As long as half of the congress remains whored out to the gun industry and the other half remains too frightened, innocent Americans will remain at risk to gun violence. We are long past time for action that helps to keep weapons out of the hands of criminals, psychopaths, domestic abusers and other dangerous people.
A few suggestions:
- Re-institute a ban on the sale of assault weapons to the general public and add in a ban on high capacity magazines.
- Close the gun show loophole that allows the sale of weapons without background check.
- Institute severe penalties for unlicensed possession of a firearm or possession of a firearm without proof of ownership
- Institute a federal tax on firearms and ammunition (the proceeds of which are re-distributed to the states) to pay the cost of the information technology infrastructure, the additional training and the additional equipment necessary for local public safety responders to deal with the proliferation of firearms in the streets
- Establish location and possession of each firearm, whether it is at the manufacturer, the wholesaler, the distributor, the retailer, the purchaser or the secondary owner. Significant penalties should be established for failure to report.
- Each gun manufacturer should know exactly where in the distribution channel each of their products are located and should be held liable if they don’t.
- Enforce the laws already on the books
For all of the wing-nut paranoia of the gun freak crowd, the only two pieces of gun related measures that President Obama has implemented is to allow firearms in National Parks and on Amtrak. How many children have to die before we as a nation get serious about management of a product that is specifically designed to kill as many people as possible in the shortest amount of time?
Doing nothing is no longer an option.
