Gun Violence in America

“We aren’t opposed to sensible gun regulation if it is politically possible and might prevent such killings. So-called red-flag laws that give police the ability to deny guns to people who may pose a risk to the community have been useful in some cases. But they are hard to enforce, as we recently learned in Buffalo. New York state has a red-flag statute, and Payton Gendron was even referred for mental counseling. He still got a gun.

Would background checks beyond those that already exist help? Unlikely, since these young men rarely have a criminal record. A six-day waiting period to receive a gun after it’s purchased? Not for someone who is determined to kill. A ban on purchasing a rifle until the age of 21? As Gov. Greg Abbott pointed out Wednesday, 18-year-olds have been able to buy long guns in Texas for more than 60 years. Yet for decades mass shootings were rare.

A ban on some or all long guns would still leave handguns available, and good luck enforcing a ban. Every political effort to control gun sales spurs a new surge in gun purchases. If you think society is polarized now, try banning or confiscating most guns as Australia has.

The recent proliferation of mass shootings suggests a deeper malady than gun laws can fix. Firearm laws were few and weak before the 1970s. Yet only in recent decades have young men entered schools and supermarkets for the purpose of killing the innocent. That a teenager could look at a nine-year-old, aim a gun, and pull the trigger signals some larger social and cultural breakdown…

We are fated to have another debate on gun control because half of American politics will insist on it. By all means have at it. But anyone who thinks gun laws will end mass shootings in America isn’t paying attention to the much larger problem of mental illness and the collapse of cultural guardrails.”

“In the aftermath of the shooting in Uvalde, Texas, Democrats are once again proposing gun control policies that would have done nothing to prevent the shooting or any of the other high-profile shootings that Democrats grandstand over…

As usual, the few vague ideas they have would do nothing to have prevented what happened. The shooter legally purchased two firearms from a “local federal firearms licensee,” meaning that he had to have passed a background check. Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer said on the Senate floor that he would bring forward two background check bills anyway. Universal background checks don’t apply here, and it’s not clear how “expanding” background checks would have done anything either.

A ban on “assault weapons” would be useless, given that such bans are entirely based on the cosmetics of a firearm. Indeed, the shooter in Buffalo, New York, circumvented the state’s assault weapons ban by altering a legal rifle in violation of the law. A red flag law may have prevented this shooting, but it didn't do so in Buffalo or in Boulder, Colorado, last year…

In 2015, the Washington Post fact-checked a claim by Sen. Marco Rubio (R-FL) that “none of the major shootings that have occurred in this country over the last few months or years” would have been prevented by popular gun control proposals. The Washington Post, hardly a pro-gun outlet, determined that Rubio was correct…

Democrats can use as many ridiculous stunts and stale talking points as they like, but their righteous indignation is all an act to manipulate voters emotionally. Democrats either don’t know that their gun control proposals would do nothing, making them incompetent, or they simply don’t care, showing how insincere their rhetoric is. Whatever the answer is, they are contributing nothing to the conversation aside from turning tragedies into campaign opportunities.”