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Showing posts with label Mike Thompson. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Mike Thompson. Show all posts

Sunday, March 22, 2015

Good Words

From a recent piece in Politico from Representative Mike Thompson

To that end, the priority of Congress should be straightforward: Keep guns away from criminals, domestic abusers and the dangerously mentally ill while protecting the Second Amendment rights of law-abiding citizens. The best way to do this is by expanding criminal background checks. 

Yep.

The reaction on one side of the debate is to argue that guns have no place in our society. Significant constraints on gun ownership are proposed as legislative remedies. On the other side of the debate, we’re told the answer is to put more guns in schools and make it easier for people to carry weapons in public places such as malls and movie theaters. Both responses are extreme. Neither side gets anywhere. Gun violence continues unabated, and we fail to pass meaningful legislation that could save lives

Yep.

If you’re a Second Amendment supporter like me, this is problematic. Persistent gun violence will eventually lead to laws that place substantial and overly burdensome restrictions on our right to own guns. You don’t have to look any further than California’s attempt to require that all ammunition purchases be made through face-to-face interactions, or New York’s attempt to limit magazine capacity to seven rounds despite the fact that almost no handguns have seven-round magazines available to see the truth of this.

Yep.

We need to stop criminals, domestic abusers and those with a history of dangerous mental illness from getting guns.
The only way to know if someone falls into one of these categories is to conduct a background check. This is a rationale that an overwhelming majority of gun owners support. It’s one that even the National Rifle Association used to support before it changed its stance. Ironically, by flip-flopping on expanded background checks, the gun lobby has undermined a legitimate effort to reduce gun violence and, in doing so, has left the door open for more stringent restrictions on Second Amendment rights in the future. 

In short, the Gun Cult should give a little now and save themselves a whole worse later...