There’s a new federal gun law in the works and it’s being heralded as a “bipartisan breakthrough agreement on gun violence.” I can’t even get past the first sentence without issuing an objection, your honor! Because the proposed gun control package is just more manipulative language aimed at eroding Second Amendment rights.
“Gun violence” makes it sound as if the guns are the ones causing the violence. The same goes for “gun safety” — a term President Biden used in response to this proposed legislation, which will not make guns any safer or less violent. Guns are inanimate objects, neither violent nor safe. They don’t spontaneously combust. People do.
But the point of this most recent round of proposed gun control — and all gun control, for that matter — is to condemn the weapon itself, not the user. Constantly associating the word “gun” with “violence” is a tricky and intentional ploy the left uses to make you think the gun is violent. Because analyzing the actual source of the violence, rather than the instrument employed, would reveal that Democrat policies leading to economic hardship and societal unrest are what really cause people to enact violence with guns. Which is different from “gun violence.”
The language of the bill itself is sufficiently vague as to be very scary. USA Today notes that the bipartisan group of senators announcing the gun control agreement “did not provide specific and detailed legislation.” In a statement, the senators laid out a head-scratching proposal that includes an agreement to “improve school safety and support for students” and “help ensure dangerous criminals and those who are adjudicated as mentally ill can’t purchase weapons.”
If agreeing to improve school safety and keep guns out of criminals’ hands were all it took, every member of Congress would have signed onto this bill. But they didn’t, and for good reason. Ten GOP senators joined ten Democrats to support it, with Chris Murphy of Connecticut leading the charge. On Twitter, he displayed a shocking level of ignorance, claiming the bill would include the
First ever federal law against gun trafficking and straw purchasing. This will be a difference making tool to stop the flow of illegal guns into cities.
…because we all know would-be criminals will be sure to check the gun trafficking and straw-purchasing laws before bringing guns into cities.
Enhanced background check for under 21 gun buyers and a short pause to conduct the check. Young buyers can get the gun only after the enhanced check is completed.
What does an “enhanced” background check entail? The background check system we have in place hasn’t worked. Many times, mass shooters have passed background checks, because the heinous crime they commit is their first and last. And again, in most other instances, criminals don’t care about obeying laws and won’t bother with a background check. Research shows that at least 80 percent of the time, criminals don’t acquire their guns in retail stores where background checks are conducted. They steal their firearms, buy them on the black market, or acquire them through — gasp! — a straw-purchase. And even if criminals did go through background checks to buy their guns, chances are it wouldn’t stop them, as the National Instant Criminal Background Check System is “riddled with flaws,” per PBS.
Murphy continues:
Major funding to help states pass and implement crisis intervention orders (red flag laws) that will allow law enforcement to temporarily take dangerous weapons away from people who pose a danger to others or themselves.
Red flag gun confiscation laws sound good in theory — of course we want to deny dangerous people access to dangerous weapons. But such laws, especially one as ambiguous as has been proposed at the federal level, are ripe for abuse. Vindictive exes, vengeful neighbors, jealous co-workers, you name it, can report you to police. With nothing more than a “tip,” law enforcement officers are legally able to confiscate your guns, and it’s up to you to prove your innocence.
David P. Kopel, adjunct professor of constitutional law at Denver University’s Sturm College of Law, testified before the Senate Judiciary Committee in 2019 that red flag laws
destroy due process of law, endanger law enforcement and the public, and can be handy tools for stalkers and abusers to disarm the innocent victims. Nearly a third of such orders are improperly issued against innocent people.
It’s likely the twenty lawmakers who came together in a bipartisan show of unity on “gun violence” know these laws will do nothing to prevent crime. But that’s not the point. The purpose of this latest gun control charade is to further the narrative that the gun is the problem and that confiscating it is the only way to end violence. When it fails to pass, the left will use it as a weapon against Republicans who failed to “do something” about “gun violence.”
