally in favor of waiting periods, and other changes to the current laws, to fix a huge public health problem.
Resist the urge to try for laws that are showy but perhaps not likely to be effective. But DO keep reminding voters that the ban the Republicans effectively put on research on the public health problem of gun violence means that the Republicans are the ones kicking this coffin down the road.
And GOP? The gagging of NIH on researching gun violence means less now that there is independent funding into the issue. More and more results will be coming in, the studies will be piling up, the results will probably suggest changes we can all predict and likely also others that we wouldn't. Changes that will save thousands of lives a year, and even more injuries.
Like with climate change, you party can continue to be what Bobby Jindal's accurately called "the stupid party" or you can evolve. As new research and new massacres accumulate, being staunch defenders of industries that don't care about the well-being of the public might eat into your polling. I hope so.
3
Remind me why Americans have guns? to protect against other americans who have guns?
12
What about my neighbor who owns multiple guns and is heavily medicated on anti depressant drugs? Someone needs to take away his weapons before he shoots up the block.
8
@Phil M. -Please be careful. You may want to let close friends or family know about this situation. I'm sure you probably already done that. It helps to have this situation known by others as to what's going on with this neighbor. And you won't feel you are all alone in this situation either.
2
Anyone buying a semi-automatic should be immediately red flagged.
Easier just to reinstate and update the assault weapons ban.
10
Anybody who wants to buy multiple 100 round magazines should raise a red flag.
13
Yes, the GOP may be able to bring themselves to vote to take guns away from people walking around with signs saying
“I am going to shoot 10 people, probably today” in flashing lights. Maybe. But probably not.
3
We need a Big Huge Glaring Warning Lights Flashing Red Flags All Over the Place Bill about the domestic enemy parading as president.
8
The second amendment and first amendment rights of crazy people spewing hate and adding to gun makers profits funding political donations are more important than your families lives.
4
I am extraordinarily proud of Connecticut Senators Murphy and Blumenthal who have been working on behalf of this legislation since the Sandy Hook massacre.
I hope and pray that their efforts will bear fruit in the coming weeks.
5
The NRA allows their Republican stooges (e.g., DeWine, Thune, Graham) to support red-flag measures because when dangerous people have their guns taken away, they’ll want to buy more guns. Background checks could frustrate that additional demand, which is why Republicans can’t get the green light they need from the NRA to support them.
5
Anyone who wants to buy an assault rifle with an extended magazine should be automatically red flagged. The desire to own a weapon that is designed and intended to kill lots of people quickly is an indication of a serious mental problem.
16
The details matter. Nothing by 2020.
3
Hmmm. Gun massacres happen in two red, possibly battleground states and now(!) republicans think they should do something about gun violence, no matter how infinitesimally small and inadequate to the problem. And mr. incite violence himself, aka dt, feels he should go and speak to his base. I can’t imagine what horrific chant they’ll scream now.
9
The only people I’ve known with assault rifles are exactly the people who should not have them.
26
@Kat
Perfectly said.
Red Flag Laws can help. Families would much rather see their son or brother, lose his gun as opposed to his life...or the life of others.
6
Why cant republicans get together to get rid of Mitch? Why does this one senator have so much power? The laws need to change to not give so much power to one person, learn from other democracies. Be smart, not stupid. Everything has gone wrong with this presidency, so its also time to fix the laws on representation by power.
9
Can we put a red flag in front of every police station in the country? They pose just as much of a danger to people (mostly black, poor and mentally ill) as mass shooters do. However they only pick off one at a time. And then there is the cost of all the doors and windows they kick in. But we’ll save that discussion for later.
2
It would appear the shot-callers at the NRA has debated and are allowing a token measure to be looked at.
Now, the big hurdle, getting Trump to sign it. But, if they convince Trump that there is no harm to his good people in the white supremacist and nativist groups then no problem.
5
Not nearly enough. Federal licensing would be a step in the right direction. This would prohibit crossing state lines in order to purchase weapons in a state with less restrictive requirements.
6
What does imminent danger mean? When someone walks into a school or grocery store with a gun?
How about gun licensing instead...
6
what is wrong with our government?! it really sickens me to see how little they care. i’m actually afraid to go out in public now. this should not be the way to live in this country!
170
@mary It's not that they care, but that their reelections are dependent on corporate and private money. If we initiated European style elections where the taxpayers give each candidate an equal amount, there would be no need for it to be legal for lobbyists to give a nickel, lunch, tickets, or future employment to put ALL legislators in their pockets. We are throwing healthy goldfish into polluted water when we elect our best, and sending sharks into a public pool when we elect our worst.
19
@mary-Just remember that in next year's election. Voting for Republicans means the status quo will continue. If you want stronger gun laws and better protection for the public, vote for Democrats.
11
@mary
I've changed my shopping habits too....I go very early in the morning, because I realize I am a "soft target" ( in the cutesie parlance of our government) and I am hoping that miscreants will wait until the maximum number of people are fodder for thier hatred.
I can't believe I just wrote that.
7
Your grief stricken reactions are misdirected at the symptoms of the disease. I think we all agree that Trump is the disease that spread and Impeachment should be strongly considered now before you reflexively and as always, victimize the public because of his sins.
5
The Dayton shooter's weapon was marketed as an "orchestra of metal and hellfire"... Pretty sure that wasn't the founders' intent with the second amendment. It is beyond my understanding why logical gun control is so elusive in the states. If you are a law abiding citizen, what is the problem with having your background checked for a gun? Isn't that their whole argument? That we don't want to to infringe on the rights of law abiding citizens? Just prove that you are. Simple.
7
Not enough, as usual, but no surprise.
The Republican Party sold its soul to the NRA long ago.
Unfettered access to commit mass carnage was the price, and we're all paying it.
6
This sudden GOP willingness to consider gun legislation a couldn't have anything to do with Latinx as a voting bloc, could it?
5
In their book "Friction: How Conflict Radicalizes Them and Us," Clark Mccauley and Sophia Moskalenko show that violence is not merely an issue of mental health, but anger. They worked for Homeland Security in the Bush Administration. This Red Flag law will do little and nothing to address the anger beneath the surface of the calm killers we've seen surface. We are failing to see the obvious connection between language of hate from the president and those motivated by his words to act out violently in acts of domestic terrorism. Go back to your homeland security experts and start dealing with reality. This is the same GOP that denies climate change, that denies Russian interference in election - now denying the language of this president radicalizes people. Wake up!
8
Since most of the shooters are in their late teens and early twenties and too often very immature, it would be better to raise the age to buy a gun to 27, when far more young men have more emotional maturity.
4
The bill won't work because there are too many guns out there.
What will work, is to terminate immediately , all sale of ammunition and recalling, with compensations, the ammunition current in stores
4
"Such 'red flag' laws might not be as momentous — or controversial — as the now-expired assault weapons ban"
Controversial where outside of the GOP and the NRA?
This is an exercise in what's the least I can do to get reelected without running afoul of the people (NRA) that pay my salary.
3
The Democrats need to stop being scared of the NRA and make this a major campaign issue. They need to bring it up at every opportunity and force GOP candidates to explain to voters why private citizens should be allowed to own automatic weapons and huge magazines.
7
Well, look there, the NRA is already trying to shut it down. They came up with all kinds of crazy stuff in Ohio (including that the person who needed the red flag got to keep their guns for 3 days or until hearing - in other words the NRA was saying HINT - do your damage quickly) " An N.R.A. spokeswoman, Catherine Mortensen, said on Tuesday that any such orders “at a minimum must include strong due process protections, require treatment and include penalties against those who make frivolous claims.”
3
The assault weapons ban must be reinstated. Period. With no sunset or expiration date this time.
14
frankly anyone who owns/has access to a gun is an imminent danger to their fellow citizens. what is being proposed is a white wash and has to be seen as such. improvement slightly i suppose but will it save the next ten thousand or so women from being killed by their ex's. no it is hand guns that are the real problem.
6
A very good analysis of why red flag laws basically won't work:
https://www.vox.com/science-and-health/2018/2/22/17041080/predict-mass-shooting-warning-sign-research
If the Republicans actually wanted to save lives, they'd ban assault weapons and large bullet magazines, institute comprehensive background checks and take a number of other meaningful steps. But the reality is that they really don't want to save lives if it costs them even a modicum of financial and political support.
6
So now the GOP are heroes? No. After Sandy Hook, it's clear what they want to change - nothing.
9
The FBI has opened investigations on the shootings. But last year when the FBI said there was inescapable evidence that Russia had interfered with the 2016 Presidential election, Trump said that US intelligence agencies like the FBI were no good. So we have a bad Federal agency investigating the mass shootings?
Why do you people vote for Trump? He is tearing America apart. While giving big tax breaks to the rich. This will hurt your kids. Is that what you want?
6
This is a fig leaf —a desperate and cynical attempt to avoid getting slaughtered in the burbs come the elections. A serious solution this is not.
6
Not good enough. Not even close.
4
Does anyone think a gun is hard to make? Everything necessary to make one is currently available without laws controlling their purchase. Gun manufacturers abide by current laws. Lawless people will produce guns to make them more deadly. Lawless people will sell them to criminals seeking them. Just as with drugs, a market will be created for demand. Guns, currently illegal under existing laws will be the ones made, or smuggled to meet demand. Does America really want to arm the lawless with a supply of weapons not currently available to the public? Or worse, does America want only criminals to have guns that are far more destructive, and unarm its citizens that follow the laws congress passes? Anyone that thinks a black market for super guns of mass destruction won’t be supplied by criminals to criminals is naive. It will only make things worse.
Be bold. Don't ban, approve. Approve the guns, bullets and accessories for the general population. Then the leadership or the cowardice would be revealed before the whole country.
If it's AG Barr who will enforce the Red Flag laws, no thanks!
2
Any representative who has anything other than an F rating from the NRA is part of the problem.
5
Mitch McConnell is picking and choosing what Bills should be taken up, and prioritized. What does he have to say for those Bills passed in the House, as far back as in February of this year? There is a call for Mr. McConnell to resume Senate sessions from the current Recess, to address the recent tragedy. That may not happen. Because, no matter how much people are crying, it is not a priority for Mr. McConnell. This is so very frustrating, and disappointing.
Merely to have a law to address 'Red Flag' concerns, will not suffice. There should be real gun control laws to include comprehensive background checks, and placing restrictions and controls on people's access to military style assault weapons. Include items passed in the House in February, this year.
4
This will never happen. The Colorado State legislature passed a red flag law. So far half of the County Sheriffs in the State have said that they will not enforce the law, declaring their counties "2nd amendment sanctuaries" and the Colorado Republicans have mounted recall campaigns against Democratic legislators and the Governor.
2
This is a truly terrible idea for more than one reason. First, this would play directly into the fears of those who think the government is going to take their guns away.
But not instituting an obstacle with fair background checks is like a doctor doing nothing to prevent a patient from getting sick and focusing solely on fixing the situation after the patient is already sickened.
It would be best if a temporary moratorium on all gun sales were instituted to avoid the predictable buying sprees that occur when gun laws are thought to be coming soon.
And then after a fair background check (no exceptions) is in force, *then* we can talk about a red flag law, which would do absolutely nothing all by itself.
1
It is imposible to couple mental state and direct action. Red flag laws aren't something terrible, but they don't fully address the only common factor in gun homicides, i.e guns.
Here in Minnesota, the "Red Flag" laws proposed didn't provide for any appeal process and had some truly unseemly provisions for levying "storage fees" by law enforcement agencies who have had scandal after scandal involving items waltzing out of their property rooms.
You may want to actually think before you enact.
How does getting a court order to disarm someone who is an imminent threat really work? IMHO not well at all.
It's a good step but very insignificant one in minimizing gun death. On the other hand, GOP focus on mental health is demonizing a health issue with gun violence and data says the correlation with gun violence is as good as general population. If we treat or block all mental health people from getting gun, it will only reduce gun death by a merge 4%.
Yes, mental health is far more important for a person to become our president, Senators, & congressmen.
I don't understand who are the subject matter "experts" (if they have any) & other advisers (political or otherwise) entrusted to advise our President, GOP Senators/Congressmen, besides great "scientists" in NRA (and some pro-gun churches). They seem to be totally out of touch.
i) Most gun deaths are of the near and dear ones of the gun owners. Many/most of whom are tricked to vote GOP on single issue of gun.
ii) Only a tiny fraction (vary from 1% to less than 10%) of gun death actually happens in mass shootings.
iii) Less than one third of all mass shootings in last many years are done by mentally unstable people.
iv) Overwhelming majority of mass shooters are white and most of them are either members of some White Supremacist groups or motivated by such white supremacist rhetoric, including some by President Trump and some of GOP politicians.
v) Almost all guns used in the mass shootings were purchased totally legally.
1
Red flag laws, background checks - these will do little to stem the violence. Many of the recent shooters would still have obtained their weapons with these laws in place.
The 2nd amendment is antiquated. Gun ownership should be a privilege, not a right. All automatic and semiautomatic weapons must be banned. Only then will we get a handle on gun violence.
Why can I only buy one package of Sudafed at the drugstore, but the same day buy as many guns as I want?
6
@PGM
The Sudafed is behind the counter at my local pharmacy and I have to show my a driver's license in order to buy it. This is the law for several other over the counter drugs as well as some prescription drugs.
But in some states I can probably buy as many guns as I want in one day and perhaps not have to show my license. We need federal action so that people can't buy weapons in a state with poor laws and then bring them to another state with better laws.
3
After the 9/11 attacks, ALL air traffic was grounded. Airplanes were only allowed to fly again once appropriate security measures were in place. Since then, no further attacks like 9/11 have happened in the US. Those security measures worked.
After two Boeing Max 8 airliner jets crashed, they were ALL grounded, around the world. Max 8 airplanes will not be allowed to carry passengers again until and unless they can be proven airworthy and safe. After those two crashes, no further loss of life has taken place due to the Max 8.
Yet, every single year, tens of thousands of lives end due to guns in the USA. Last year, there was an uptick in gun deaths to nearly 40,000. But the 2nd Amendment zealots will not even allow any kind of discussion of this ever growing mountain of dead. For them, the dead are merely the cost for their so-called “freedom.” They are willing to have your life, the lives of your loved ones, the lives of your friends and neighbors, even the lives of their own loved ones, rubbed out so they can keep their precious guns. No price is too dear for society to pay so they can have their guns.
And we allow them to keep them, year after year. And the mountain of dead grows higher each day.
5
@Ernest Zarate
Sir, your logic is spot-on. It is just madness that this situation continues on and on in America, with no genuine efforts to even try and reduce this staggering number of fatalities in the U.S.
This insane condition in America is why I am most likely to stay here in Japan. There are the occasional acts of random violence in Japan as well, but they are a tiny fraction of the annual number of killings that occur in the States.
2
Where in the Constitution is the Senate Majority leader given an override-proof veto? Why are we begging this nauseating character to allow the Senate to consider a matter of life-or-death importance.? Who made the rule that gives him such power? Can it not be changed?
And, if a toothless red flag bill is proposed, can it not be amended to have more substance? Or would any proposed amendment be ruled out of order?
This is not the America I have known and loved. I have to explain my patriotism to my 10-year old son, who doesn’t see what’s so great about the U.S. right now.
1
This alone is woefully insufficient to deal with the gun problem in this country. I can think of a couple of young men about whom I and others have often said we would not be shocked if they became a mass shooter, and neither of them would be flagged by a red flag law or, for that matter, a background check. Nothing short of a ban on semi-automatics and high-capacity magazines will do.
Every official running for office (whether mayor, congress, senate, president or whatever) should be able to answer clearly and in a simple manner, that even a child can understand, one question: What is the need for an assault rifle among everyday people outside of the military?
We should not expect anything from policy makers who cannot answer this question.
2
How does a federal red flag law work? Will the ATF show up at some disturbed person's door? In addition to being inefficient, that might go over quite poorly if the "disturbed" person is a white separatist or just especially paranoid of the federal government.
Red flag laws seem like a clear state-level policy to be enforced by local, county or state police. This may be why Republicans in the U. S. Congress like the idea.
There are many ways a determined (and essentially suicidal) criminal can circumvent a magazine limit. It seems like a vast majority of these people plan their attacks for a long time. There is nothing wrong with a limit on new sales of large magazines, but it seems unlikely to accomplish much.
Current owners of ARs and AKs might benefit from a ban on new sales of similar weapons, since their weapons might become quite valuable. Banning sales of new weapons and requiring a more thorough licensing to transfer these weapons might have a positive effect. A buyback may have some impact as well, but it makes sense to see if the law "sticks" before offering one.
One thing to avoid as much as possible is turning previously lawful people into criminals simply by changing the laws. Expanding background checks for all guns, with even stronger limits on transfers of AR and AK-derivative weapons seems like a useful avenue to pursue.
You could do what the UK, New Zealand and Australia did in response to a mass shooting. You could remove handguns and semi-automatic weapons from private ownership - military only.
The 2nd Amendment is still satisfied as anyone can still own a breech loading shotgun or a bolt-action rifle, a musket, or a flintlock but the potential to cause immense harm is reduced. Not eliminated - there is still gun crime in the heavily regulated countries here in Europe - but the days of children armed with AK47s, Glocks or AR-15s walking into schools full of other children and murdering them would be over.
The pain we felt in the UK after our school shooting, as well as in Australia and New Zealand translated into instant action by politicians. It was never going to be embraced by everyone but non-compliance was never an option.
Culturally we are very different and I'm not sure the American public would accept the measures that we did We also didn't have the complications and legal implications of being a Republic.
There has to be point, though, at which Americans just cry 'enough' or just accept this is going to be a routine occurrence as your politicians on both sides of the House equivocate, deflect and bluster.
Forget the causes for now- that's a long term goal. Fix the laws for the weaponry that enables these people to use mass murder for a political or psychological goal.
Our wonderful progressive governor signed a "Red Flag" law in Colorado. The opposition initiated a recall petition. Even small logical steps towards dealing with a serious real world problem is fought NRA style. Don't give an inch.
3
.
It should not be that a person have a "flaw" before his/her right to possess a firearm is revoked.
Instead, it should only be after a "very strong reason" has been presented that permission to own a firearm would be issued.
And - even then – that firearm could only be available when the stated peril is “imminent.”
That said: Non-concealed, low capacity/non-automatic guns for sport and hunting purposes by trained users ought to remain legal (with reasonable restrictions).
Sez me.
Congress can enact another gun regulation, but will they fund the enforcement of the regulation. The shooter at the Sutherland Springs church shooting was legally forbidden to possess a firearm, but the Air Force never processed the paperwork documenting his domestic violence conviction that would have prevented him from buying guns and ammunition. What is the point of passing more regulations if the government does not enforce them?
"Gov. Mike DeWine of Ohio proposed a bill that would make it easier for the police to seize guns from people deemed dangerous."
I am for the bill, but I also realize that to act on people "deemed dangerous" is a slippery slope.
Who decides ? Lots of safe guards will be required.
Next logical step would be to seize driver licenses for people deemed dangerous - such as drunks. Drunken drivers kill far more people in one year than mass shootings do in one year.
As usual, Conservatives seem to be practising their skill of doing the minimum they possibly can while proclaiming they've done something of substance. It gets really old...
2
No, no, no. This is not adults with any modicum of intelligence would propose. The simplest solution, universally and long acknowledged, is the most obvious one: ban - and buy back weapons of mass destruction. Whatever, the root cause of these atrocities, let everyone first acknowledge two things: 1) These root causes are not necessarily unique to US of A and 2) No other civilized country allows such easy access to these abhorrent weapons. Politicians: If you are truly serious, start here.
2
I guess we're supposed to be grateful that the GOP/NRA puppets are maybe going to some crumbs to those concerned citizens who don't want their children growing up in a country where they have to worry about being slaughtered just because they want to go out in public. But a true reality is for those that truly want to see CHANGE, that truly want strict gun laws and get all the assault military style weapons out of the hands of the public, you have to vote the GOP out. Because in the long run they will never ever truly change the gun laws. If they weren't going to do it after Sandy Hook and after ALL the senseless massacres that have followed - why would they do it now? Hey - I hope I'm wrong and that some truly helpful laws are passed but I really want them voted out in 2020 and then we can have some effective changes to the gun laws in this country. No, no one is coming for your guns - that is if you don't have an arsenal of military grade killing machines. But enough is enough.
From the article: “They were absolutely right,” Mr. DeWine said Tuesday morning at a news conference. “We must do something, and that is exactly what we are going to do.”
Hollow words from Ohio's Governor spoken out of the left side of his mouth. Out of the right side of his mouth, he and his Republican General Assembly are preparing to eliminate all CCW permits and training, so that ANYBODY in Ohio can carry a concealed weapon whenever and wherever they want (except, of course, into the Statehouse where DeWine works).
Completely ignored in this debate is why we exempt gun owners from the requirement to be a member of a "well-regulated militia."
1
Random thoughts, hither and yon...
Taking guns from people who already have them while still allowing those whose possession of them is problematic to still procure them is another case of "too little, too late." And that is viewing the problem in the best light through rose-colored glasses.
The hurdle to getting a driver's license compared to buying a gun is comparable to Mark Twain's differentiation between lightning...and the lightning bug.
In Texas, you can carry your AR-15 into the church of your choice. Just fills you with warm fuzzies, doesn't it. No one who loves God enough to go to church would ever think to kill. Would they?
Red flag laws are a band-aid, but without the stick-um needed to make them work. Their effectiveness is directly related to the acceptance, diligence and alacrity of the law enforcement personnel tasked with carrying out any orders for weapon confiscation. And there is nothing stopping those deprived of their arsenals from re-accumulating same via private sale.
There are more guns than there are people in the U.S. And every mass shooting worsens that ratio in the days that follow.
We haven't reached bottom yet. Things will still have to get worse before there is any hope of them getting "better."
Much worse.
As someone from a country without guns on every corner, I find it ludicrous that the Republican Party is willing to accept that all they have to do to stop gun deaths is to put in place these ‘red flag laws.’ It is simply not enough to take guns away from a select group of people who are proven to be a danger to society, but rather there must be a greater effort to remove access to firearms for anyone who is considered a threat. The GOP might like guns, but at the same time you can also like life. This problem of sever gun violence is a uniquely American issue, and it has become normalised. Mass shootings are not normal. Civilians having access to military grade weaponry is not normal. Having a government which is not willing to tackle possibly the biggest domestic security threat head on is not normal. Whilst some people might fall for the NRA’s line of “only a good guy with a gun can stop a bad guy with a gun,” it must now be clear that the best way to stop a bad guy with a gun is to take their gun away. Sure, honest, decent people can still bear arms, but there is an added level of security in having background checks. Mitch McConnell, have some decency and do something to stand up for the people of your great nation who are being slaughtered not only by “bad guys with guns,” but by your inaction over stopping them having the opportunity to hurt and kill people in this way.
2
How reassuring that "something" is exactly what Mike DeWine intends to do!
But all the proposed legislation just nibbles around the edges of gun deaths. I think the NY Times article from 2017:
https://www.nytimes.com/2017/11/07/world/americas/mass-shootings-us-international.html?action=click&module=Spotlight&pgtype=Homepage
convincingly argues that the sheer availability of guns is the overwhelming factor that makes the U.S. such an outlier.
Trump has done too much to normalize racism, hatred, bigotry and violence. We need to normalize the idea that the second amendment should be repealed and that the burden of proof of fitness and need should be on those seeking to acquire guns. That's how it is in the vast majority of civilized nations.
Why can we NOT ban military style assault weapons?
What possible justification can we have for allowing
citizens to possess these arms and high capacity
magazines?
Are our lives just collateral damage to those we elected
to be our legislators?
3
Why can we buy assault weapons but not hand grenades? Isn't that an infringement on second amendment rights?
3
Until a bill passes the senate and is signed by Trump, there shall be no rest.
They could all fly back tomorrow and get this done. I’m not optimistic.
IMHO, it is all a lot of meaniless hype. No "red flag" law would have stopped any of dozens of mass murders in this year alone. Unless they have been in trouble over and over again, no one knows that these mass murderers are going to strike. The real solution is to outlaw military style weapons, large magazines bump stocks. and any modifications that allow rapid fire. Make it a Federal Felony with a mandatory prison sentence even for a first offender. Also forbid every gun dealer in the nation from selling guns to a resident of another state that are in violation of that state's law. Pass a federal law for a manditionr ID check and waiting periods before buyer can take the gun they have bought home. Outlaw the sale of guns at gun shows and require every private sale to be done through a licensed firearms dealer.
1
"Red Flag" laws are a "Red Herring"
Face Facts: human behavior is the least understood, and least controllable, factor in gun violence.
Out of shear curiosity, how many mass shootings would have been averted if such a law had been in place the last several years? Newton? Orlando? Gilroy? Virginia Beach? Las Vegas?
And WHO will be the real key to red flag laws working? Vulnerable people close to the victim who realize the danger and KNOW that the government can NEVER account for every weapon! What then? Criminalize those who do not report out of fear and self-preservation?
Gun violence is here to stay as long as this nation denies local government the ability to limit the firepower that any citizen could (not "should" or "may") have. Whether on the street, in the home, or anywhere.
What will it take for this nation to be awakened like Australia, New Zealand, or UK? Based on populations at the time of seminal events, a death toll of 94 by a single act of gun violence is similar to the ratio of deaths to population in Dunblane, 650 in Port Arthur, and an astonishing 3690 if Christchurch is the standard used.
Highest toll thus far is Las Vegas with 59, and one might speculate, given the lack of other clear motive, that the gunman was trying to push this nation to control weapons as a diabolically evil life's legacy.
Either we make the change - or tragedy will change us.
1
McConnell will not do anything to put him on wrong side of NRA. He has been doing this even before Trump. He cares about money in his coffers. He isn’t getting any younger. Does he have loved ones? Doesn’t he care for them? That has got to be the difference between we as parents with children in schools,going to churches and movies. We would move heaven and earth to protect them, keep them safe. His answer is silence.
2
If something does not suddenly remove all guns, the best way to reduce gun violence is to seriously account for all guns and who has them so that ‘red flag’ policies and background checks can be used to separate guns from those at high risk to misuse them. To actually do this is just out of reach, because the compromises that are required to do so are not ready to be accepted.
Gun control advocates hope that there will be a great popular rejection of guns and near unanimous agreement to destroy nearly all of them. Pro gun advocates hope that the status quo of little serious regulation of guns will continue indefinitely.
But the registration of all guns and licensing of all users along with background checks and legal procedures for removing guns from people who ought not have them are reasonable measures to reduce gun violence. But gun ownership must be tolerated as long as people take care to keep them from being misused. Gun owners must agree to report all of their guns, register, and prove that they know the laws and their responsibilities to secure them and can use them safely with licensing, and undergo background checks.
3
I've always held the belief that psychology is the worlds universal language and we all have a sense of psychology, so many might agree that the long overdue Republican acceptance of the need for gun legislation seems to have been accomplished by labeling the new legislation "Red Flag" laws. Isn't that something of a subconscious thought on the part of the Republicans?
1
There is no consensus on guns in America. The spectrum runs from a large minority opposed to any restrictions to a tiny minority who want to repeal the 2nd Amendment, with everything in between. In the long run - over decades - views may shift, as the history of the last 50 years shows on a number of social issues. When a strong anti-gun consensus forms is when meaningful restrictions will be imposed. But not this year.
1
@r a: Your conclusion is rather mysterious since a Feb, 2018 Business Insider/MSN poll found 70% of Americans want striker controls on assault style weapons.
1
Really? This is the best they can do? The proposed plan will solve exactly zero, but the GOP will tout the plan as though it solves everything. Each person in favor should go on TV to answer questions from the public and
explain exactly why and how this will work and why banning assault weapons and large magazines is out of the question.
19
Before throwing around terms like "most significant" and "in 20 years" let's wait to see the final legislation and the vote on it, assuming Massacre Mitch allows one.
Then let's see if Trump signs it or blows up another deal as he has done so many times on, say, immigration.
The NY Times needs to report facts and not speculation. Even if it is in the midst of a presidential election cycle.
6
To put it in perspective, the incidence of psychopathy is 1%-4% in the general population. (https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4649950/) That means at least 3 million psychopathic Americans, maybe as many as 12 million. The country has more guns circulating than people, and there are many ways to buy weapons with no scrutiny whatsoever. We will never identify, never mind cure, those millions of potential assassins. Therefore, we must radically reduce the number and power of weapons available.
9
The NRA has suppressed research into gun violence. Congress needs to approve funding to the Center for Disease Control to continue this important work, in defiance of the NRA. But they never will; the republicans in Congress are cowards. We need to vote them out.
12
@Peggy The Congressional Republicans are cowards and are loathe to bite the hand that bribes, err, contributes to their campaigns.
2
"Mental health issues" does not equal stupid. It's taken our country's law enforcement decades to apprehend the most notorious serial killers. People who are successful at commiting mass violence have made well-thought out, detailed plans. GOP Red Flag legislation will hardly deter them; it will make it only more intruiging, another exciting piece of the game.
There's just one effective solution and we all know what it is. Until our pathetic leadership can ban military-style assault weapons, they own the blame for every death.
4
This is a disaster.
Eradicating Constitutional rights to appease the radical left is a recipe for disaster. These red flag laws don’t stop evil mentally ill shooters or criminals with illegal guns. They will, however, allow leftists to make baseless charges against lawful gun owners.
3
@Cjmesq0 - right. By your view, judges and police will suddenly become leftist anti-gun types?
Couple quick questions for you to anwer for us - on whether you'd support having the following people surrender weapons to law enforcement (for storage) or sell them or put them in the hands of some trusted person outside their home. Answer each individually.
1 - person treated for severe depression who admits suicidal thoughts
2 - person who is at a stage of dementia where they do not recognize family members in the house
3 - person who has had multiple guns "lost" or "stolen" (parts of my city suffer from a flood of such weapons)
4 - person who has made threats of harm to family or co-workers
5 - person who has made repeated statements supporting violence or suggested there are people they would like to kill
Note that the last one is a nice balance of first and second amendments, and also includes the very Constitutional right to assert public well-being over an individual's behavior
3
What specific rights to own an assault rifle or semi-automatic are in the Constitution?
I’ll wait...
2
Much ado about nothing. Ditto the GOP effort to pivot to "mental illness." At the end of the day, getting guns, ammo and high capacity magazines off the market is the only real answer -- but it is not something the Republicans will even consider.
Think about this; most rental car companies impose additional fees on drivers under 25 -- because those people (mostly men) are the most reckless and are involved in an inordinate number of accidents due to their aggressive driving. Yet, a 21 year old can walk out of a Walmart or other store with a murderous weapon.
8
Evidently in some states they can also walk into that Walmart with an assault weapon.
2
Where are all the pro life people?
Why don’t the picket gun stores?
Aren’t they outraged by the deaths of these innocent people?
33
@Deirdre - after being born we're on our own as far as many of those groups go.
5
The “pro-life” movement is a right-wing gimmick to shut down hospitals and clinics in poor communities.
We need to stop acting like they care about fetuses or babies. THEY DON’T!
Once we understand that they are out to deny medical care to poor women, everything they do makes sense.
2
@Deirdre
Exactly!
The GOP are so pro-life but weren't moved enough to do a thing when twenty 6/7 year old children (along with 6 adults) were gunned down in their elementary school...or when all the others lost their lives in the last 7 years.
And most (or possibly all) of the states who have the death penalty and still carry out executions are red states regardless that 4.1% (1 out of 25) of those executed are innocent.
& they care so much once a fetus is born, they never play politics with CHIP, SNAP, etc.
2
I see. The citizens of this country should be totally distracted, impressed and grateful that the Red Flag Bill just might squeeze through the Senate. No Mitch.....no go! The number one weapon of choice in these ongoing mass killings is semi automatic rifles which civilians have no reason to own. These are weapons of war meant for our military. And you and many others in Congress have blood on your hands. The blood of innocents because of your refusal to quit nursing at the breast of the NRA. You are the leader of the pack Mitch. Be a man and get the silverware out.
10
Cool, now we can honestly say Republicans are trying to take your guns.
4
We need gun control, not people control.
6
Consider this: The person who would be adjudged most mentally ill and unfit to possess a firearm has our nuclear launch codes.
If this doesn't sum up the attempted Trumpian distraction of GETTING RID OF FIREARMS, what would?
The narcissistic sociopath-in-cheif is the living embodiment of he who should NEVER be allowed to control anything that could harm another - be it Twitter bullying, jailing innocents, kidnapping children, antagonizing nuclear-equipped enemies, sanctioning desperate countries where help would bring peace, alienating our allies or LYING to all Americans.
Further words are unnecessary - the truth is so obvious.
10
You just know who will be the first and second people to whom "Red Flag" laws are going to be applied, right?
3
I suppose committing mass murder with an automatic assault rifle would be a red flag.
6
No legislation, no matter how reactive it is, will change who we as a nation are. As our foreign policy and domestic history clearly shows, America solves problems with violence. To think that this violence would not seep into our national "DNA" is naïve, at best.
No nation that bombs and invades other nations at will shall ever find peace at home.
This is who we are.
This is who we will remain for a long, long time until we evolve.
https://emcphd.wordpress.com
5
We had less mass killings when the assault rifles ban was in place, so your point...
2
@Kat: So you accept these killings and are willing to settle for less? That's your answer?
https://emcphd.wordpress.com
1
A bit like taking an aspirin for a brain tumor. Surgery is needed not an analgesic .
7
This is poor theatrics by the republicans. We all know they are bought and paid for by National Riflemans Association.
9
"Red Flag" Laws? How appropriately named that Republican gun lovers would agree to such a name.
1
The only way to stop a bad guy with a gun is a good guy with a red flag (apparently).
6
Watch them tie it up to some crazy immigration law and then blame the dems for not voting for it...
4
Why isn’t Mitch standing out in front leading the charge? Oh, he’s sent in one of his sacrificial lambs. Plausible deniability so he can keep that cold hard NRA cash rolling in for his party. What a disgrace.
6
The GOP red-flag proposals only provide funds for police. Nothing for mental health, nothing for the courts, nothing to protect families from harm. And 45 wants to extort immigration concessions on top of this bag of nothing.
Business as usual.
9
@Kathleen S. - it truly is a step - just one - in the right direction. For police to secure weapons from people who have lost the right to own them, it takes a lot of paperwork (that's policework) and effort and manpower and hours of time, for each weapon.
It also takes better access to data by law enforcement at different levels from national to county and local police department - something bitterly fought by many pro-gun groups.
But for police to do a job, they need the tools, they need the staffing to carry out the additional work, and they do need it prioritized.
So to carry out the full process where it's decided a person loses their right to hold weapons, through to where they verify guns have been turned in, or to where they show up at someone's door to collect guns, it takes money. It also is another way law enforcement puts themselves at risk for us.
So if the GOP can be shamed into this tiny sliver, we should take it.
Not a fan of Trump at all, but I’m tired of the focus on him with these gun massacres.
He is not needed to solve this problem. Senate and congress can pass legislation ... age check, background check, red laws, automatic weapon ban, federal crime for possession, prohibit sale. That is just a start. Take action, ignore Trump’s rhetoric and do something.
Also, business can take immediate action as well. I changed all my business to CVS when they discontinued cigarette sales. Wal-Mart and others, stop selling guns. Gun manufacturers; have a conscience and do the right thing. Do the self regulation now before you look like the greedy fools in the pharmaceutical world.
Landlords and renters; stop providing space to companies selling these automatic / semi-automatic weapons.
Fund managers and financial advisors let your money speak volumes. Move your assets to companies with a moral conscience.
NOW is the time for all of us to take action!
16
How dumb an our legislators be? By now it should be obvious that what we need is FEDERAL GUN CONTROL which requires that all guns be issued Certificates of Title like with cars, that they be Federally registered, and that gun owners be required to maintain liability insurance with high deductibles to indemnify people harmed by their guns. Limit the number of guns that people may own to some reasonable number.
Like with cars, require prospective gun owners to demonstrate proficiency and mental competence plus impose strict, vicarious liability upon gun owners for their direct or otherwise negligent conduct in connection with their guns. Leave a gun lying around unsecured and someone gets access to it, you're in trouble.
As far as bullets go, the eggs I buy are imprinted with a traceable code. Do that with bullets so we know who is buying them and in what quantity.
This will not eliminate all gun violence but it will cut it back and provide at least some compensation for victims. As far as I can see, none of this in any way conflicts with that pesky 2d Amendment which would, of course, stay in full force and effect.
What we have now, a patchwork of gun legislation in 50 states, is ineffectual. You can still get a gun in a state with lax firearms laws and take it anywhere you want. If states, to meet their own needs, want to impose laws that are more stringent than the Feds, like with booze and drugs, fine.
12
Guns are inanimate objects, easily recognizable. They do not reproduce themselves, nor do they change character; and they are finite in number. People with mental problems are not easily recognized; they reproduce and have personality changes; and their number is unknowable. Get the picture.
4
@Nick There have always been people with mental illness. Only in recent history have we had more guns than people in this country. As the social fabric unravels and economic needs shift and decades of conservative dismantling of safety nets leave even the middle class in financial straits, some desperate people, egged on and fired up by the constant hateful messages from right-wing propaganda mills online and on TV, take advantage of easy access to all manner of guns and lose their minds on the public. Huge social problems are never as simple as “mental illness.”
To illustrate a point, I'm going to apply for a gun permit in my home state (not Kentucky). I'll get it, too.
Then I'll be back to list the eleven reasons that I should never be allowed to own a gun. Ever.
BTW. Restrict weapons of war to war zones. Much better than this red flag silliness.
12
Restore the PERMANENT ban on gun ownership by violent felons. Used to be federal law but NRA had ban modified.
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/11/14/us/felons-finding-it-easy-to-regain-gun-rights.html?pagewanted=all
Under federal law, people with felony convictions forfeit their right to bear arms. Yet every year, thousands of felons across the country have those rights reinstated, often with little or no review. In several states, they include people convicted of violent crimes, including first-degree murder and manslaughter, an examination by The New York Times has found.
While previously a small number of felons were able to reclaim their gun rights, the process became commonplace in many states in the late 1980s, after Congress started allowing state laws to dictate these reinstatements — part of an overhaul of federal gun laws orchestrated by the National Rifle Association. The restoration movement has gathered force in recent years, as gun rights advocates have sought to capitalize on the 2008 Supreme Court ruling that the Second Amendment protects an individual’s right to bear arms.
The Times’s analysis found that among the more than 400 people who committed crimes after winning back their gun rights under the new law, more than 70 committed Class A or B felonies. Over all, more than 80 were convicted of some sort of assault and more than 100 of drug offenses.
3
It's time to start a "Storm the NRA Headquarters - They Can't Stop Us" Facebook-inspired event. Location: Fairfax, VA.
5
OK. Take the one real solution off of the table, and then have a "serious discussion" about all the things that absolutely do not work. Give me a break. Wash, rinse, repeat. Hopes and prayers. So jaded.
3
GOP means "Gaslighting On Purpose".
Until yesterday the Republican lockstep response to all the attacks was to indulge in some tut-tutting.
But now that the public is shouting "Do something! Do something" they are blaming "video games" and have trotted out a first line of what will be a series of diversionary tactics to deflect, delay, and deny the best initial remedy: an enforced ban on all assault weapons; and that, followed by some serious soul searching within their ranks.
3
This is truly hopeless. Everyone wants to talk about everything except GUNS. No one wants to accept that Guns are what kill people: hand guns and assault weapons have no other purpose.
On PBS to-night the reporter from El Paso mentioned that a woman he interviewed said that she went and bought a gun and registered for gun training. We hear that after every mass shooting: a spike in gun sales after a mass shooting. People must really be simple minded not to follow the news: at No Mass Shooting was there ever "good guy with a gun" stopping anyone firing!! As a matter of fact, in El Paso it was pointed out that Texas being an "open-carry" state, very likely that many of the people running away from the shooting were "carrying" guns.
We have been forever propagandized to believe that we need to own guns for our own protection and, yet, there is scant evidence that any innocent minding his/her own business was ever so protected, but plenty of evidence that of those four hundred million guns, thousands seep into the hand of very angry people. George Will pointed out some thirty years ago that two angry Brits come out with a bloody nose while two angry Americans come out with one or both shot.
Among the rest of us, the enablers look upon the Second Amendment just as the ISISers look upon what they chose in the Koran. Owning guns has become a religious creed.
11
I have zero confidence that any so-called red flag law will have any effect whatsoever. The country is so awash in weapons I expect any successful seizure from a person showing malicious intent or emotional imbalance will be undone within a couple of hours with a trip to a gun show. I also wonder if we are setting up police for more deadly confrontations. I would think "attend crazy loner's house to dis-gun him" is not high on the desirable call list.
Any solution short of reducing the number of weapons in circulation is a PR stunt.
5
Talk about red flags. I can immediately think of two glaringly obvious signs that someone may have mental problems and poses a possible danger to others:
- owning more than one or two guns
- owning any weapon designed to kill many people in a short period of time (e.g. an AK-47)
Rational people do not have a fetish for guns.
12
It is so easy for people to talk about assault weapons as war weapons without a moment hesitation as if these wars themeselves are are not hidious and monstrous. And who has access to them? Every minute some sadistic criminal who doesn't need any red flag for anyone and everyone to know who they are. And then even the most sensible politician or columnist always says the option to use nuclear weapons should never be taken off the table. As if they can imagine a situation where it would be justified to use them. Red Flag them also.
3
To Mitch and members of
Congress:
You are not doing what needs to be done in this country with gun legislation.
We want background checks and a ban on assault weapons.
And hey Mitch...the subjects that the pres raised are not the problems...i.e. video games. Mental illness...seems to me that our government needs to uphold some of that repair. Or perhaps you could see my boss, Jeff Bezos, and ask him to cough up money for major mental illness funding....oh yeah, sorry...he's more interested in building living conditions on the moon.
So forget your committee reviews on this stuff...enough.
American citizens have the solutions and bipartisan committees can't come to terms with what to do because they have no backbones and cannot decide what constitutes an assault and military weapon.
American citizens are over this.
Yes, we are mad
4
While Red Flag Laws are a start, the biggest hurdle lies with assault weapons.
The assault weapon is somehow seen as a must have weapon, and if taken away, will leave people defenseless.
There are plenty of other guns one can own to defend themselves. It's time to make the distinction of which weapons are needed, and which are not.
Time to give up assault rifles.
4
It's a joke. It ain't enough. The assault weapons need to be banned along with any high capacity clips for hand guns and assault shotguns. These weapons of war and special forces need to be taken away from the public.
9
Take one of these semi-automatic guns into a battle against people armed with real military assault rifles and you would not survive. It’s as simple as that. They discharge no faster than any gun, they load faster but not by a lot. People can squeeze triggers very quickly, in split seconds. They can reload guns by hand very quickly, too. Even single shot guns can be fired many times per minute.
All this military weapons talk does is stop people who have different views and interests with respect to guns from working together to reduce gun violence.
High capacity magazines, large rounds, and high muzzle velocity. Those who seek to educate gun control advocates always seem to conveniently leave these topics out of their lessons.
But these shooters are not taking their semi-auto rifles "into battle." They're taking them into Walmarts and garlic festivals and other soft targets. These semi-auto rifles, without pointlessly arguing with you over what to call them, are more than deadly enough to carry out acts of domestic terrorism, in the name of white nationalism, against civilians. They are objectively unnecessary to the pursuit of life, liberty, and happiness.
1
Grateful to those GOP members who have realized that a deadly virus has spread throughout our country like a wildfire and they can no longer, in good conscience, sit back and rationalize their votes and actions in regard to gun policies.
May their fellow conservative colleagues begin a tidal about face and come to the same realization that this aberration of mass slaughter cannot go on unchecked
At some point one of their own will be a victim. Background checks aren’t enough. All internet ammunition sales must cease and law abiding HANDGUN owner must show up at legal dispensaries to acquire ammunition with ID and insurance and proof of handgun training.
It is both absurd and obscene to realize that Wild West approach of gun ownership is a free for all with the least oversight or legal system to track ownership and quantities of amassed ammo that we apply to driver’s licenses, passports, the privilege to fly an airplane, or any other dangerous activity.
If not now, then we are all doomed to forever live in an anyplace/anytime shooting gallery where any trip to the mall, or places of worship, a park, or a concert or movie means exposing ourselves to potential death by gun violence.
How anyone can rationalize and normalize that and say it’s enshrined in the Constitution is willfully insane themselves, and precisely the type of person who should be forbidden from owning and wielding a firearm, let alone a weapon designed for a theatre of war and multiple casualties.
236
@Rene Pedraza Del Prado
I understand that you're relieved -something- is being done, but I don't think gratitude is the way to go. I'd equate it more to the short-term relief an exasperated parent feels when their unruly child finally does what it's been told to do for hours without listening or doing the opposite on purpose.
There's still much to be done if this passes at all, or isn't spitefully attached to policy Democrats would never agree to so blame can be shifted on them.
15
@Rene Pedraza Del Prado
An Elizabeth Warren fan and a guy frightened that the environment will fail to feed us have gotten you this alarmed?
Have you reacted this way to news events before?
3
@Rene Pedraza Del Prado
I do recall when it was one of their own: Ronald Reagan & James Brady. His wife Sarah Brady fought the gun industry and the NRA tooth and nail while at the same time she heroically took care of her wheelchairbound husband. Finally she was able to get legislation passed! What did the Republicans do when it happened to one of their own? Not much. Not even for Ronald Reagan
39
Please. This is a band-aid to placate us. We shouldn't be the slightest bit moved or slowed down by this.
3
Please adopt both “red flag laws” and “yellow flag laws”. Track every bullet and gun. Most of these mass shooters had large arsenals. The LV shooter had 47 guns!
RIDSS Register, Insure, Document and Safely Store.
Document every gun firing. Every bullet from manufacture to fired. The good guys will.
It's ok to hunt and target shoot. Gun clubs could be fun.
My friends In Alaska tell me that they need guns to go on a hiking trip safely.
Just count every bullet and keep a photo video record. Require insurance for all bullets and guns.
The good guys that own legal guns will. Because they respect the need to foster safe communities. They will take care to safely store and practice.
We can seek other measures to bring illegal guns out of circulation. It will take decades to reign in the excess. Buybacks, no questions asked. Stiff penalties for no RIDSS.
1
Next up, the Republican Party will ban video games for all people under 21 to help prevent mass murder in America's streets, stores, schools and sidewalks.
Thanks, Republicans, for again doing nothing to help America as they are shot dead on a daily basis.
36
All people who kill are mentally disturbed- certainly at the moment of killing. This not a mental health issue. it is a failure to recognize that there is a global white supremacy movement recruiting people in probably much the way that ISIS does.
This should be treated a s form of terrorism and people arming themselves are a threat to all of us. Easy access to guns are a threat to all our lives, liberty and pursuit of happiness.
5
Banning corporate campaign contributions and dark money from election campaigns would save a lot more lives than this pathetic 'red-flag' Republican band-aid.
The Republican Party is on the take from the National Terrorist Association and would prefer to cash their NTA checks than save American lives.
These right-wing Merchants of Death have no business representing Americans in 'life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness'.
30
Forget this nonsense. Let's start an effort in blue state legislatures to repeal the second amendment. It won't pass anytime soon, but let's get the ball rolling.
8
Will white supremacy rants wave a red flag? Not among white supremacists. Like, for example, many Republicans.
How about banning assault weapons? Nah, too radical. It might actually save lives.
4
Half-stepping Republicans. Serious moral decay.
4
Red flag is a whole lot of nothing.
4
Republican answer to mass shootings and white terrorism: flags.
5
A ban on assault weapons and large magazines is the only step that offers the possibility of significantly reducing the incidence of mass shootings. Unfortunately, the genie is already out of the bottle with an estimated 10 million assault style weapons in circulation, but at least we can try and stem this tide of carnage that is sweeping over this country. Red flag laws and more stringent universal background checks should also help but I suspect any meaningful legislation will have to wait until 2021 which in my view is in itself a reflection on the polarized state of our nation's body politic.
6
Need to regulate bullets - if a bullet is fired there should be a way to ID who bought it Also a limit on how many bullets a person can buy How many deer can you shoot in a season ?
Do something!
5
Do what, exactly? Yelling "do something" might feel good in the moment, but it's just giving republicans a blank check to "do something" totally useless and not in any way helpful to actually stopping these events. These "red flag laws" are something, but not really all that helpful. Afterwards they're free to claim, "there, we did something. Now stop pestering us about it."
This a cowardly act by the Republicans. It's time we call them what they are, COWARDS>
6
Standing up to the bully nra by hitting them with a Kleenex. How pathetic
9
A weak response to the problem. Just trying to look like something is being done. Not going to address the problem.
11
The purpose of the proposed red flag law is not to prevent future massacres, but rather to deflect criticism away from the availability of high-powered guns and toward the family and friends of the perpetrators when future massacres inevitably. There’s absolutely no evidence that red flag laws would have stopped either recent mass murderer, but both of them still apparently lived at home, making their parents easy scapegoats.
6
The Pentagon has always held dominion over the various forms of media that trains our people to be soldiers by portrayals of gun use. That is what explains decades long resistance to gun legislation and furtherance of the gun culture by the Republican leadership long aligned with the military. If you really want effective gun legislation, you are going to have to publicly face that reality and call on Republicans to comply with the will of the people, not the military. All the shooters have been young having grown up during wars for the last 18 years during their formative years. That is why I and others are no longer shocked by these horrid events, but diligently lobbying against the militant direction of the nation.
4
Red Flag laws aren't enough. I fear Republicans and gun-rights advocates will consider passing this a grand concession. At the very least there should be an assault weapons ban and a restriction on magazines. 9 people shot in a matter of seconds. Enough already. If you feel the need to fire an assault weapon do it at a regulated gun range.
4
Red Flag laws would work if the biggest red flag was, “white male.”
I can understand everyone’s frustration and despair. But as a Psychiatrst, I am completely baffled why anyone would oppose a law that allows the police to confiscate guns from dangerous individuals. Is it enough? Of course not. But I really feel that we are not giving our neighbors enough credit. Who in their right mind wouldn’t call the police if someone they know is acting dangerously?
Law enforcement (and child welfare agencies) have been using a similar strategy for years to engage the public. And maybe, just maybe, this law will allow us to be more engaged and save some lives in the meantime. It certainly can’t hurt to try.
All of these bills are bandaids. To achieve gun safety the Congress must repeal and replace the second amendment. Even the Founding Fathers said the Constitution is not perfect. The Constitution originally gave power to the state legislatures to elect senators but this led to the scourge of machine politics. In 1913 the Congress of the USA passed the 17th amendment to choose Senators by direct election so as to end this blight on the Republic. We are now faced with a similar antique law which threatens the fabric of our society. The second amendment was a right granted to the people and meant to protect us from government tyranny. But now we face new dangers caused by the right itself. President Trump recently suggested a grand bargain of reform on gun rights tied to immigration reform. I believe this is an interesting proposal and worthy of study.
1
We had two grandmothers in Brooklyn. Grandma Murphy had loud parties, with many friends and, even more, relatives come through the doors day and night. Grandma Gage lived a more cloistered life only a few blocks away and seemed as hard as the candy she served. One Christmas it was arranged that Grandma Gage would be the one to give my sister her first Barbie doll. Instead of the iconic Matell plaything my Grandmother presented my sister with an unpackaged, brute of doll that looked used or made in the Soviet Union. She was shocked to find that not just any blonde doll would do. My sister was confused and disappointed. I feel the same way about this gift the Republicans are willing to give, in order to appease those cranky voters. Well I got news for them. It's not what we want, it's not what we asked for and we're insulted you thought we wouldn't know the difference.
11
A bandaid for a bullet hole through the heart of America!
15
Band-Aids that are supposed to make us all feel better and safer.
We are never going to get rid of all the guns.
We are never going to get rid of all the drugs.
The problem is mental health.
No politician on the left or the right is ready to tackle the real problem.
Good luck.
@P&L By the argument that this is simply a mental health issue, then most of the criminals in the prisons have mental illness and should be in the psychiatric institutes. lol.
2
@P&L: Wrong. There are bipartisan gun control proposals from the House lingering in the Senate because McConnell refuses to bring them up for a vote.
8
Leave it to the NRA-funded GOP to come up with the lamest "gun control" proposal possible, one that's 100% reliant on an already weak municipal law enforcement capacity.
8
I was about to say that the gun problem in America has nothing to do with mental health as Americans are no more crazy than people of other nations. But after observing the Republican Party do all it can to avoid actually addressing the root cause of a deadly gun problem—guns—I need to reconsider. Obviously America has a very serious mental health problem that other nations don't have.
6
Senator Thune, along with all his Republican friends, should be running really scared right now. He is still a supporter. The fact is likely there will be more unpredicted domestic terrorist events, probably killing many innocent Americans, in the name of the Second Amendment, military style equipment being available to virtually anyone and 45's horrific and repeated lame excuses, will mean they will ALL be looking for a new job in November 2020. Having "I worked for Trump" on your resume, is going to shoot you dead. That will apply to everyone who was there, even at the lowest level, of the Republican party. "You supported re-electing him ?" Goodbye.
3
Red flag legislation is just a deflection so they don't have to take up serious legislation that the NRA opposes.
10
Right wing media talks about a coming civil war. We should be talking about disarming the agitators, eliminating assault weapons and registering all weapons and requiring liability insurance on every weapon.
If you want to own weapons then you should pass a test that proves you know how to use them, store them and clean them.
7
Can we use this to lock up Joaquin Castro for what has to be one of the most obtuse acts by a member of Congress in the past 230 years?
Mitch will stop it.
I think the tipping point on this (so far) has been the doctors talking about the horrible damage these bullets do.
Ironically, as Trump as NRA toadies blame video games, more damage is probably done by less violent movies that portray bullet wounds as little black holes in someone's body, maybe with a little leaking blood. Too many people think that a bullet wound is a non-violent event because TV and movies tone it down and don't show the damage done, especially in the exit wound.
Take the automatic weapons off the streets. Make the high capacity clips illegal. Stop selling the incredibly damaging bullets.
There is no need for an AK rifle for hunting. (Illegal in most places anyway.) If someone wants one for target practice, enforce storing those rifles at the shooting range. Keep them locked up.
4
Wait till you see the lineup.
The stop and frisk Republicans will be for these laws.
The Democrats and the ACLU crowd will oppose them.
Democratic lawmakers are going to find themselves between a rock and a hard place.
To avoid a vote, they're going to resort to it won't work.
All I can say to this is "Amen." Paraphrasing Connie Schultz, "if you want people to change, you have to let them change."
Republicans coming a little late to the game
1
The only thing easier to buy than a gun is a NRA Republican. Oh wait, they are all NRA.
12
QUOTE
El Paso bloodshed shows our politicians' outrageous failure (CNN, 4Aug2019)
... As a Texas resident, I know our state has notoriously lax gun laws, and the El Paso shooter would not have looked out of place walking into the Walmart with a semiautomatic weapon ... this open-carry policy has made it incredibly hard to determine who is a good guy with a gun and who is a bad guy with the gun ... Gov. Greg Abbott expressed his condolences during a press conference ... But back in 2015 the Republican sent out a tweet that said, 'I'M EMBARRASSED. Texas #2 in nation in new gun purchases, behind CALIFORNIA. ... His response to these tragedies continues to be the standard issue of 'thoughts and prayers' ... President Trump can also be considered complicit in this crime for vilifying immigrants attempting to cross the border and fomenting racial tensions with his political rhetoric ... Stopping mass shootings is possible. Let's start by implementing universal background checks and linking state and federal databases so criminals are red-flagged regardless of where a gun is purchased ... "
James C. Moore is a business consultant and principal at Big Bend Strategies, a business development firm. He has reported on the state's government and history for four decades.
END QUOTE
I do not believe that the 2nd Amendment, written in a time of flintlock weapons and requiring a "regulated militia", gives individuals the right to modern military grade weapons.
6
Be assured, I am in agreement with promulgating democratically debated legislation that correctly reflects the compromises of all, but you call them "RED FLAG" laws? How realistically named, especially coming from the Republican party which bears responsibility for supporting the gun fetish and use.
1
Red Flag laws are fine, but they only take you about ten percent of the way. The House bill, while much better, is also insufficient. The only realistic solution is to go a step further: ban assault weapons entirely, as well as large magazines, and buy back as many weapons as possible over the next few years.
We have a mass killing problem in our country, a problem that is orders of magnitude larger than any other country on Earth. It's not because we have more mentally ill people or more video games than other countries -- we don't. It's because we have hundreds of millions of guns, far more than any other country, and these guns are available to anyone who has a grudge. The people must speak, and this must stop.
454
@James How do we address the guns already in circulation? No one seems to be addressing this. Buy-back programs are just not going to work in this country. We need to start identifying dangerous individuals before they harm themselves or others. Law enforcement does it all the time with foreign terrorists. Maybe we need to pivot here and focus some of our energy domestically.
7
@James Couldn’t agree more. To the rest of the world looking at America this seems obvious.
18
@James
330 million Americans--do the stats. Greater chance of being killed by a teenager texting while driving.
1
Mitch McConnell - not the president - is running the show. He alone is solely responsible for the absolute breakdown of our legislative, democratic process.
Through his actions (and inaction) he is, without a doubt, the single biggest threat to our democracy.
26
Republicans don't want the violence to stop, otherwise, they'd do something substantive. What they do want is an opportunity to enable a society so terrified that will bend to some form of martial law.
This has been the plan since Nixon's Southern Strategy, and with Trump at the helm and McConnell stuffing the courts with militant judges, it is closer to reality than ever.
10
Republicans don't want the violence to stop, otherwise, they'd do something substantive. What they do want is an opportunity to enable a society so terrified that will bend to some form of martial law.
This has been the plan since Nixon's Southern Strategy, and with Trump at the helm and McConnell stuffing the courts with militant judges, it is closer to reality than ever.
2
No self respecting individual and no individual with respect for the United States and fellow citizens should object to the the stiffest gun reform possible including extensive background checks, ban of assault style weapons and those that can be converted to assault weapons.
9
"Republicans who have long resisted gun restrictions appear rattled." NOW they appeared rattled? So the murder of twenty children, ages six and seven, wasn't enough to rattle them? On the risk of being a cynic, if Congress didn't act then, I have no hope they'll do so now. And if they were to do so, the action will be far more symbolic then substantial. And in the end, what is needed here is substance, not a mere symbol.
7
Red flag laws are very good but a robust background checking system is also very good. The Republicans are less enthusiastic about background checks.
1
I always say that courts and politicians are in no position to allow guns into my workplace and social life until they allow them into their spaces. When I can bring an automatic rifle into courts, state houses, even the offices of legislators, then talk to me.
10
Ohio's governor announced today he was going to press the legislature to enact seventeen measures intended to reduce gun violence. He is being praised for his leadership on the issue.
Some research on the Ohio laws will reveal laws on the books already in place that can accomplish the same results as the proposed changes.
All of the talk is meaningless unless it will somehow reduce gun deaths. Action, not talk, can solve this national emergency.
2
And what makes people dangerous? Could it be the violence on Television, in movies, in video games, on social media, on the internet? Be honest. Everyone has no courage to face the causes, only the effects.
2
@PATRICK
Yeah, the cause is guns. You didn't even mention it.
4
@PATRICK - honestly? It's not tv, movies, video games.
Social media, of course, presents areas where people can get encouragement to do horrible things - we've seen it with radicalization from external and internal groups, including groups that embraced the hateful rhetoric of the current President. To be very clear, I'm talking about numerous white supremacist groups rejoicing that the current incumbent is on message with them.
And there are news channels and conspiracy web sites that do nothing but promote a sense of victimization in people who are supposedly at risk in a "War on Christmas" and a "War on Religion" and all sorts of other assaults that are merely other people wanting the freedom to not pretend they're white Christians of the right type of Christian persuasion.
And you add that to an excessively armed country, and it has effects. You get deluded individuals shooting in a pizzeria that they've been told - believe it or not - the ridiculous story that the leadership of a political party is also trafficing children in the back of a small business in DC. You can't make stupid stuff like that fly in a video or a movie - yet some places that claim they're "news" are pushing garbage into weak minds. When weak mind owns a gun, problems can happen. And it's so easy to get guns.
Have you got the courage to admit that guns being handy leads to a lot of violence that might otherwise have not happened?
1
@b fagan. A question: Why does talking about violence on the internet encourage psychos to kill but watching movies, video games have no effect? I'm not believing that. All the over- the- top violence that has been escalating for decades in American "entertainment" has contributed to a coarsening of our culture, too many people mimicking Clint Eastwood or Rambo. It's pathetic.
No more talk.
No more political football.
No more grandstanding.
Ban military weapons from civilians.
20
Focusing on individuals and their possible pathologies is an intentional Republican red herring. As is, in this instance, the issue of preventing suicides by guns (usually not by semi-automatic weapons), worthy as that otherwise is. It is more “like the 100-round drum the Dayton shooter used this weekend.” That and every attendant weapon of massive and quick taking of human lives. It is,actually, very, very simple.
2
So the Republican position now is that we must allow unlimited gun ownership to protect our liberty but to allow for unlimited gun ownership we must create a police state.
3
Such laws face a narrow gauntlet of federal HIPAA laws.
New laws must be written in such a way that they skirt the protection of health specific information that is protected against disclosure by HIPAA.
Any future laws may be opposed by arguing that HIPAA restrictions preclude enabling the new laws if those new laws run afoul of HIPAA.
1
Republican senators like Thune and McConnell are no more interested in protecting gun rights than they are interested in protecting innocent citizens, including children. All they are looking for are ways to remain in power. After all, McConnell needs to protect family interests in Chinese shipping and perhaps personal interests in Russian aluminum production. Not sure what Thune gets out of being a life long senator. In all events, the calculus is being contemplated or perhaps even solved - just how much lip service do they need to pay to gun control to stay in power.
12
Congress doesn't need to do anything with red flag laws.
This is the domain of the states.
Let the states decide how they're going to implement it.
I'm not about to let California's harsh red flag laws become the standard for Idaho, Iowa or Minnesota.
1
@Erica Smythe Leaving it up to states allows buyers to make online purchases from sellers in other states. The 2007 Virginia Tech shooter had been involuntarily committed and was ineligible to buy a firearm under Virginia’s red flag laws. But he was able to legally secure one online from a business in Wisconsin and used it to kill 32 people before taking his own life.
5
When do we get a red flag law in Minnesota? After a harsh mass execution of innocent citizens?
3
@Erica Smythe What does CA have to do with anything? Why would you object to the government taking away guns from someone who's mentally ill? What about that specifically upsets you?
5
Guns are to Republicans what immigration is to Democrats. In both cases, the parties’ positions are outside the mainstream consensus.
Republicans can/should certainly do more than just “red flag” laws, but they won’t. And their strategy will probably work.
Within one week, 90% of the U.S. public will have essentially forgotten about the incidents in El Paso and Dayton. In the modern media environment, the U.S. attention span on any given issue is about 72 hours at most.
But if another event happens (God forbid) much closer the election and the Democratic nominee focuses on it, Republican could lose badly.
As a Republican and Second Amendment supporter, I hope that Republicans move closer to the national consensus very quickly. But it’s not likely.
4
The only “red flag” apparent here is the cowardice of republicans.
93
Republican damage control is all this is and you can bet that the NRA is calling all the shots.
28
Real gun control laws? That haven't been written and approved by gun industry lobbyists and that haven't been significantly watered down before passing? I'll believe it when I see it. So what are you going to do, Congress?
21
Federal grants offered by Lindsey Graham? Easy to spend someone else’s money when it makes you look good.
17
Let’s not delude ourselves nothing short of repealing the 2nd Amendment will make any meaningful difference in the total number of gun deaths.
19
We don’t have to repeal the second amendment, we just have to follow it. A well regulated militia...
3
Repealing the second amendment won’t get rid of guns it will just put it back on the states which is actually a more coherent system than one size fits all
Congress should also make it a federal felony to commit any crime using a gun that has been transported through interstate commerce.
8
Require licenses and put limits on magazines, bullets, etc. require registration for the magazines and bullets. Showva license for hunting, the shooting range, etc. Reduce production by law. No one needs to stockpile this stuff. Keep the guns, destroy the bullets.
6