Thank you Diane Feinstein [View all]

Maybe some of you have seen the "This major new report on gun deaths should shock us all" post currently climbing up the Greatest Page:


https://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/plum-line/wp/2018/03/02/this-major-new-report-on-gun-deaths-should-shock-and-anger-us-all/?utm_term=.4119042fd01e

The new report from Rand reveals what a depraved dereliction of responsibility doing nothing yet again will really amount to. The report represents a serious effort to fill huge holes in our empirical knowledge about gun policy — holes that are there by choice, in part because Congress has badly underfunded research and data collection on the topic. The Rand report undertook a comprehensive review of an enormous amount of recent studies on more than a dozen gun policies — then whittled that down to around five dozen that passed its methodological standards, and summarized the conclusions.

The key findings, for purposes of the current debate, are as follows:

There is credible evidence that policies implementing background checks do reduce firearm homicides and suicides, and there is reason to believe expanding these checks would have a similar effect.

There is credible evidence that gun prohibitions associated with mental illness reduce firearm violence (though there’s more limited evidence that they reduce firearm suicides).

There is more solid evidence that child-safety measures reduce unintentional injuries and deaths.

Rand did find that the evidence on the efficacy of other policies — such as bans on assault-style weapons and raising the minimum age for purchases — is inconclusive.

So, background checks work. Keeping crazy and violent people from having firearms works. Bans on guns because of their looks - not so much.

In other shocking news, water is wet, fire is hot, kittens are cute.

THANK YOU DIANE FEINSTEIN!

After Sandy Hook there was widespread bipartisan support for genuine and meaningful action on keeping bad people from having access to firearms.

Right now we could have a robust, secure, nationwide background check system in place, linked to reliable and timely information about whether or not a prospective purchaser (or transferee) was a prohibited person.

The political will was there - but NOOOOOoooooo! Diane Feinstein had to lard up the bill with her signature pet ideology BAN ASSAULT WEAPONS! Poof! There goes your bipartisan support and the bill fails.

How many lives have been lost because we don't have a universal and up to date background check system in place? Can you say Devin Patrick Kelley, Dylann Roof, Nikolas Cruz?

Most of us here know that despite what half of your Facebook feed is trying to convince you, assault weapons bans don't work. The 1994 ban did little more than cost Democrats in the mid-terms. The intensity and fervor of anti "assault weapon" memes suggests to me that an outside actor (Russia?) was primed and ready to take full advantage of the next gun tragedy and use it to give the Left every opportunity to shoot itself in the foot. I mean no disrespect to the Parkland students and their efforts, but their movement blew up really big and really fast - almost as if it was given a "push" by a foreign actor whose chief interests are not school safety and gun control but to blunt the momentum of the Democrats in November.

The Trump kleptocracy/kakistocracy/regime is the most dangerous, destructive, disaster to happen to the United States since the Civil War.

We need to focus on winning seats.

Background checks, reliable reporting on prohibited persons, closing the "gun show loophole" are winnable solutions.

Banning some of the most popular firearms because of their looks - is a losing proposition.

So thank you Diene Feinstein, for once again giving the Democrats a prime opportunity to snatch defeat from the jaws of victory.