Even closer to Brunswick than Lewiston…
It was Susan Collins. King is after my time occasionally darkening the hallways of Congress…
Look at the history of Australian gun control. Thirty-five killed in the Port Arthur incident, laws passed, Australian gun violence is a fraction of what it was pre-1997.
The American gun lobby are just moronic. Look at the number of guns per capita in the US, compared to Canada or Iceland. More per capita granted, but not an order of magnitude. People in Canada have guns. I have guns. But I adhere to regulatory requirements, my guns are very secure, and they don’t kill people.
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Jim Jeffries nailed it (parts 1 and 2).
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Thanks for the considered response.
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Ditto, thank you for the considered response.
It would be interesting to see if the US would have the stomach for stricter laws, or a buy back. Apparently it does not. The scale would be off the charts, and law abiding people would not want to yield their weapons as they would say that only the criminals would then be armed.
At the least there has to be better background checks, and gun shows need to be regulated so checks can happen there too. Violent offenders and any mental health issues should be the things looked for and sifted out.
Personally, I would liken the owning of a gun to the owning of a car, and make several laws in a similar way. If I want to own and operate a car I have to learn how to do that and pass a recognized test. I would get a license that would be good for 5-10 years, then re-up as applicable. Let’s apply that to firearms.
And if I want to operate a car, I have to carry insurance, due to numerous things that could happen as a result of owning and operating a car. I would apply that to gun ownership and require insurance. At that point I would let the actuarial tables do their work too. Young? Inexperienced? Then you would pay more, just like with owning a car.
Beyond that, I would personally be much more strict, but this would never pass.
I would allow guns for sporting purposes, and for hunting. Not my bag, but it’s a vast land, and I can see that that aspect has some merit.
At that point, your guns are locked up in a secure facility, and you check them out for your hunting trip, and then check them back in at the end of the trip.
Guns would be outlawed in all city limits. Three strikes, and it’s jail for a long long time.
If you live outside city limits, you could have a gun. I get that there might be a need to protect your farm/homestead from wild animals. Even then, guns must be locked up securely.
Just spitballing here, but there are lots of things that could be done, if the will was there.
Tragically the political will is not there, so it won’t be long until the next time. And the next. And the next. Etc.
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Brilliant stuff from Jefferies 
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Please explain
I’ve read in a newspaper that since the start of the year, 15k people have found a violent death through firearms in the US. That’s without counting in the number of suicides. Is that number accurate?
Probably.
It’s the freedom argument that upsets me the most.
At what cost? And if you’re a slave to your guns, how free are you really?
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The idea that the 2A contains text “shall not be infringed” (often cited by gun nuts) seems to clash with the idea of having a (also part of the 2A) “well-regulated militia.” Funny how we don’t hear much about the latter. Seems like bad faith to me.
I gave up caring after Sandy Hook. Lawmakers’ inability to do anything meaningful after that horror proved that , for some of them , gun rights were more important than kids’ lives.
This is America , sadly.
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The problem is the conversation is no longer about guns. Guns have become a totem and a representation of “freedom”. To that crowd, any restriction on guns is an attack on what it means to be American. This is a relatively new issue as it relates to guns, but the right’s positioning of political opposition as being anti-american is part of a decades long theme.
Part of the point of this is that it creates such a reflexive opposition among a certain segment of the country who are likely double down on support of their guns, and support of those people fighting for them, to a far greater degree than they would if it was JUST an issue of guns. But the other point is by coding the conversation, to make it about something other than your opponents think they are talking about, you make it much harder for them to argue their way towards any progress. No amount of well argued points about safety or any of the other lines the pro-restriction groups like to make will get you anywhere if opponents think the conversation is about something else. The only way to get movement is to argue from the perspective of what it means to have freedom. But as Will Macavoy so famously pointed out, Americans have a warped sense of their freedoms and how that compares with the rest of the world so that its a conversation I just dont see can get anywhere. But I think more problematic, is that even if you can find devastatingly effective arguments from this angle they fall on deaf ears because by definition anyone making them is defacto unamerican and therefore not worthy of being listened to.
As for the Will Macavoy comments -
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Freedom from fear is a beautiful thing
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15k gun deaths, not including suicide, sounds about right since we are in October. It’s depressing to think about, but the most recent annual figures I could find were from the CDC:
This is 2021
20,958 gun murders
26,328 gun suicides
PS - just where my mind is going, but on the suicide stat we are living in a time when mental health issues and underfunding are rampant, so it seems that deaths by suicide will be up. There are various means for suicide, and without being an expert on the matter, presumably that includes lots of failed attempts. However, the problem with ready access to guns is that such a devastating and final act on oneself is available, right there, for many people.
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This is hugely important point. The “failure” rate for suicide is actually really high. Guns are a very clear standout in being an exception to this.
https://x.com/NAACP_LDF/status/1717909466111410607?s=20
These are the maps the 2022 house elections were conducted under. Several of these districts were already determined to be constitutional violations, but courts refused to intervene on the basis that doing so that close to an election would appear political. This is the landscape in which the GOP won their incredibly thin house majority
Update from Maine: suspect found deceased last night. Doesn’t do much for the families of the 18 lost, but it is good to know he is not still on the run. Now we can begin to heal — but I share the view of many, that (given past behavior as a country) nothing will change.
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Best response - he should be forced to carry his term to full term