if/when we pass any kind of gun reform, we must have the backs

[mopinko]

of all the yes votes.
remember what happened to the reps who voted for the assault weapons ban. they will have a target on their backs. i say that both metaphorically and literally.

no, i dont have a shred of hope that it will happen until 2018, at the earliest. unless the departure of cheato causes a try political earthquake.

but maybe some day we will come to our senses.

[Hoyt]

1. Assault style weapons ban will send today's gunners into shock. They've been using those to bolster

their courage for too long.

Of course, if we had banned semi-autos in the 1990s, Paddock would have just sucked his miserable life up and not massacred a bunch of people. There would also have been 100 million or so less guns on the street. Assault style semi-autos have fueled the gun industry for years.

And, No, gunners, it's not too late. We have to start somewhere. Every decade we do nothing -- to keep gunners from whining -- puts another 100 million guns on the streets that we will have to deal with. Maybe it'll take 50 years to see a big difference, but it will make it better. I don't care what coward, bulling gun-strokers say.

[EX500rider]

3. "Paddock would have just sucked his miserable life up and not massacred a bunch of people."

Maybe, or maybe he would have plowed into the crowd in a U-Haul at 70mph and killed more people, like the terrorist in Nice France did, who killed 86 people and injured 458 with a truck.
Unfortunately where there is a will there is a way.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2016_Nice_attack

[Hoyt]

4. Or maybe it would have been too difficult to pull anything off without the relatively low cost of

some assault style rifles, a bump stock and some practice.

At a minimum, with no assault rifles, he wouldn't have had the guts to do anything. That's why people acquire the dang things.

[EX500rider]

6. "BTW, how many assault style rifles do you have?" None.

I do have some 70 year old bolt action WWI/WWII Mausers and Mosin Nagants and one 1934 K31 Schmidt–Rubin.

"Or maybe it would have been too difficult to pull anything off without the relatively low cost of some assault style rifles, a bump stock and some practice."
So you think that's easier and cheaper then renting a truck at $29.95 a day?

[Hoyt]

9. I think banning some guns will be a good idea. If for no other reason, it will cool down the gun

market, maybe even end it. Also, make gunners have to find other ways to bolster their courage and deal with life's challenges.

[bettyellen]

5. Not so easy to run over your wife and kids though. Their deaths would be less common too.

[EX500rider]

8. I doubt any gun reform is going to do away with handguns, which are used in 90%+ of gun homicides

[mopinko]

13. rly? how about this-

no guns for those w orders of protection. no guns for those accused of domestic violence.
take that shit as serious as a heart attack. have those guns rounded up by the time the sun sets.

and how about we allow family members to petition the court to remove guns from people who are mentally unstable? many people refuse to get treatment for the very reason that they fear being labelled as mentally ill. but their families know. they may not care about a dx, but they sure as hell know when someone is threatening them w guns, or has a hair trigger temper that they know could get pulled one day and people will die.

this is the law in cali.

[EX500rider]

14. I am fine with all that...but all rifles includ "assault rifles"...

....are used in about 3% of homicides so the strong vibe here to ban those won't move the homicide rate hardly at all.

[bettyellen]

17. I think it's more keeping them out of the hands of the wrong people- those w restraining orders etc.

And actually enforcing that where it is the law. Right now licensing is a fucking joke in too many states.

[Hoyt]

10. :)

[hack89]

7. And do you really think an AWB will be passed anytime soon?

what is your best guess?

[Hoyt]

11. Not with so-called Democratic gunners threatening to vote for Trump in 2020.

Look, Hack, I know your guys will pull out all the stops to keep your precious guns. But, might as well keep the pressure on. Maybe some day, it will be like cigarettes -- many gunners will be too embarrassed to let anyone know of their sick gun habit.

[EL34x4]

16. Of course, if we had banned semi-autos in the 1990s...

...Paddock could've still massacred a bunch of people, only using a weapon that had a thumbhole stock and no bayonet lug.

The '94 AWB didn't really ban anything. It just made some people feel good.

Oh, and it cost some other people their political careers.

[Amishman]

18. an AWB is a bridge too far, unpassable. The best we might be able to do is bumpfires

and that will probably mean simply adding them to the machine gun registry and controlling them as such, rather than an outright ban

[H2O Man]

2. Recommended.

[better]

12. Hopefully whatever we do manage to get passed will be more sensible than previous AWB's were.

The AWB's, for all their good intentions, had two major flaws.

First, they defined "assault weapon" in such a way that a regular old rifle you could buy at Wal-Mart could be rendered an assault weapon simply by changing the stock out for one with a pistol grip or a thumb hole. And secondly, they created the appearance of making us safer without actually making us safer, because the exact same firearm with the exact same capabilities, just mounted in a stock quite literally of just a different shape remained completely legal, despite being functionally identical to the banned "assault" weapon. Ergo, they banned certain ergonomic features that create absolutely no additional risk, for absolutely no public safety benefit.

I'm hoping that the focus we have seen of late on these bump fire stocks will be a teachable moment, because they illustrate with shocking clarity the difference between a stock that lets you adjust the position of your face relative to the trigger (and thus the optics mounted above it) by two or three inches and a stock that lets you fire several times as many bullets in a given stretch of time. One of those two very clearly applies to public safety while the other very clearly doesn't.

I suspect a good many gun owners would actually be okay with an assault weapon ban, provided it limits the criteria by which a weapon is classified as banned to things that actually impact what the gun is capable of, as do those bump fire stocks, and leave purely cosmetic or ergonomic characteristics up to the owner. I know at least that I would.

There will, naturally, be considerable resistance to passing any form of assault weapon ban, but it would be incredibly foolish for Democrats to underestimate the degree to which we can benefit, both legislatively and electorally, from simply confining our regulatory efforts at gun reform to the things like bump fire stocks that actually do have an impact on how dangerous a weapon is, and thus on public safety. Going beyond that to banning things that don't costs us a great deal of support we might otherwise have, and it's really easy to avoid if we simply insist on our legislators actually understanding the things about which they craft legislation.

Speaking for myself, if Congress does step way over the line of sensibility on this again, I will certainly not vote Republican in protest, but I very much would be compelled to support challengers from the left who will take a more knowledge-based approach, and as we have hopefully all realized with painful clarity, that is a dangerous game to play, even within our side of the political spectrum.

[mopinko]

15. and then there is this-

https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/wonk/wp/2016/09/19/just-three-percent-of-adults-own-half-of-americas-guns/?utm_term=.7cf04782e46a

people suffering from mental illnesses prolly shouldnt have guns.
owning more than 1-2 guns should be considered a symptom of the mi of paranoia.
we really need to track the # of guns and ammo ppl have.
families should be allowed to veto foid cards.

[Amishman]

20. except that would require a lot of other new laws which would be difficult

outlawing private sales
a registration system (non-existent in most states)
a FOID card process for all states (most do not have such a thing)

That 3.5% is still like 10 million people who not only vote the issue but are very vocal about it. Makes it hard to get anything done when the smallest proposal is met with massive hostility

think smaller; safe storage requirements, opening the background check system for use by private sales, adding bumpfire guns to the machine gun registry. These types of things are possible.

[aikoaiko]

19. Passing an AWB (like the one in 2012) would do nothing prevent a LV style massacre.

The 2012 AWB allowed new ARs to be bought and possessed with a simple $35 grip change. One screw.

The reason why AWBs are so easily defeated is that lawmakers are trying to ban AR15s without banning semi-auto rifles.

[mopinko]

21. well so far this thread has completely missed the point of the op.

my comments mostly included.