I really don’t like The President.
However, I found that I leaned toward several of the points that he made.
I’m still processing on the points, Here’s a list of what I mostly agree with.
Shootings
The shootings must stop.
An animal that walks into a school or a store and just opens fire, is to my mind rabid. As such, they deserve nothing but to be put down as you would a rabid animal. No mercy, no negotiation.
Something that I have noticed is that these animals always seem to go for “soft” targets. Whether that is a school, a church, a bar, or a shopping center. One thing these venues have in common is that they are almost always a Gun Free Zone.
A notable exception was the church in TX where one of the parishioners dropped a shooter on a sunny Sunday morning.
More Gun Control Laws
I’m not sure that more gun control laws will prevent these kinds of shootings. The so-called “Expanded” background checks I think are toothless.
I can say from experience that the “Gun Show” loopholes are largely red herrings. I’ve never been to a gun show that was “Cash & Carry”. If you purchase a gun at a gun show, you still have to pass the background checks and the gun must be shipped to a licensed federal firearms dealer. The purchaser can pick it up after providing appropriate documentation, and paying a handling fee. The same is true of Online Sales.
Mental Health
Mental Health Care must be expanded. I honestly don’t care how that is done, but I believe it must be done.
Red Flag Laws
I’m ambivalent about red flag laws. I can see the point and their usefulness. Alternatively, I’ve read horror stories where an aggrieved party abused the law to settle a score.
There’s one story that pops to mind where in a bitter divorce, the wife activated the Red Flag law. Her husband’s collection of rare and antique guns was taken, then the guns “disappeared” from police custody. The collection was worth north of 100,000 dollars. The wife demanded her half of the cash even though the guns were gone and therefore couldn’t be sold for profit. Depending on the Red Flag law, it’s possible to misuse it in a way similar to “Swatting”.
Age Limits
I’m not sure about the age limits on gun purchases. I do applaud The President’s speechwriter for addressing the military versus non-military aspects of 18 year olds purchasing guns. Yes, we send 18 year olds to fight in wars and kill people. Then those young people come home and can’t buy a beer. I’ve always found that to be wrong. On the other hand if the drinking age is 21, then I can see the gun purchase age being 21 as well. It is for handguns in most places.
And yet, we still have the weekly Chicago teenage shooting fest. This tends to imply, that criminals will be criminals regardless of the law or their age.
I completely disagree with laws similar to the California law that proposed making it illegal to hand a weapon registered to you, to another person, or member of your family. That disrupts a father being able to take his sons hunting, or to a shooting range. It also creates a complication if, for example, you’re at a range with a buddy and would like to try out his new Glock to see if you’d like it. (I don’t know if that idiotic law passed or not in California. I’ll have to look it up.)
Gun Safety
The President mentioned trigger locks, and safe storage of weapons. I can see that. (Although trigger locks can be defeated fairly easily.) The problem I have with so called “safe storage” is that a gun locked in a safe is no damn good if someone kicks your door down in the middle of the night.
Now you know why I sleep with a baseball bat at hand and some kind of knife nearby as well. Just as with a gun, I hope I’ll never have to use either of them. (Then again, caving someone’s skull in or gutting them wouldn’t disturb the neighbors like a gunshot would.)
High Capacity Magazines
The President referenced High Capacity Magazines again. This time he defined what he meant by high capacity. I lean toward agreeing, that 30 or 40 round magazines are high capacity. I’m not sure why someone would want that kind of capacity. I don’t know enough about that particular subject to intelligently comment.
I’ve been looking a Henry Lever action rifles for hunting. Most of them, top out at 10 round capacities. Several of them top out at seven rounds. These seem like reasonable maximums if you’re hunting.
I remember being told once, (discussing the model 1911 pistol,) that if you couldn’t hit what you were aiming at with seven rounds, you probably couldn’t hit it with 70. In my family, we were taught it was a very bad thing to waste ammunition. So I might be biased about the number of rounds necessary.
Other things said
One thing I noticed in comments that popped up after The President’s speech was that a lot of people were just badmouthing The President based on some of his comments earlier in the week. He said things like he wanted to ban 9mm.
Because of his earlier statements, people heard what they wanted to hear in his address Thursday.
In this post, I’m trying to maintain focus on what he said in his speech.
If in fact some of the legislation his party is proposing contains bans on 9mm, or AR-15 rifle mechanisms then I’ll have to re-evaluate.
9mm is one of the most common calibers on the market today. Most law enforcement use them and honestly if The President did actually ban that caliber, it would create chaos.
Law enforcement goes through a lot of testing before they approve a particular gun and / or caliber for their use. Having to resupply every police force in the country would impose a large financial burden on police budgets nationwide. Including The President’s own security forces. I tend to think The President misspoke earlier in the week referencing 9mm.
Size wise, a 9mm slug isn’t terribly different from a .38 so I’m really not sure why The President spoke about 9mm at all.
Then again, time will tell.