Address Gun Violence in Cities: As president, Barack Obama would repeal the Tiahrt Amendment, which restricts the ability of local law enforcement to access important gun trace information, and give police officers across the nation the tools they need to solve gun crimes and fight the illegal arms trade. Obama and Biden also favor commonsense measures that respect the Second Amendment rights of gun owners, while keeping guns away from children and from criminals who shouldn’t have them. They support closing the gun show loophole and making guns in this country childproof. They also support making the expired federal Assault Weapons Ban permanent, as such weapons belong on foreign battlefields and not on our streets.
From here. As an aside, does it disturb anyone else that there’s already a “change.gov” website for the president-elect?
Hmm, let me see if I can sum things up:
- Open up gun trace data for political purposes (read: lies), as police already have access to trace data for bona fide law enforcement purposes.
- Ban on private sale of firearms. (There is no “gun show loophole”.)
- Mandating “smart guns” that don’t exist and probably won’t work.
- Banning scary-looking guns, permanently.
That sounds remarkably like the list of talking points at the Brady Campaign.
It looks like all my friends who claimed Obama was a friend of the Second Amendment were wrong. I hate to say “I told you so”, but…well, I told you so.
Look, I agree that violent crime is reprehensible. I agree that violent criminals should have no business owning a gun. I agree that we, as a society need to work to reduce violent crime…but putting these restrictions on law-abiding citizens has no effect on crime. California’s banned the private sale of firearms, and it’s done nothing. There was a ban on scary-looking guns for ten years, and it did nothing.
Rather than pushing for these stupid feel-good measures which have been tried over and over and over (and have inevitably resulted in no change in violent crime rates) and which only affect law-abiding citizens, why not actually try to address the root causes of violent crime?
Update: Hat tip to Sebastian. It was bad form of me to not credit him first.
Hello, and thanks for your support of both the Second Amendment and simple common sense. To pick up exactly where you left off: nearly all violent crime in this country originates with the illegal drug trade. I’m no advocate of drug use, but our current drug policy is a disaster for everyone in this country except traffickers, law enforcement, corrections, and the Mexican GDP, all of which benefit mightily. The gun lobby is undoubtedly willing to battle gun legislation for eternity, and that’s a good thing, because as long as we accept and continue to fund our existing drug enforcement policies, politicians will continue to fight crime with gun legislation.