After three weeks of Biden meeting with groups representing all sides of the gun control debate (including a plan to meet with the NRA tomorrow), it seems like any specific recommendations should be expected within the next few weeks. Today, Biden said that he is "determined to take action" and “we are not going to get caught up in the notion unless we can do everything, we’re not going to do anything.”
At the same time, some members of Congress are planning to introduce bills. However, with partisan procedural roadblocks, the threat of Senate filibuster. etc. it is unlikely that there will soon be a vote in either chamber.
Also, at the state level, a variety of different actions have taken place. Governor Cuomo of New York plans on enacting major changes in gun control in his state. While New York has already banned some assault weapons, Cuomo "wants to broaden the number of guns and magazines covered by the law while also making it harder for gun makers to tweak their products to get around the ban." On the other end of the spectrum, a small town in Utah stresses the importance of a gun in every household and "approved funding to offer concealed firearms training Friday to the 20 teachers and administrators at the local elementary school." Many other gun rights advocates also support this notion, while some even going as far to compare President Obama to Adolf Hitler, saying that "Nazi Germany banned guns before embarking upon the Second World War and the Holocaust" (information found here). The article continues on to say that "in fact, Hitler loosened gun laws in 1938 so that German citizens...could buy handguns with simple hunters' permits." However, even if the assertion was true, I do not believe that President Obama deserves to be compared to Hitler. Regardless of your political preferences, and regardless of whether or not you like President Obama, it is absurd to say that just because Obama supports stricter gun control, we will have another Holocaust on our hands.
On another note, former Arizona Representative Gabrielle Giffords and her husband Mark Kelly issued a statement yesterday, on the two-year anniversary of the shooting in Arizona that seriously injured Giffords, that their PAC (Americans for Responsible Solutions) will support and raise money for better gun control legislation.
It seems to me that the big debate between gun control advocates and gun rights advocates is whether or not greater gun control would be denying a individual Constitutional right, or increasing safety for the broader population. What do you think? Is the issue of gun control a matter for Congress to deal with, or the states? Or maybe even the president? Will any significant changes result any time soon?
3 comments:
The Colbert Report (http://www.hulu.com/watch/443675#i0,p0,d1) had a few choice (albeit very partisan) words to say about the gun debate. The issue that Colbert and I both find in the rhetoric following the Sandy Hook shooting is that gun advocates (most notably the NRA) are trying so shift the blame entirely from this nation's easy access to guns. While I admit that of course gun accessibility was not the only factor that caused the shooting, Colbert brings up a good point in that, while other countries have mentally ill people and pop cultures that glorify violence (the head of the NRA cited these as reasons for mass shootings,) only the US has such a high rate of gun violence and mass shootings. But as long as gun advocates can point the finger of blame at someone else, it will be difficult to get these suggestions compiled by Biden and his team taken to heart.
The gun debate is also considerably tricky when applied to federalism: should the federal government or the states have more say in dictating gun control laws? Although the states arguably have a greater knowledge about their individual circumstances involving gun possession in each state, having the states create their own laws involving gun control would lead to a disorganized jumble of conflicting laws and events. For instance, some may attempt to avoid answering to violations of gun laws in one state by moving to another state, or avoiding violations altogether by moving. However, a federal law involving gun control would also be difficult to execute, given the ruling from United States v. Lopez on congressional limits on intervention in public schools (regarding guns in that case). It will be interesting to see how Biden and his associates will seek to remedy the gun control issue.
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