Pirate's Cove

When Democrats call for “common sense gun control”, they need to look no further than California

Hillary Clinton has a gun control plan. It’s not half-bad! https://t.co/keNPvGu7Xg pic.twitter.com/1oYeyUbsxl

— Slate (@Slate) December 3, 2015

Not half bad. Here’s what it looks like on the front page of Slate

From the article

Clinton has a three-pronged plan. First, there are background checks. As president, she would hope to sign comprehensive federal background check legislation and close such loopholes for gun show and Internet sales. On the supply-side, her plan calls for repealing the law that prevents victims of gun violence from suing manufacturers and dealers, and backing punitive action against “bad-actor” dealers that “knowingly supply straw purchasers and traffickers.” She would also seek to limit access to guns among the mentally ill—specifically people “involuntarily committed to outpatient treatment”—and make straw purchasing a federal crime.

As I mentioned this morning, California has very restrictive background checks, which require a Firearm Safety Certificate, 10 day waiting period, registering the weapon, and the purchasers fingerprints on file. All private sales must go through a federally licensed firearms dealer, which means no gun show loophole. All Internet purchases must also go through a federally licensed dealer. Straw purchases are already a federal crime (perhaps she should have a word with Obama and Eric Holder regarding Operation Fast and Furious). Almost everything she wants is already being done in California. Suing manufacturers? We don’t sue alcohol and auto makers when someone gets liquored up and kills someone with a vehicle.

O’Malley has a similar approach, drawn from his experience in Maryland. He wants expanded background checks, an end to “unregulated internet gun and ammunition sales”—which seems especially apt given the huge amount of ammunition held by the San Bernardino shooters—and greater information sharing between states, so that a background check in Virginia, for instance, is useful to authorities in Oregon.

Maryland has lots of shootings, especially in Baltimore. Increased sharing would be great. Would these Democrats allow information such as, oh, say, that someone who passed California’s restrictive gun permitting system was traveling to Saudi Arabia, a hardcore Islamist nation?

Beyond background checks, O’Malley wants fingerprint-licensing and safety training for all gun purchases, including private sales by licensed dealers; a national age requirement for handgun possession; required safety standards for gun storage; and pushback against concealed-carry laws. To fight gun crime and domestic violence, he wants to ban gun ownership for people convicted of domestic violence in any relationship, as well as gun ownership for people subject to emergency restraining orders. He’ll also push a national firearms registry, mandatory reporting of lost or stolen firearms, and “microstamping”—a unique code stamped onto a cartridge case—for all guns, to help law enforcement trace weapons involved in crime. And like Clinton, he’d punish dealers who break the law and expand penalties for gun traffickers.

Almost all of that is done in California. Oh, and pipe bombs are plain illegal. Funny how criminals refuse to follow the law.