The Washington Post prints an op-ed by Ann Brown, who was the “chairman of the U.S. Consumer Product Safety Commission from 1994 to 2002.” Hey, isn’t referring to her as “Chairman” sexist? Anyhow, she thinks she has the common sense solution
America should regulate bullets
When I chaired the U.S. Consumer Product Safety Commission, I was grateful that we had authority to regulate lead in household paint. Banning the use of lead-based paint in homes has prevented brain damage in countless children over the years.
So why wouldn’t Congress allow us authority over another dangerous consumer product often made with lead?
Specifically, why not bullets?
On Tuesday, President Obama unveiled a package of executive actions that he hopes will reduce gun deaths in the United States. I urge him to put one more proposal on the table: regulating ammunition. The idea is workable, and Americans could support it.
This idea isn’t new. In 1974, the CPSC’s first chairman made clear his belief that the agency could probably regulate ammunition, and a court agreed — whereupon a frightened Congress passed laws making it impossible even to try. Now is the time for the president to begin pushing to correct that mistake.
Perhaps she missed that it would require Congress to pass a new law. Anyhow, Ms. Brown positions ammunition control in a way that seems oh-so-reasonable, noting that 80% of citizens agreed with regulating ammunition in a 2013 Fox News poll. She ends the op-ed with “It’s time to start exploring sensible ways to stop gun violence and save lives by regulating ammunition.” How would she do this? Note this paragraph
Do I say this swayed by all the horrific mass shootings we have seen in the past few years? Only in part. These are the tragic, visible tip of an iceberg. While mass shootings attract headlines and our grief, bigger problems with guns often go unnoticed: the hundreds killed annually in intimate-partner violence; those killed by kids too young to know what pulling a trigger can do; the 21,000 Americans who commit suicide with a firearm each year.
This very much sounds like she means to create a ban on ammunition purchases, despite later “common sense” restrictions. And this all means an increase in federal government authority, in her mind. She notes that the Consumer Product Safety Commission worked with manufacturers and “It didn’t ban cribs, walkers, toasters — or paint. It worked out ways to address what made them dangerous — and saved children in the process.” How do you do that with ammunition? Bueller? Bueller?
The same flexible approach can work with ammunition. When someone who may be dangerous is prevented from buying ammunition, any gun he has hidden becomes like a car without gas: a useless hunk of metal.
Who decides they’re dangerous? What are the standards? She wants to ban on-line purchases, mandate background checks, license ammo purchases. While these seem common sense…hey, I have no problem with a background check or a license for myself: I know I’m not dangerous, no criminal issues, I rarely even carry the weapon outside the house…who decides the standards? Might there be mission creep? Once that genie is out of the box, how big and intrusive does it get?
Ammunition is very strictly regulated in Israel.
Depends on the meaning of the word “ban”. Do you consider any restriction a ban?
So your concern is not for the actual proposals but for some potential future policy? Sort of a domino effect?
As I’ve said many times before, it’s only a tiny vocal minority that desires and thinks it practical to ban firearms in the US. I’m as liberal as they get (I think Bernie Sanders policy prescriptions are perfect for America) but my “crew” of urban, suburban and rural liberals would not stand for a ban. Never. It’s not going to happen in America.
Would the regs apply to the non-lead shot we’re required to use for waterfowl hunting in MO?
Referring to her as the “Chairman” is not sexist at all. In English grammar, properly understood, the masculine subsumes the feminine, in cases where the sex of the person is unknown. Now, Mrs Brown’s sex is known, so chair
wenchwoman might be more appropriate, but chairman is not wrong. It would be wrong if a male chairman was referred to as a chairwoman.Mrs Brown said:
Given that the majority of the voters voted for Barack Hussein Obama, twice, I would suggest that the evidence indicates greater brain damage in children, not less.
The part the left don’t understand is that serious shooters, people who legally own firearms and use them safely, are going to use more ammunition than the terrorists and the thugs. Why? Because serious shooters practice marksmanship, whether at the range or on the farm, and they tend to expend rather a lot of ammunition doing that. It’s the gangsters and thugs who cannot legally own firearms who cannot go to the range and practice, and might shoot fewer than a hundred rounds in their lifetimes, but what they do use, they aim at people
Hey now Dana that sounds like you are lumping Teach in with that group who aren’t serious shooters
And Teach shame on you for not carrying your gun with you at all times. Remember the only way to stop a bad guy with a gun is a good guy with a gun.
John, I do not know whether our host is a “serious shooter,” or even if he owns a weapon. There is no one here who is a more adamant, more absolutist defender of our natural right to keep and bear arms, as recognized by our Constitution, than me, but I choose to exercise my Second Amendment rights in the negative: I do not own a firearm.
Try breaking into my house when I’m home, John, and see how serious I am, and whether a good guy with a gun will stop you.
But, it’s cute how you change the subject. This is SJW-101.
[…] Via Pirates Cove […]
On May 2, 1967, a group of 30 Black Panthers walked into the California state Capitol building, toting rifles and shotguns to protest the pending Mulford Act. The police ordered them out and the Panthers left peaceably, but were arrested once outside.
The resulting Mulford Act, backed by the NRA and signed by Gov Ronald Reagan, took away a Californian’s right to openly carry a loaded firearm in the state.
How times change!
And there it is – the end goal of this particular “common-sense” camel’s nose under the tent. Give ’em an inch…