Common Sense Gun Reform Laws

“Common sense isn’t so common, anymore,” goes one woefully pithy saying.

And, it certainly seems true — at least when it comes to matters of politics in this period.

But, exactly WHAT IS “common sense”?

Common sense could be the proverbial “moving target” which changes with every whim, and puffing wind of doctrine.

But, let’s hit the “pause” button for a moment and examine some matters surrounding firearms, aka “guns” and at least the two most recent tragedies in Buffalo, NY and Uvalde, TX, both sites of mass murders by 18-year-old gunmen armed with AR-15 style rifles.

Campaign flyer for GOP Arkansas U.S. Representative, Jay Dickey, CD-4.

Hyperbole aside, is there ANYTHING which could have been done to have prevented either holocaust?

Quite possibly, yes.

So, let’s examine some facts, and what laws ALREADY EXIST (or not) pertaining to firearms that might have prevented such carnage, and if they were useful — or not.

First, in BOTH cases, the perpetrators were aged 18.

Second, in BOTH cases, the firearm used — an AR-15 style rifle with a high-capacity ammunition magazine — was legally purchased.

Incidentally, that was also the firearm of choice used in numerous other massacre-style killings.

With respect to the Federal Government, there is NO law requiring establishing a comprehensive database of such massacres, and because of that, there is none. The ONLY such databases are maintained by private, non-governmental entities. That should not be so.

The Department of Justice maintains all sorts of statistics about crimes, and their perpetrators, but not on matters like this.

Why not?

That’s because a GOP Representative from Arkansas’ 4th Congressional District, Jay Dickie Jr. (1939-2017), put a “rider” onto a budget item in 1996 which has since been monikered as the “Dickie Amendment” which specifically forbade the Federal Government from studying such things.

At the time of his terms in the House of Representatives, Dickie described himself as an ardent Second Amendment supporter, which essentially translated into being “the NRA’s point person in Congress,” as he later described his role in a July 27, 2012 Op-Ed co-authored with Dr. Mark Rosenberg, MD.

“One of us served as the NRA’s point person in Congress and submitted an amendment to an appropriations bill that removed $2.6 million from the CDC’s budget, the amount the agency’s injury center had spent on firearms-related research the previous year. This amendment, together with a stipulation that “None of the funds made available for injury prevention and control at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention may be used to advocate or promote gun control,” sent a chilling message.”

Consequently, Federal scientists and researchers have been prevented from studying any matter related to firearms.

In that same Op-Ed, an analogy was used to illustrate the case in point.

“A few years ago, one of us came across a young woman who had just been hit by a car. She was the mother of two young children and one of Atlanta’s star runners. I found her unconscious and bleeding profusely from a severe head injury. She died in my arms while I tried to resuscitate her.

“Her death was tragic, but it wasn’t “senseless.” In scientific terms, it was explicable. The runner, who had competed in 15 marathons and broken many records, wore no lights or reflective vest in the early-morning darkness; she crossed the street within crosswalk lines that had faded to near-invisibility; there were no speed bumps on this wide, flat street to slow cars down.

“Scientists don’t view traffic injuries as “senseless” or “accidental” but as events susceptible to understanding and prevention. Urban planners, elected officials and highway engineers approach such injuries by asking four questions: What is the problem? What are the causes? Have effective interventions been discovered? Can we install these interventions in our community?”

It is blatantly anti-science, and anti-reason & illogical, to tell scientists that they can’t perform research, that they can’t seek to learn answers to questions, and to understand problems. And yet, that’s precisely what the Dickey Amendment did. And to be utterly certain, we’re definitely NOT talking about evil, unethically destructive and deadly experimentation as so-called “research” upon captive imprisoned human subjects by Nazi “Angel of Death” Josef Mengele (1911-1979). It is bizarre why the CDC is prohibited from studying that, or any other problem.

So, Dickey’s voice is at least one GOP ghost from the past who has spoken about that matter.

The voice of another GOP ghost from the past is now-late, former California Governor and POTUS Ronald Reagan, who, at his 78th birthday party in February 1989 — in response to a question about the shooting deaths of five Stockton schoolchildren in January that year, in which the gunman used an AK-47 style rifle — said “I do not believe in taking away the right of the citizen for sporting, for hunting and so forth, or for home defense. But I do believe that an AK-47, a machine gun, is not a sporting weapon or needed for defense of a home.”

And then, there’s the ghostly voice of GOP former VP & POTUS George H. W. Bush, who in a public letter to the NRA dated May 1995 wrote that “I resign as a Life Member of N.R.A., said resignation to be effective upon your receipt of this letter. Please remove my name from your membership list,” because “in the wake of the Oklahoma City tragedy, Mr. Wayne LaPierre, executive vice president of N.R.A., defended his attack on federal agents as “jack-booted thugs.” To attack Secret Service agents or A.T.F. people or any government law enforcement people as “wearing Nazi bucket helmets and black storm trooper uniforms” wanting to “attack law abiding citizens” is a vicious slander on good people.”

To be so purposefully paralytic, and make accusation of “playing politics” when good laws are deliberately killed in the Senate by the filibuster process, is purely anti-American, and exclusively evil.

Common Sense, Constitutionally Sound, Firearm Reform Laws

1.) Mandatory Universal Background Checks for ALL firearm purchases, transfers, and gifts, including private (person-to-person) sales.

 

2.) Increase Minimum Possession Age to 21.
We do that for beverage alcohol and tobacco, why not firearms?

 

3.) Mandatory Firearm Competency & Safety Training
Such was formerly taught in public schools, and some states mandate a safety & live-fire training course be successfully passed before possession occurs.

 

4.) Mandatory Waiting “Cooling Off” Period
The Brady Handgun Violence Prevention Act (Pub.L. 103-159, 107 Stat. 1536, enacted November 30, 1993), aka the “Brady Bill,” does exactly that, by mandating a five-day waiting period on possession of purchases, until the National Instant Criminal Background Check System (NICS) was implemented in 1998.

 

5.) Place ALL Assault-type firearms, and high-capacity (over 7 rounds) magazines, under the auspices of the National Firearms Act.
The BATF writes that, “Firearms subject to the 1934 Act included shotguns and rifles having barrels less than 18 inches in length, certain firearms described as “any other weapons,” machine guns, and firearm mufflers and silencers.“

 

6.) Increase the NFA Tax to $5000, and regularly adjust it for inflation.
The Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives writes that, “While the NFA was enacted by Congress as an exercise of its authority to tax, the NFA had an underlying purpose unrelated to revenue collection. As the legislative history of the law discloses, its underlying purpose was to curtail, if not prohibit, transactions in NFA firearms. Congress found these firearms to pose a significant crime problem because of their frequent use in crime, particularly the gangland crimes of that era such as the St. Valentine’s Day Massacre.” [NOTE: The massacre was a Prohibition Era rivalry murder of 7 Irish members of Chicago’s North Side Gang on Saint Valentine’s Day 1929, who were together at a garage in Lincoln Park, Chicago, on the morning of February 14, 1929, were lined up against a wall, and shot execution-style, by four unknown gunmen, allegedly and ostensibly in retaliation for a murder of a police officer’s son, by either Al Capone’s Italian Chicago Outfit rivals, and/or corrupt Chicago police.] “The $200 making and transfer taxes on most NFA firearms were considered quite severe and adequate to carry out Congress’ purpose to discourage or eliminate transactions in these firearms. The $200 tax has not changed since 1934.” According to the Consumer Price Index Inflation Calculator of the Bureau of Labor Statistics, the adjusted-for-inflation relative value of $200 in January 1934 would be the equivalent of $4,380.44 in April 2022.

 

7.) Establish a maximum number of firearms which may be owned before one must be required to obtain a Federal Firearm License (commonly referred to as an “FFL”), e.g., a combined total of 9 firearms, as 3 rifles, 3 shotguns, and 3 pistols, or any possession over 3 same-type items individually.
Numerous states have laws mandating that individuals who purchase and sell a certain number of vehicles in a a certain period of time must obtain a a license as a dealer/seller.

 

8.) Mandate that ALL owners maintain active liability insurance coverage for as long as ownership occurs.
The states do that with automobiles, why not with firearms?

 

9.) Outlaw so-called “ghost guns,” i.e., firearms and/or firearm parts made in any way, that do not contain a serial number and identifying a maker, and requiring such makers to obtain a FFL.

 

10.) Mandate that computer code/programming for “printed” firearms and/or parts, constitutes evidence of being a firearm maker/manufacturer, and that such code writers similarly be licensed with a FFL.

The lower receiver — the most critically integral part — of an AR-15 “ghost gun” rifle which has been printed, and contains no identifying information, no serial number, etc.