The White House is weighing a far broader and more comprehensive approach to curbing the nation’s gun violence than simply reinstating an expired ban on assault weapons and high-capacity ammunition, according to multiple people involved in the administration’s discussions.A working group led by Vice President Biden is seriously considering measures backed by key law enforcement leaders that would require universal background checks for firearm buyers, track the movement and sale of weapons through a national database, strengthen mental health checks, and stiffen penalties for carrying guns near schools or giving them to minors, the sources said.
“We’re going to take a look at what happened there [in Newtown] and what can be done to help avoid it in the future,” Rep. Bob Goodlatte (R-Va.), the incoming chairman of the House Judiciary Committee, which oversees gun laws, told Roll Call last month. “But gun control is not going to be something that I would support.”
Maybe we could have a bake sale instead.
“Appearing on the Dennis Miller Show, Rep. Louie Gohmert (R-TX) told guest host Larry O’Connor that he “refuse[s] to play the game of ‘assault weapon.’ That’s any weapon,” said the Texas congressman. “It’s a hammer. It’s the machetes.”
Funny, then, that these mass shootings never seem to be mass-hammerings or mass-machete-ing. If it could just as easily be any other weapon, then why don’t they ever use any other weapon? It seems that guns offer some comparative advantage when contemplating mass murder.
You also don’t see a lot of inner-city thugs using hammers either.
But let’s say, arguendo, that they’re right – “anything can be a weapon.” Even box cutters can be a weapon. And when they were used as one on airplanes on 9/11 we didn’t respond by arming all the flight attendants with box cutters – we banned them all together.
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