Okay here, I'm closing it.

You left your bold tag open, spraying an orgy of semi-automatic HTML formatting all over Slog.

Why would a missing bold close affect all the posts? Wouldn't a DIV section confine it?

Obviously it depends on how they are implemented, but I don't see any major issues with the executive actions being discussed. A number of them deal with improving the existing background check system and improving mental health, both are things that I have encouraged in the past. One action that stood out:

18. "Provide incentives for schools to hire school resource officers."

School resource officers in many cases are police, which would be the same thing the NRA suggested (in their poorly handled and presented way). Curious to see what they mean on this one.

The assault weapon ban and limiting magazine size is essentially useless in reducing crime and is extremely unlikely to pass in the House (the only thing I consider the Republicans any use for). The armor piercing ammunition thing is a complete non-issue. It isn't a real threat now and any round suitable for hunting medium size game will penetrate most vests anyway.

@3 it's happened before.

7

And then you close your bold tag.

I think this is a great list, though obviously it needs a lot of fine-tuning. I and many gun owners would support the bulk of these, though some - assault weapons ban and magazine limits, as Amnt says - don't mean much and wouldn't accomplish much, since most of the definitions include purely cosmetic features. But I support the attempt made, and hope at least some of them move forward.

Nothing on handguns. Coward.

@9: What would you have liked him to propose on handguns? Just curious. The magazine limits, and closing of gun-show loopholes and similar would apply to those as well as rifles.

@9, handgun-specific controls are impossible. Smart legislators and smart presidents don't submit legislation they know is going to get voted down by 75% or more. It makes you look weak.

Yeah, but what if one (hypothetically) wants to, without reloading, shoot eleven guys invading your home? HAPPENS ALL THE TIME!

@10: Handguns are the real threat, not assault weapons. I'm not in favor of assault weapons, but I recognize that probably 95% of gun crime is with handguns and shotguns, and a trivial percentage is with assault weapons.

One easy suggestion: require registration of all handguns, immediate reporting of loss, and immediate reports of sales. The government should be able to track a gun from its creation until it is seized in a crime. This would have ten times the effect on crime than any magazine size or assault weapons ban.

More drastic suggestion: require a need to own a handgun and a more thorough background check, as well as positive verification of ownership on a periodic basis.

Most extreme suggestion: ban handguns unless authorized by a court.

@6: "executive order" means congress is out of the equation. they'll throw tantrums and pass laws that go nowhere, but they can't stop EOs.

reagrdless, it's just deck chairs on the Titanic.

The funny thing is when you contrast Obama's mild, center-right policies with they hysterical reaction of the wingnuts. The Heritage Foundation's preferred health care reform? Socialism! Putting taxes back to where they were when the rich prospered under Clinton? Communism! Bringing back the assault weapons ban that we lived under happily for a decade, and enforcing the laws already on the books? Tyranny!

Ironically, the best chance these proposals have in Congress now is for the crazies to get so crazy that some Republicans will have to break ranks and support them.

@13: Most of those seem reasonable. Many states (speaking as a resident of MA) already require a number of those for handgun or rifle ownership, and I'd be happy to see it expanded countrywide. I don't know about needing a 'reason' to own a handgun; wanting to shoot it seems like a good enough reason to me. But I wouldn't mind even a 4yr verification of ownership, though I would never see it getting through Congress. But yes, handguns should be registered at the point of sale and loss or theft should immediately be reported. Honestly, I don't know why it doesn't happen now; I would sure as hell immediately report it if someone broke into my home, or car if I was traveling with them to go hunting, and stole my firearms.

@11: This gun control plan will not have any effect on crime without controlling handguns. Ten years from now conservatives are going to be able to point out again how gun control doesn't work. And they'll be right since we didn't include handguns. This plan is going to fail. And since it is giving the conservatives more ammo to use in future arguments, it is actually worse than failing to pass a handgun ban. In that case, we would at least have momentum on our side.

If the gnashing of teeth and sorrows announced by the right-wing nuts at work are any indication we are in for some fantastic FoxNews comedy today.

@17: But... These do address handguns, if not to the level which you want. These measures are restricted to rifles and shotguns. These in particular:
1. "Issue a presidential memorandum to require federal agencies to make relevant data available to the federal background check system."

3. "Improve incentives for states to share information with the background check system."

4. "Direct the attorney general to review categories of individuals prohibited from having a gun to make sure dangerous people are not slipping through the cracks."

5. "Propose rulemaking to give law enforcement the ability to run a full background check on an individual before returning a seized gun."

6. "Publish a letter from ATF to federally licensed gun dealers providing guidance on how to run background checks for private sellers."

7. "Launch a national safe and responsible gun ownership campaign."

8. "Review safety standards for gun locks and gun safes (Consumer Product Safety Commission)."

9. "Issue a presidential Memorandum to require federal law enforcement to trace guns recovered in criminal investigations."

10. "Release a DOJ report analyzing information on lost and stolen guns and make it widely available to law enforcement."

14. "Issue a presidential memorandum directing the Centers for Disease Control to research the causes and prevention of gun violence."

15. "Direct the attorney general to issue a report on the availability and most effective use of new gun safety technologies and challenge the private sector to develop innovative technologies."

– require universal background checks (background checks on anyone who would buy a gun, whether in stores or at auctions and conventions)

– ban gun magazines with capacities of more than 10 rounds

– tougher penalties on people who sell guns to people who aren't allowed to have guns

Would all affect handgun availability and ownership.

@19: A musket ban or a powder loaded single shooter ban is unconstitutional. A semi-automatic handgun ban or rocket propelled grenade ban is not.

Not a huge fan of the AWB, but the measures requiring background checks for private sales, providing school counselors, and mental health coverage in health care plans are absolutely worth it, if this to be looked at as a whole. Especially the last two, which would provide great benefits even outside the context of gun legislation.

@20: Are NOT restricted to rifles and shotguns. Sorry.

@19

If you're an activist judge, you can see "handguns" written into the Constitution somewhere. How is restricting machine guns constitutional but restricting handguns not? There's nothing in the Second Amendment about handguns. Or mortars, or magazine sizes, or cruise missiles, or semi-automatic or fully automatic.

There is something that says "well regulated" which common sense would tell you means "Congress decides." It it's not Congress doing the regulating, who else can it be?

@21
"A semi-automatic handgun ban or rocket propelled grenade ban is not."

I suggest that you learn more about what the SCOTUS has ruled on the issue of semi-automatic handguns and the 2nd Amendment.

On a side note... what a stupid bunch of reactive, short-sighted, primitive idiots human beings are.

Terrorists attack on 9/11: "OH MY GOD WE MUST MAKE NEW FLYING LAWS!!!"

Hurricane Katrina wipes out New Orleans: "OH MY GOD WE MUST MAKE NEW EMERGENCY MANAGEMENT LAWS!!!"

Guy goes on shooting rampage in school: "OH MY GOD WE MUST MAKE NEW GUN LAWS!!!"

No fucking foresight. No fucking prevention. Everything waits until AFTER it's already too late, and then people run around like a bunch of headless, panicked lemmings.

I absofuckinglutely guarantee not one thing will be done about climate change until AFTER Manhatten sinks. And then of course, the reaction will be: "OH MY GOD WE MUST MAKE NEW CLIMATE LAWS!!!"

Humans are doomed.

Sorry for the digression, back to the gun talk...

Handguns account for the overwhelming number of homicides in the US. Perhaps more importantly, handgun homicides drive the variation in rate year over year (other means of homicide occur at more or less constant rates) which suggests (doesn't prove) that the marginal homicide (i.e., the one you have the most likelihood of preventing via policy) in the US is committed with a handgun.

[Data here: http://bjs.ojp.usdoj.gov/content/homicid… ]

I think it's fine to reign in assault weapons because there is very, very little upside to their private ownership, and a very clear downside in terms of public safety. But we need to be clear that (at best) this will only impact a tiny subset of the homicides that occur in the US.

I worry that the president is wasting a lot of time, resources, and political capital here.

@25

Activist judges putting things into the Constitution that just are not there. And erasing words that are there.

You know, the Supreme Court doesn't just pull up stakes and quit after a ruling. They stick around year after year often for the purpose of correcting stupid rulings of the past. There have certainly been many of them.

@28: Ayup. Except nothing will happen if Manhattan sinks. It's too much a blue state. The Republicans who already don't care about climate change wouldn't give a shit if the entire state fell into the ocean. Maybe if it's Florida that goes first...

@4,

Providing "incentives" for schools to hire cops is significantly different than spending billions of dollars on putting an armed guard in every school in this country.

@28,

You don't see the hypocrisy of your rant given that you're one of the people here claiming that no gun control measure will be effective and so there's no point in even trying?

Why does the NRA care about pistols, machine guns etc, when they're the National RIFLE Association? It's like the National Cat Fancy trying to tell people they can't dock the tails on their dogs.

Makes sense to me, and probably 90 percent of Republicans who actually are or have hunted.

@13, look: I agree with you. But it's not going to happen. The broader controls you describe are unpopular with the public and extremely unpopular with legislators in both parties. You cannot win that battle now, and if you try you're just going to look foolish. Saying "how about..." without at least a conception of how to go about it is exactly the same thing I've been criticizing the gun nuts for.

@29, there is no "political capital" for a handgun ban. I wish there was but there just isn't.

@29
"Handguns account for the overwhelming number of homicides in the US."

And that is one of the reasons I've been harping on the staff of The Stranger to start tracking ALL shootings in Seattle.
That way they will have exact information on who is shooting whom with what and why.

"I think it's fine to reign in assault weapons because there is very, very little upside to their private ownership, and a very clear downside in terms of public safety."

Except that there does not seem to be a problem with rifles with bayonet lugs being used in crimes.
So banning something that is not used in a crime will probably not result in any decrease in crime.
The same with flash suppressors.

So here in WA state (so I am told) the measure of mental health for a background check is having been involuntarily committed for a 14 day stretch. That may have made some sense in the 50's, but with modern meds and service cuts no one spends that much time in the hospital, involuntary or voluntary.

For the last 6 months or so there is always a line out the door at the sheriff's office of people filing for a concealed carry permit. When I'm there I always look around and wonder which of these idiots are going to shoot their wives, their kids, leave a gun out and have an accidental shooting, etc.

The blandness of Item #14 on the executive-action list ("Issue a presidential memorandum directing the Centers for Disease Control to research the causes and prevention of gun violence.") belies its importance: it would overturn an NRA-engineered 17-year ban on such research.

...From the mid- 1980s to the mid-1990s, the CDC conducted original, peer-reviewed research into gun violence, including questions such as whether people who had guns in their homes gained protection from the weapons. (The answer, researchers found, was no. Homes with guns had a nearly three times greater risk of homicide and a nearly five times greater risk of suicide than those without, according to a 1993 study in the New England Journal of Medicine.)

But in 1996, the NRA, with the help of Congressional leaders, moved to suppress such information and to block future federal research into gun violence, Rosenberg said.

An amendment to an appropriations bill cut $2.6 million from the CDC’s budget, exactly the amount the agency’s injury prevention center had previously spent on gun research. The money was returned to the agency later, but targeted for brain injury trauma research instead.

In addition, the statute that governs CDC funding stipulated that none of the funds made available to the agency can be used in whole or in part “to advocate or promote gun control.”

While that did not specifically prohibit firearms research, the language was ambiguous enough to alarm CDC officials and stifle scientists interested in gun data, said Stephen Teret, director for the Center for Law and the Public’s Health at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health.

“CDC overreacted to that statement and became more reluctant to fund anything dealing with guns, even the traditional epidemiological research, so there was a chilling effect,” Teret said...

http://vitals.nbcnews.com/_news/2013/01/…

@41: This is what I never quite understand about demonizing the NRA (deserved or not): why is it that the legislators, who actually make the votes and laws always get a pass, and everything is blamed on the NRA?

You can see it at work in the quote: "But in 1996, the NRA, with the help of Congressional leaders..." notice how apparently the NRA wrote, voted, and signed the law into being, with a little assistance by congress. It should read, "the congressional leaders, at the urging of the NRA..."

It is totally backwards. We blame the NRA, but do not hold legislators accountable, and wonder why nothing changes. I am beginning to believe that the NRA purposefully makes itself out to be a pernicious and irrational group just for this purpose: it focuses attention on them and gets the legislators off the hook, allowing the debate to hopelessly stall out everytime, as everyone blames the NRA and lets the people actually responsible slide.

"Hey, look at the crazy circus, but don't notice those congressman doing nothing about the issue!"

@30

Freedom of the press doesn't mean you get to publish absolutely anything you want to. Libel, copyright and classified secrets are the most obvious limits on speech, but there are many.

The right to bear arms doesn't mean you get to have absolutely any arms you want. Somebody has to decide what the limits are. Because the "militia" is supposed to be "well regulated".

An absolute right to free speech, regardless of libel, copyright, or state secrets, would be chaos, and unacceptable. More specifically, it would put the right to free speech and the press in contradiction to other rights, like property, privacy, and life, to name a few.

Giving people any arms they like would overstep other rights as well. When different rights are in conflict, congress must make hard choices about where to draw lines.

This "handguns are sacrosanct" orthodoxy is a phantom. I don't even expect the assault weapons ban to pass (without help from gun nuts scaring the public with their crazy tantrums). But in the future, it is possible.

@34,

you're one of the people here claiming that no gun control measure will be effective and so there's no point in even trying?

I never said that. I think plenty of gun control measures could be effective, I just haven't heard many yet. Well, not until very recently, at least. Probably because so few people seemed to give two shits about guns until a bunch of kids were shot. Then suddenly everyone is demanding immediate after-the-fact action. As usual. It's like a rush on people buying fire insurance AFTER their houses burn down.

@43

That should have been @29, not 30. They renumbered.

@42: Follow the money. These politicians didn't get elected by magic.

@28

If you're really going to get all high and mighty about how everybody else is reactive, then you're the one who needs to tell us how to be proactive.

Where's your plans to avert all the disasters that haven't happened yet? It's easy to take cheap shots, but not so easy to do any better yourself.

@44 it's a bit of a chicken/egg issue. You could easily say 'we don't need tighter gun laws because nothing horrible has happened yet'. Then the horrible happens and people readjust to that unforeseen possibility.
Same with the TSA, I'm sure if you traveled back to the 50s and told them 'you can't smoke on a plane by the 80s and in the 21st century some assholes will fly a plane into a skyscraper' they'd probably say you're a paranoid idiot.

@42

Because guilt by association attack ads don't work? If the NRA has a bad image, they become radioactive, and that will cost votes for those with an A+ NRA rating. Look at all the attack adds associating Obama with Bill Ayers, or connecting politicians with Acorn.

The NRA hasn't been this unpopular in years. People used to be fairly positive about them. Things have changed.

Absent:

-Mandatory incarceration for mentally ill

-Increased sentencing for those abusing guns in the commission of a crime

@24 If not congress...

I hate to quibble to your broader point.

I am no SCOTUS-ee or constitutional expert so my opinion means jack, but in my reading of the 2nd amendment, I have understood it to mean that the us congress - the federal govt in general - is expressly forbidden to restrict firearms. That power was intended to belong to each state. The feds can't take your gun if your state says it's ok for you to own it. RahRah states' rights!

Of course, SCOTUS ruled otherwise.
SCOTUS is wrong says little ole me.

@30 The second biggest problem I have with an AWB is rifles, including "assault rifles" make up somewhere around 300-900 firearms related deaths a year (that range includes homicides and 'accidents'). There are around 10-40 million "assault rifles" in private hands. The percentage of mis-used "assault rifles" is miniscule. The percentage of mis-used handguns is huge.

It's like looking at car related deaths and saying that, well, antique cars, which make up some very small amount of cars on the road, but have quite a large pool of ownership should be banned because they look different and cause some number of deaths, just like all other cars, but a much smaller percentage of deaths per car owned. Also, no one needs an antique car. Compared to modern cars, antique cars are terribly unsafe.

The biggest problem is that an AWB based on cosmetic features is absurd.

@50:

-Mandatory incarceration for mentally ill

What?

@50: so you're in the clear then.

@50: so you're in the clear then.

@46: If this year's election told us anything, it was that money alone can not win elections. Furthermore, the NRA spent 4 million bucks in 2012, not even enough to guarantee the election of a few congressmen.

@49: True enough, and I can find no fault with that. But my point is, the NRA can not make legislation. The NRA can not vote on legislation. The NRA can not sign or veto anything, not can they solely elect politicians. Voters by and large do not base their votes on gun control, or reject candidates that make gun control a sentral part oftheir campaign. Polticians can count votes, trust me, and they know gun control is not a winning issue. That is our fault as the electorate.

Hopefully this will change, but single mindedly blaming the NRA, a group with little actual power, will not bring about that change. It is a distraction. We blame the NRA and pretend the legislators are helpless to stop them, allowing politicians to never address the issue.

@42, what 46 said. We regularly blame the tobacco industry, the oil industry, agribusiness giants, etc. for the deleterious influences and economic distortions they exert in our society, and the NRA is no different—they are not like a quilting circle or even a beekeepers' cooperative, they are an industry lobbying group. Our feckless legislators could not do anywhere near the damage they do—they're campaigning nearly full-time, including seeking donations from industry—without these lobbyists to write targeted legislation and talking points for them.

That said, I personally hold out more hope for change from within the NRA and similar groups on this issue than for noticeable alterations in the makeup of Congress. And I picked the quote I did because it was the most concise historical recap I could find in a quick search regarding the mechanism of suppression, which was, after all, the actual point of my comment.

My apologies for the typos in #56, I hit "post" instead of "edit," and do not really care enough to fix them now.

@50: For this reply I'll assume that you meant mass commitment instead of incarceration. In this case, I think you made a Freudian slip. Some observations:

1. You're a fascist. It isn't an ad hominem, it is an observation. Anybody who wants to discriminate against a minority population without due process and then use the power of the state to enforce it is, by definition, a fascist.

2. The rate of violence by those who have mental illnesses is no higher than that of the general population. There is no basis for mass commitment.

3. A quarter of the population has a mental illness and half the population will have a mental illness in their lifetimes. You will be attacking over a hundred million people in this country. Even if you only attack people that are classified as having a "serious mental illness" you are talking about 6 percent of the population, per NIH estimates. This group includes tons of child abuse and rape victims as well as servicemembers returning home from war. At least 20 million people will have to be locked up for your safety delusion.

4. Outpatient treatment is more effective, in general, than inpatient treatment. This is because the skills learned to live in a psych ward are not the same skills needed to live in the real world.

5. Only a third of people with mental illnesses get help and only half of people with serious mental illnesses get help. Your mass stigmatization program will reduce even those numbers.

6. The discrimination that people with mental illnesses face is profound (from personal relations, employment, places to live, etc.). You would make discriminating against people with mental illnesses the policy of the United States.

7. Your plans for mass commitment would break the bank. How are you going to pay for the locking up of tens of millions of people? A typical psych ward costs around $1000 per day for treatment.

@57: Yes, they are a lobbying group, but let us look a few numbers.

These figures are the totals spent by each industry/group on lobbying during 2012. Now I am aware that I am arguing based upon a degree of influence, but that kind of is the point. I am not arguing that the NRA does good, or is not run but horrible people with horrible ideas. I am not arguing that the NRA does not exert some influence, or that they are not an obstacle to sensible gun laws.

Oil and Gas industry: $104,000,000
Agribusiness: $96,000,000
Tobacco: $14,000,000
NRA: $2,905,000

I am simply saying that as far as lobbying groups go, the NRA is objectively weak. They are slightly more powerful than their money suggests because the american public does not base votes on gun control issues. But blaming the NRA for this is nonsense. They do not even have the lobbying power of some individuals.

It goes deeper than money or lobbyists: we do not ask candidates their positions on gun control, and we do not vote based on it. This needs to change, and it is not the fault of the NRA. They are the definition of a paper tiger.

On the contrary, @60, they have had influence wildly out of proportion to their direct lobbying expenditures—more bang for the buck (sorry).

Part of this structural; they spend a huge amount of money communicating with their individual members, who can be quickly mobilized to clog phone lines and fill congressional e-mail inboxes. And the legislation they favor does not require the complexity of that required for oil and gas leases, tax preferences, or drug approval.

I can take or leave the assault weapons ban and banning of ammunition magazines. They make sense, but won't do much realistically to change gun crime or murder rates. Good first steps, I guess.

The tracking of confiscated weapons and research into gun safety will do a lot more good. I'd like to see more emphasis on mental health benefits and treatment, especially for criminals, but maybe the improved "resources and discourse" will move in that direction.

@61: Right, that was my point: they have clout that is bigger than they should, so there is something more going on than "they have lots of money and own congress."

Those things you outlined are things that every lobbying group does, and all legislation is complex when you get to the nuts and bolts.

A big takeaway from the numbers I posted is that the tobacco industry, while spending almost five times the amount of the NRA, has almost no lobbying power on the hill. It is laughable how far the tobacco lobby has fallen. But why? They have just as many people, and spend lots more money.

It is because the public is against them. The public knows they are a public health nightmare, and exactly how toxic their products are. No amount of money can fix this. People have not realized that this is also true of the firearms industry, and so the public is not overwhelmingly against it. We have a public education and perception problem, not a lobbying problem. The NRA is not as powerful as everyone wants to believe. They are just a really, really, easy scapegoat that washes us from our faults of not holding legislators responsible and demanding action.

Don't get me wrong, fuck the NRA, but they are not the problem, not by far.

@62

If they 'Won't do much realistically to change gun crime or murder rates." Then how the hell does it make 'sense?'

If it won't reduce gun violence, then what the hell is your point?

'Good first steps, I guess.'

First steps toward what? And therein lies the crux of your notion...

@63

Indeed. The NRA is not the problem. Criminals are the problem.

The NRA doesn't derive it's power from the gun manufacturers. It derives its power from its members, who are active and vote.

That's the key.

The tobacco industry and other lobbying organizations derive their purported power from buying politicians. The only thing politicians fear are the voters.

Given the abysmal voter turnout rate in the U.S. four million committed single-issue voters is a big deal, especially if you get into the nitty-gritty of election math.

Given the number of pro-gun lefties like myself in Western states in addition to the predictable Republican vote, the math just doesn't add up.

Furthermore, let's look at history. We all know Al Gore won the election, but had he won his home state, there would have been non doubt. The numbers show that his anti-gun views cost him in the South. Next, look at the swing numbers in the 1994 midterms after the Democrats passed their ineffective, masturbatory 'Assault Weapons Ban' which had no effect on crime.

To summarize, their isn't enough far left-wing support from places like The SLOG and urban centers to offset the Republican vote and opposition from pro-gun liberals like myself. The math just isn't there.

Don't let me keep you from your rallying cry, but don't be surprised when high-capacity magazines and ugly black weapons with bayonet lugs aren't banned this year.

I prefer to support things like universal single-payer health care that includes comprehensive mental health treatment and identification of at-risk youth.

These are examples of specific ideas from The SLOG's so-called 'gun nuts' that can realistically have an impact on gun massacres. So there.

@65

Hey, phony liberal.

Sounds like you haven't looked at a poll in over a dozen years. There's overwhelming support for closing the gun show loophole. And banning large capacity magazines. And beefing up law enforcement, background checks, etc. And even the assault weapons ban.

And, if you've checked any polls recently, you'd know that even among gun owners these common sense changes have majority support. Many of them are even supported by the majority of NRA members.

Guess you're one of those "liberals" who not only never comments on any issue except gun control, you also have no idea what's being said at the Daily Kos or TPM or the New Yorker or even the New York Times. As in one of those "liberals" who is in fact conservative.

@64

You pretend to support single payer health care, but can you explain why that's not a first step towards a total government takeover of the entire insurance industry? Of the entire free market economy? It is the same slippery slope, is it not?