I don't necessarily think it's a "power grab" so much as the congresswoman sincerely thinks the best way to save lives is to eliminate gun ownership. I give her the benefit of the doubt that she's trying to help her community.
(This is the argument I would make to my anti-gun friends)
This bill in it's current form would basically eliminate gun ownership, obviously anything like this that ever made it out of committee would be watered down.
The problem with a watered down bill is it would be impossible to implement. Currently, there are about as many gun owners as passport holders in the US, ~140million. Passport requires you to do basically nothing, send in ID/photos/money and wait. Because it's such an administrative hassle they are good for 10 years.
Psch eval... your going to get 140 million people into a psychiatrist? We already have a massive shortage, further recent research suggest that people with mental illness are actually less likely to lash out than others.
Insurance... forcing people to buy insurance... I feel like we tried that...
Training... I mean I guess a new NRA could take that bull by the horns, maybe not a bad thing.
Valid for 1 year until 5 years 3 years after. Mass played around with this because it's such a hassle for the government. My Non-Resident License will be good for only 1 year, but all I have to do is send in a renewal and only have to complete the other steps every 5 years. Also they farm the whole process out the the local towns, essentially your local chief of police runs everything the state just does the background check... which again speaks to home much of a drain on resources it is.
As far as registering guns, looking again at Mass; basically anything you previous had was grandfathered in. If you leave the state establish residency elsewhere buy a bunch of guns and move back you don't have to register those. If you have a non-resident license you don't have to register them. If you move to mass you don't have to register guns before you became a resident. All this goes to show what a nightmare the registration component is.
So basically take the DMV and then add it to the passport office, that's the kinda infrastructure you would need to make a licensing - registration system work at current gun ownership scale.
Basically this bill is insane, even a watered down version of this is logistically insane. To make it work you'd need to shrink your problem massively with huge gun buyback program. Mass has low gun ownership 700,000 owners Community 7 million people. If the goal was to hit that level your buying back ~110,000,000 guns back so about 170x as many guns as Australia did.
Also I would imagine the locales like CA and MA actually might not vote for it as then they essentially have to trash the systems they've built.
Personally I think federal gun laws are a nonstarter, it should be entirely a state issue. Mass has it's system, CA, Maryland... fine, WY, ID, MT, NV, VT, NH more power to you.
I think the US is often the best when we respect each others differences; personal and geographic.
Thank you for coming to my TED
That’s the strategy, they know there will be voices from “our” side who say if we just give in to “this” and “compromise” on “that” so we can seem reasonable to the people in the middle. Hell, I had that line of thinking in my early 20’s when I started paying attention to this stuff. But it’s hogwash, these people don’t go away, it’s not like their gonna stop at 30 rd mags, or bump stocks, or pistol grips, or gun registration. As soon as they pass those they will move right on to introducing the next one. Just keep chipping away piece by piece.
I couldn’t agree more with you, no compromise ! Why in the hell would I compromise when I’m doing nothing wrong and what you want me to do won’t save one life ! Gun laws are laws that only take away rights of the responsible, that is ridiculous ! Hunters remember one thing the 2nd amendment does not guarantee us the right to hunt , it guarantees the right to bare arms. It gives us the right to have high capacity magazines , black guns and hand guns to protect home , family , community and country against tyranny both foreign and domestic ! If you don’t see that then you have not taken the time to understand the reason our forefathers made this the 2nd of the amendments. I also don’t agree with having states make gun laws , why should I because of where I live be restricted more than any other American ? Gun laws make the blameless suffer for what criminals do! Think about that , I can buy booze , as much as I want or afford ! I can drink as much as I want in the privacy of my home! That is not a crime or a right ! If I go and drive I commit a crime , if I go in public drunk and disorderly , again a crime ! Alcohol came make me dangerous even lethal . I can abuse it and many do but if I am responsible then no one cares! Legal purchase and consumption are not against the law , no matter how powerful , how high the alcohol content or the amount of bottles! There can be no compromise because gun laws are for the law abiding , if a criminal cared about gun laws then they wouldn’t be criminals.