President Obama Considers Executive Action on Gun Background Checks

Some of the earliest gun control laws were instituted in the South. In most frontier towns of the Wild West, you had to turn your guns into the sheriff; there were fewer shootouts than Hollywood would have you believe. The American public overwhelmingly supports background record checks. It would also make background checks mandatory for anyone hoping to purchase weapons from these dealers. “There seems to be no middle there, but I know there is”. The consequences of situations analogous to the Oregon shooting, and even those of the Oregon shooting itself, could have been drastically diminished if those involved were carrying guns. But at the federal level, our elected leaders do not heed the will of the majority, and instead surrender to a vocal minority of Americans who speak forcefully and angrily – and often intimidatingly – in favor of an absolute right of gun ownership. The online vitriol can be intense. Thanks to retirements and losses in the 2014 elections, they now are probably 11 votes shy of the support they’d need to succeed. Psychologically this lack of worry makes sense too.

For years, a tiny percentage of federally licensed gun dealers has been responsible for a disproportionate percentage of guns used in crimes. There are no reports in any of these cases of the adults who allowed children access to guns being charged, though the 11-year-old who deliberately shot the little girl will be facing murder charges. The president and the left wing media horde of editorialists and activists citing Great Britain and Australia give us our hint – gun confiscation. There is no way politicians can take away this fundamental right guaranteed by the Second Amendment whether they like it or not.

“Half the people in Roseburg say it’s wonderful, the other half say he shouldn’t show up”, said Earl Skonberg, a local gun owner who engages in sport shooting.

It’s a sick marketing loop, with a killer slogan: He’s coming for your guns.

The fight to impose reasonable gun controls is not going to be won in one grand battle. Clearly, background checks are not going to prevent a lot of these mass shootings from happening.

Again, misdirection. Rare mass shootings aren’t the issue; common mass gun violence is. Why aren’t this repeated outpouring of emotion, and public opinion overwhelmingly in favor of reasonable gun safety laws, enough to get things to change? But they argue tighter control could still save a significant number of lives.

Lott followed this book with The Bias Against Guns, which sought to explain why his opponents couldn’t accept the results of his study. “His is not something [gun control] I can do by myself”. And he’s stopped listening to their views.

“It was God’s will. It was her time to go, I guess”, said another. But sometimes they sound awfully similar, and the guns they worship flow from the same booming market. New efforts are now underway.

To force federal legislators to act on gun control action in the face of the well-funded and well-organized NRA, exceptional passion is called for. Indeed, gun crime may warrant its own code, penalties and segregated incarceration for offenders featuring conspicuously austere prison conditions.

Bond’s strategy: Use humor and a conversational tone. They did not check his gun purchase records or search his home. The question-and-answer section on its Web site is both entertaining and welcoming.

Here are three books we recommend: two from authors positioned on either side of the debate, and another who stands in the middle. “We can’t keep the stuff on the shelves”. Mostly, they are handgun deaths, whether homicide, suicide, or accidental.

In the wake of the shooting of Trayvon Martin, we’re more aware that those 30 lives have meaning. “For years on immigration, he said he was not a king, not a monarch”. By comparison, the NRA raised almost $350 million in 2013.

“I don’t see how he has anything authority to do this”, he said.