In Wake of Colorado Massacre, Blumenthal Renews Call For Assault Weapons Ban

Still waiting for anyone anywhere to show that relationship between increased crime and defunding the police. I think I'll be waiting until the day I die. Lack of evidence won't stop you from repeating the claim, though, of course.

"Colorado has a red flag law - why wasn't it used?"

Great question, and one that was answered by journalists yesterday: https://www.politico.com/news/2022/11/20/shooting-colorado-red-flag-law-00069674

"El Paso County appears especially hostile to the [red flag] law. It joined nearly 2,000 counties nationwide in declaring themselves 'Second Amendment Sanctuaries' that protect the constitutional right to bear arms, passing a 2019 resolution that says the red flag law 'infringes upon the inalienable rights of law-abiding citizens' by ordering police to 'forcibly enter premises and seize a citizen’s property with no evidence of a crime.'

County Sheriff Bill Elder has said his office would wait for family members to ask a court for surrender orders and not petition for them on its own accord, unless there were 'exigent circumstances' and 'probable cause' of a crime."

And this is why we need national gun control, with teeth -- not just an "enforce it if you feel like it" red flag law or a "we'll try this for a few years and then reverse it" assault weapons ban or a "we'll pass it but then ignore online marketplaces and gun shows" background check law.

One day, people in this country are finally going to get fed up with the NRA-backed Republicans undermining gun laws at every turn. And you'll be amazed at how well laws can actually work when they're not watered down. (See, for example, the UK, Spain, Japan... the list is long.)

A woman was killed with a wine chiller earlier this year. (https://patch.com/new-jersey/brick/woman-found-guilty-wine-chiller-murder-wife-brick.*) Should the U.S. ban wine chillers now too? Why not?

263,487 civilians were killed by anti-personnel explosives from 2010-2020. (https://reliefweb.int/report/world/decade-global-ied-harm-reviewed.) Should the U.S. allow anyone to build and own an anti-personnel explosive? Why not?

Oh right: Degree matters. Lethality matters. Likelihood of escalating from an argument to murder: also matters.

This is obvious.

*P.S. See how you can cite sources just by pasting a URL? It's easy and fun!

1) Democrats don't have power over statistical analysis or the ability to hide homicide data.
2) There is no data showing that the power of my thoughts is NOT propelling every motion in the universe, therefore, I am going to continue claiming that. QED, baby, QED.

There are about 10,000,000 firearms manufactured for domestic sale each year, and around 50,000,000 domestic firearm sales. So don't tell me the "genie is out of the bottle."

Sources and further reading:
1) https://www.atf.gov/resource-center/2020-annual-firearms-manufacturers-and-export-report-afmer
2) https://www.statista.com/statistics/249670/number-of-background-checks-done-by-the-nics-in-the-us/
3) https://www.thetrace.org/2021/10/firearm-average-lifespan-how-many-lost-stolen-broken-guns/

Yes, it would take something like 600 years of zero new firearm sales for all firearms to disappear from U.S. households at the current rate of destruction/recovery... but there are a lot of reasons why that's a junk metric. For one thing, the goal is not to disappear all firearms; the goal is to exit the state of affairs in which anyone with a petty beef can't just drop $200 and have a gun in hand within the hour. We do this by making firearms more scarce, more expensive, and more traceable, and by focusing on players whose guns routinely end up at crime scenes.

We also do this by drastically raising the difficulty of illegal arms trafficking. (Right now, between gun shows and Armslists and zero tracing or accountability, the difficulty level of being an arms trafficker is somewhere near 0. Universal background checks and registration/renewal/limits make this no longer a viable occupation.)

We can also dramatically raise firearm recovery rates by un-hamstringing the ATF (thanks Republicans!), microstamping all new guns, instituting liability, and getting over our hangups about registration/renewal. That Indiana dealer whose guns repeatedly show up in Chicago crime scenes? Yeah, send him straight to jail and confiscate his inventory -- and that's a few thousand guns off the market right there.

More on the how the ATF actually does their jobs (or doesn't): https://www.gq.com/story/inside-federal-bureau-of-way-too-many-guns

I do love the ammo regulation too, though!