Stephen Benson first learned during Navy SEAL training that carrying a gun would be more likely to expose him to gun violence.
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“Despite what we see on TV, the presence of a firearm is a greater risk, especially in the hands of an untrained person”, Chipman told The Nation. Simply deciding that the gun control issue is a political loser is self-fulfilling, just the sort of fatalism that the NRA counts on to preserve the status quo.
“We could have opened ourselves up to be potential targets ourselves, and not knowing where SWAT was, their response time, they wouldn’t know who we were, and if we had our guns ready to shoot, they could think that we were bad guys”, said Parker, who took shelter with other students in a classroom.
Anyone buying assault rifles needs to have insurance coverage to protect the innocent citizens who may be harmed, accidentally or otherwise, In the event that they lose their minds temporarily and go on a shooting rampage. MoveOn.org circulated a petition to repeal the Second Amendment.
Many civilian gun owners understand this, and a few are taking increasingly popular weekend-long tactical training courses.
So if mass shooters are already passing background checks to acquire their guns, what good is a push to expand background checks to even more sales? There are three “no” votes on background checks with tough re-election races in swing states next year: Kelly Ayotte in New Hampshire, Ron Johnson in Wisconsin and Rob Portman in Ohio.
While Murphy said that he is “hopeful” the Senate will take up his bill, any gun control measure faces an uphill fight in the Senate.
Republicans say that “guns don’t kill people, people kill people!”
There has always been a culture war element to the American gun control debate.
Following the recent campus shooting in Oregon, I chose to look into North Carolina’s gun laws. State legislatures have been taking on the gun lobby – and they’re winning.
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Senate Democrats are set to roll out legislation this week that would block a gun from being sold without a background check. The hope is that imposing stricter gun controls on the latter will reduce the supply available to the former. The 300 million guns already here and the significant private demand for weapons would make for a potent black market. But neither the sincerity of those feelings nor the seriousness of the underlying problem obviate the obligation to spell out what policies are really being proposed here and marshal evidence that they will actually work.
