Can the US break its cycle of gun control failure?

[TeddyR]

That’s the work Hockley has been doing for more than three years. The first weeks after her son’s death, still shocked and grieving, Hockley and some of the other parents of children murdered at Sandy Hook began a “crash course” in the history of American gun laws and gun politics.

They learned that while assault weapons played a prominent part in many mass shootings, they play only a tiny role in America’s overall gun violence problem. The loophole-ridden 1994 federal assault weapons ban, which expired in 2004, produced no clear evidence of reducing gun violence. An in-depth evaluation of the law concluded that the impact of even a more comprehensive ban would be “small at best and perhaps too small for reliable measurement”.

That was not a surprise to anyone who had been paying attention. In the early 1990s, even some gun control advocates criticized the push for an assault weapon ban as a “distraction” with little crime-fighting benefit. But the ban generated intense, visceral reactions from the public. A former Democratic staffer who helped craft the assault weapon ban said he had hoped passing it would give Democrats the political momentum they needed to pass the drier, more technical gun laws that might actually save more lives.

Instead, the push for a political victory backfired. President Bill Clinton later blamed the assault weapon ban for the 1994 midterm victories that allowed Republicans to take over both houses of Congress. Many prominent gun control groups have since moved away from an assault ban – “through hard, bitter experience”, said Matt Bennett, a gun policy expert who advised Sandy Hook Promise.

Democrats know the research behind the ban. While a ban on high-capacity magazines could help some, the assault weapons ban “does nothing”, a former senior Obama administration official said last year.

This is the first in a series of stories from the Guardian discussing gun violence/control. This story focuses primarily on the assault weapons ban. The rest can be found here - https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2016/jun/20/gun-control-orlando-attack-newtown-mass-shooting

[Agnosticsherbet]

1. A more liberal court will help.

Most of it is in the hands of Congress because it requires legislation.

[Adrahil]

2. Not until the House is ours. NT

[jmg257]

3. The lastes on the Sandy Hook lawsuit...

http://www.reuters.com/article/us-connecticut-shooting-idUSKCN0Z6165

"The maker of the assault rifle used to kill 26 children and educators at a Connecticut school in 2012 argued on Monday that attempts to limit the sale of such weapons to civilians are best left to lawmakers and not families of the victims who sued the company.

A lawyer for Bushmaster Firearms LLC, which manufactures the AR-15 that 20-year-old Adam Lanza used in his attack on Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, told a Connecticut judge the 2005 federal Protection of Lawful Commerce in Arms Act prohibited the suit.

"It's not the role of this court or perhaps a jury to decide whether civilians as a broad class of people are not appropriate to own these kinds of firearms," James Vogts, an attorney for Bushmaster's parent company, Remington Arms, told a courtroom so packed that more than a dozen spectators were watching the hearing standing in a hallway outside the court."

...

[hunter]

4. Social pressure against smoking and drunk driving have been effective.

I can eat in smoke free restaurants, rent rooms in smoke free motels, fly on smoke free planes.

Assholes who insist their smoking isn't a health hazard, who insist on smoking anywhere, are much rarer now than they used to be, as are drunks who insist on driving drunk.

People also ought to know the second amendment is bullshit, an ugly relic in our Constitution, just as slavery was.

The purpose of the second amendment has rarely been noble; instead it's a means of keeping a well armed population of fools around to further oppress the oppressed.

Slaves revolting, workers striking, Indians won't leave? Call the morons with guns. Call them a militia. Deputize them. Tell 'em they are patriots and they'll shoot anyone. They'll even buy their own guns and ammunition. If a few occasionally commit unsanctioned murder, shooting up Indian Villages, murdering black or gay people, it's just unfortunate.

[LanternWaste]

5. I believe it's mathematically possible, but without the collective will to examine our wounds

I believe it's mathematically possible, but without the collective will to examine our wounds, let alone the cause of those wounds, I don't really think anything will happen anytime soon.

Indeed, the mere mention of simply bringing up the conversation in a public forum is met with the righteous cries from the absurd of "what other rights do you want to take away from me?" or "what works over there can't work here because (insert fallacy here)" and my favorite "the CDC shouldn't be studying the health impact of firearms anyways!"

If we eventually become rational, we will then discuss; and from those discussions come plans and hopefully measurable, objective results.