Guns

[LFC]

A bit of political waffling while the bodies are still warm. Kristi Noem is still in but that's no shock for that death worshiping sicko who was happy to allow COVID run rampant in her state as well as export to other states.

South Dakota Gov. Kristi Noem’s (R) office confirmed to TPM on Wednesday that the GOP governor is still planning to speak at the National Rifle Association’s convention in Houston on Friday amid mounting outrage surrounding the event in the wake of the tragic shooting at an elementary school in Uvalde, Texas.

Texas Gov. Greg Abbott (R), for his part, avoided addressing whether he would cancel his scheduled appearance at the NRA event during a press conference on the shooting on Wednesday. Abbott told reporters that he is “living moment to moment right now.”

Among the figures who were scheduled to speak at the NRA event, Sen. John Cornyn (R-TX) and Rep. Dan Crenshaw (R-TX) have told reporters that they have canceled their appearance. Both Cornyn and Crenshaw denied that the shooting informed their cancelations.

Crenshaw is in Ukraine and can't make it back because ... well, it doesn't matter. Whatever the excuse it's bullshit to hide his cowardly hiding from his long spouted viewpoints.

[LFC]

Beto went after Abbott at a press conference and gets removed by police. Good for him! Make that piece of shit squirm in public.

Former Rep. Beto O’Rourke (D-TX), who is running for Texas governor, was just removed from a press conference in Texas for protesting and confronting Gov. Greg Abbott (R) on gun laws a day after the tragic shooting at an elementary school in Uvalde, Texas.

As Abbott finished announcing updates on the shooting Wednesday afternoon, O’Rourke excoriated the Texas governor for his inaction on gun violence and his ongoing opposition to common sense gun control reform.

“Governor Abbott, I have to say something. The time that you could have stopped this was after Sante Fe High School. The next shooting is right now and you’ve done nothing. You are offering us nothing,” O’Rourke shouted, adding that the shooting was “totally predictable” and “preventable.”

Sen. Ted Cruz (R-TX), who was also in attendance, told O’Rourke to “sit down” while the Democrat confronted Abbott.

Texas Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick (R) scolded O’Rourke, claiming his behavior was “out of line and an embarrassment.”

In footage of the incident, an unidentified person who appeared to be on stage at the press conference could also be heard deriding O’Rourke as a “sick son of a b****.”

O’Rourke was escorted out of the press conference by law enforcement.

Shortly after O’Rourke was removed from the building, Abbott remarked: “There’s no words anybody shouting can come up here — and do anything — to heal those broken hearts.”

An embarrassment? Sick son of a bitch? Talk about projection. And nothing can heal those broken hearts? No shit, Schlock. The whole point is that it should never have happened and the Republican stance virtually guarantees it will happen again and again and again.

[LFC]

Another Democrat calls out the sickness of the Republicans. This time it was long-time political whore Ted Cruz's instant whining about how this could lead to gun control. (Hint, Teddy. In a sane society IT F***ING SHOULD!)

Rep. Ruben Gallego (D-AZ) tore into Sen. Ted Cruz (R-TX) on Tuesday night after the GOP senator groaned about renewed pushes for gun control in the wake of a deadly shooting at Robb Elementary School in Uvalde, Texas.

“Fuck you @tedcruz,” Gallego tweeted. “You care about a fetus but you will let our children get slaughtered.”

“Just get your ass to Cancun. You are useless,” he added, referring to the time when Cruz fled to a Mexican beach resort in the middle of a Texas power outage that was caused by a major snowstorm, leaving millions of Texans without heat last year.

The Democrat put extra emphasis on his callout of the Texas Republican later on Tuesday, tweeting “Just to be clear fuck you @tedcruz you fucking baby killer.”

Gallego was responding to Cruz complaining to reporters earlier in the day about the audacity of people calling for tougher gun laws in response to the massacre, which left at least 19 students and two adults dead.

“Inevitably when there’s a murder of this kind, you see politicians try to politicize it, you see Democrats and a lot of folks in the media whose immediate solution is to try to restrict the constitutional rights of law-abiding citizens,” the GOP senator griped.

Cruz is scheduled to speak at the National Rifle Association’s convention in Houston this Friday.

[LFC]

Republicans have no souls. They seem to have dropped "thoughts and prayers" but their responses in the face of slaughtered children is still the same brand of formulaic and sociopathic drivel they spewed before. Nothing like phoning in your response to a mass murder of children. It's certainly easier than taking responsibility for your votes.

A mass shooter killed 19 children and two adults at Robb Elementary School in Uvalde, Texas on Tuesday. And Republican politicians took to Twitter in the wake of this tragedy to express their condolences. But if you look closely, you’ll notice something odd. Many of the messages were identical, as though they’re all just copying and pasting the same tweets from the last mass shooting.

There seems to be a formula for how right-wing politicians are now responding to mass shootings on social media that goes something like this: I am [HORRIFIED, HEARTBROKEN, ETC] at the senseless tragedy in [LOCATION] today. We are [LIFTING THEM UP IN PRAYER, PRAYING FOR THEM] and thank the heroic efforts of [POLICE, FIRST RESPONDERS, ETC] on the scene.

Take a look at some of the tweets from yesterday, with an emphasis in the text from Gizmodo to show just how identical these statements really are.

Sen. Mitch McConnell of Kentucky:

Horrified and heartbroken by reports of the disgusting violence directed at innocent schoolkids in Uvalde, Texas. The entire country is praying for the children, families, teachers, and staff and the first responders on the scene.

Sen. Marsha Blackburn of Tennessee:

Horrified and heartbroken to learn of the significant loss of life in the shooting in Uvalde, Texas. Please join me in lifting their loved ones up in prayer. Thank you to the local first responders working on the scene.

Gov. Doug Ducey of Arizona:

This is heartbreaking and soul wrenching. Our prayers are with the parents, families, students and staff of Robb Elementary in Uvalde, TX at this unimaginable time. Thankful for the heroic efforts of medical pros, law enforcement and community members who responded so quickly.

Sen. John Hoeven of North Dakota:

We’re horrified by the news out of Robb Elementary School in Uvalde, TX today. Mikey and I are heartbroken for the families and loved ones of the victims & grateful for the first responders and law enforcement who worked to save lives.

Gov. Brian Kemp of Georgia:

Marty, the girls, and I are heartbroken over news from Uvalde, Tx. For children and innocent adults, including the school teacher, to be taken from this world in such a depraved, violent way, it is incomprehensible. We are lifting up the families of these victims, the first responders on the scene, and the entire community in prayer.

Sen. Ted Cruz of Texas:

Heidi & I are fervently lifting up in prayer the children and families in the horrific shooting in Uvalde. We are in close contact with local officials, but the precise details are still unfolding. Thank you to heroic law enforcement & first responders for acting so swiftly.

Cruz’s statement was identical to a statement he made back in October 2021 after another school shooting in Texas:

The list goes on and on. And they all use the same formula.

But oddly, it wasn’t just Republicans who used a similar mash-up of platitudes on Tuesday. Sen. Kyrsten Sinema, a Democrat from Arizona, used language identical to the Republicans:

We are horrified and heartbroken by the senseless tragedy unfolding at Robb Elementary School in Texas and grateful to the first responders for acting swiftly. No families should ever have to fear violence in their children’s schools.

[/quote]

[LFC]

This article on what happened is gut wrenching. It took some of the most highly trained federal agents in the nation to finally get in and kill him but they still needed to get a key from the principal to gain entry. In the meantime he slaughtered the children in the classroom.

The gunman who murdered 19 students and two teachers at a Texas elementary school was killed by members of an elite Border Patrol tactical team, officials say.

The suspect barricaded himself into a two-room classroom at Robb Elementary School in Uvalde where he killed his victims and fired at law enforcement through windows.

Members of the Border Patrol’s Bortac team responded to the school, located in the town 80 miles west of San Antonio, but were unable to get into the classroom because of a steel door and the building’s concrete block construction, law enforcement sources told The Wall Street Journal.

The team also took fire from the gunman who shot at them through the door and the classroom’s walls.

After Bortac got a master key from the school principal, they were able to force their way into the classroom.

One Bortac agent took rounds to his shield as the team entered the classroom, another agent received shrapnel wounds, and a third agent shot and killed 18-year-old Salvador Ramos.

Officials told the newspaper that once inside, the agents found dead children in multiple piles.

A f***ing well armed and highly motivated 18-yr old managed to hold off 3 police officers to gain entry to the school and then murder children while elite agents had to get a key to the door. Imagine if he was in a larger room with more kids and had thought to bring a metal wedge to shove under the door.

[AnBr]

[goldenvalley]

May 26, 2022 0:35:43 GMT LFC said:

This article on what happened is gut wrenching. It took some of the most highly trained federal agents in the nation to finally get in and kill him but they still needed to get a key from the principal to gain entry. In the meantime he slaughtered the children in the classroom.

The gunman who murdered 19 students and two teachers at a Texas elementary school was killed by members of an elite Border Patrol tactical team, officials say.

The suspect barricaded himself into a two-room classroom at Robb Elementary School in Uvalde where he killed his victims and fired at law enforcement through windows.

Members of the Border Patrol’s Bortac team responded to the school, located in the town 80 miles west of San Antonio, but were unable to get into the classroom because of a steel door and the building’s concrete block construction, law enforcement sources told The Wall Street Journal.

The team also took fire from the gunman who shot at them through the door and the classroom’s walls.

After Bortac got a master key from the school principal, they were able to force their way into the classroom.

One Bortac agent took rounds to his shield as the team entered the classroom, another agent received shrapnel wounds, and a third agent shot and killed 18-year-old Salvador Ramos.

Officials told the newspaper that once inside, the agents found dead children in multiple piles.

A f***ing well armed and highly motivated 18-yr old managed to hold off 3 police officers to gain entry to the school and then murder children while elite agents had to get a key to the door. Imagine if he was in a larger room with more kids and had thought to bring a metal wedge to shove under the door.

I doubt there was ever going to be an end to the situation that had fewer deaths. It does stink that they waited around for a key...cops batter down doors in no knock raids after all.  But I guess those raids happen while the occupants are asleep and less likely to shoot at the cops.  No good alternatives here but dang the optics stink.

[goldenvalley]

This speaks of idiot adults leaving their toys around.

A second-grade student brought a gun and loaded magazine to school, according to Sacramento City Unified School District officials.

Kemble staff members were alerted by students that a classmate brought the weapon to school. They found the gun and “an accessible loaded magazine” in the desk of the pupil, according to the district’s statement.

Read more at: www.sacbee.com/news/local/crime/article261773402.html#storylink=cpy

[LFC]

Remember when Ted Cruz said using this incident to bring up gun control was unacceptable politicization? Yeah, I doubt he's got much to say now that Republicans are jumping on the crazy train ... again.

There is zero evidence the 18-year-old who killed 19 children and two adults at Robb Elementary School in Uvalde, Texas, on Tuesday was a transgender woman, an undocumented immigrant or a Democrat. But that hasn’t stopped the churning of a massive disinformation campaign on right-wing media falsely claiming all of these things to try and deflect blame.

“Texas school shooter. A teenage, trans immigrant LEFTIST whom they are trying to paint as ‘right-wing lunatic/white supremacist’ DEMONRATS LIE,” one user posted on former President Donald Trump’s social media network, Truth Social, emblematic of the false statements users can make on there unchecked.

The disinformation push reportedly began almost immediately after the shooting on 4chan, the anonymous message board favored by white nationalists, where users spread photos of a random trans woman who bears a passing resemblance to the actual shooter, Salvador Ramos, whom police said they killed responding to the massacre.

Ramos was male. He was a U.S. citizen, according to Texas’ own Republican governor. And there hasn’t been a lot uncovered yet about his political beliefs or his personal life.

The woman in the widely disseminated photos has come and out said that she’s not the shooter — and that she doesn’t even live in Texas — and asked people to stop sharing the pictures of her apparently taken without her consent from Reddit.

In spite of that, the lie made its way to Republicans with big national followings, permanently establishing it as part of the shooting’s narrative.

[LFC]

Ted Cruz wants all schools to be in full lock down except for one guarded entrance. Welcome to the innocence of being a child in Republican America. Gawd I loathe that man. I don't wish ill on many people but I would most definitely celebrate his death.

Let’s Make Schools Supermax Prisons
After an elementary school shooting in Uvalde, Texas left 19 kids and two adults dead, Sen. Ted Cruz (R-TX) (who’s speaking at the NRA’s convention this Friday) argued yesterday that the problem isn’t that there are too many guns out there, it’s that schools have too many doors–more specifically, more than one door.

• Schools need to “harden” by “having one door that goes in and out of the school [and] having armed police officers at that one door,” Cruz told reporters during his visit to Uvalde.

• The GOP senator pushed his “solution” again on Fox News later on Wednesday night.

• Cruz made this point several times yesterday and retweeted clips of himself making it, so this wasn’t just some throwaway idea the GOP senator had. This is a spin he’s fully leaning into.

[goldenvalley]

May 26, 2022 20:06:48 GMT LFC said:

Ted Cruz wants all schools to be in full lock down except for one guarded entrance. Welcome to the innocence of being a child in Republican America. Gawd I loathe that man. I don't wish ill on many people but I would most definitely celebrate his death.

Let’s Make Schools Supermax Prisons
After an elementary school shooting in Uvalde, Texas left 19 kids and two adults dead, Sen. Ted Cruz (R-TX) (who’s speaking at the NRA’s convention this Friday) argued yesterday that the problem isn’t that there are too many guns out there, it’s that schools have too many doors–more specifically, more than one door.

• Schools need to “harden” by “having one door that goes in and out of the school [and] having armed police officers at that one door,” Cruz told reporters during his visit to Uvalde.

• The GOP senator pushed his “solution” again on Fox News later on Wednesday night.

• Cruz made this point several times yesterday and retweeted clips of himself making it, so this wasn’t just some throwaway idea the GOP senator had. This is a spin he’s fully leaning into.

Wow, just wow!  Put all the kids into maximum security facilities from kindergarten onwards. Next...parents put kids in private, non maximum security schools, leading states to cut education funding because there aren't as many students any more, and then end publicly funded education because taxpayers won't like paying for schools their kids do not attend.

[AnBr]

One door for a large school? Wait for the next fire.

[LFC]

Let the Republican posturing, avoidance, and tap dancing begin! Also, Ted Cruz is a little bitch.

Everyone Wins!
Texas Gov. Greg Abbott’s (R) office tells the Dallas Morning News that he won’t be attending the National Rifle Association’s convention in Houston on Friday as he had originally planned. Instead, Abbott will give another press conference at Uvalde, Texas on the elementary school shooting that killed 19 kids–and record a video address for the NRA.

• Abbott’s change in plans came after he was pressed on the issue during his first Uvalde conference on Wednesday. The governor avoided saying at the time if he was still planning on going to the NRA meeting.

• Sen. John Cornyn (R-TX) and Rep. Dan Crenshaw (R-TX) said after the shooting that they’d backed out of the conference before the shooting happened.

• Ex-President Donald Trump, South Dakota Gov. Kristi Noem (R) and Sen. Ted Cruz (R-TX) are still going. Speaking of Cruz, check out the way he storms off when a British reporter presses him on why these mass shootings only happen on this scale in the U.S.:

[pnwguy]

May 27, 2022 15:38:31 GMT LFC said:

Also, Ted Cruz is a little bitch.

Ted Cruz has to go.  He was going to have his own booth in the vendor area where he sells Machine Gun Bacon.

[LFC]

May 27, 2022 16:00:39 GMT pnwguy said:

May 27, 2022 15:38:31 GMT LFC said:

Also, Ted Cruz is a little bitch.

Ted Cruz has to go.  He was going to have his own booth in the vendor area where he sells Machine Gun Bacon.

He really is so many brands of awful.

[AnBr]

[goldenvalley]

As I listen to jerks in the NRA and the Texas governor I realize that they are blaming the victim in the ways they suggest to reduce or eliminate mass shootings.  The schools should be hardened; there should be one door for ingress; the schools should have more security.  The attitude is that we as a society must accommodate ourselves to the use of weapons made for killing people.  Those kids should have been in better secured schools; those people in the supermarket in Buffalo...well I guess they shouldn't have been black.

[AnBr]

[AnBr]

[Art Vandelay]

Thoughts and Prayers!

[LFC]

OK, strap in for some serious sickness across the entirety of the right. The Republicans are out with all the worst suggestions for doing ANYTHING but actually restricting guns. Here are 5, with Paul Gosar and Herschel Walker with the nuttiest. Walker has clearly taken too many hard hits. He's just bonkers, like Donald Trump and Kanye West bonkers.

2  Herschel Walker: ‘Getting a department that can look at young men that’s looking at women that’s looking at their social media’

Republican challenger to Sen. Raphael Warnock (D-GA) Herschel Walker came up with a solution so erudite that it escapes the understanding of more pedestrian minds.

“You know, Cain killed Abel and that’s a problem that we have,” he opened promisingly.

“What we need to do is look into how we can stop those things — you know they talk about doing a disinformation — what about getting a department that can look at young men that’s looking at women that’s looking at their social media?” he offered.

“This has been happening for years and the way we stop it is putting money into the mental health field, by putting money into other departments rather than departments that want to take away your rights,” he added.

Is someone writing this down?!


3  Paul Gosar: Confirming your priors about ‘a transsexual leftist illegal alien’

Social media users and trolls on 4chan, Twitter and Facebook wasted little time after the shooting in disseminating pictures of at least three trans women and falsely accusing each of them of being the shooter.

The completely fabricated claims were further spread by truth crusaders Alex Jones and Candace Owens.

Before long, the troll-to-congressional kook pipeline did its work.

“It’s a transsexual leftist illegal alien named Salvadore Ramos,” Rep. Paul Gosar (R-AZ) wrote in a now-deleted tweet responding to another deleted tweet. “It’s apparently your kind of trash.”

Gosar almost got the shooter’s name correct, a rare and likely fleeting moment of near-accuracy.

[LFC]

Trump's performance at the NRA is beyond just his usual sick and twisted level of performance art. He just supplied another data point that he suffers from serious mental illness.

Former President Trump was met with backlash for his bizarre reading of the names of victims of the tragic Texas elementary school shooting during his speech at the NRA convention on Friday night — which concluded with a … dance.

[LFC]

A teenager can buy a military grade assault rifle and armor piercing ammunition but not a handgun until they're 21. Attempts to raise that to 21 have been fought by the NRA and gun nuts.

The fact that the gunman responsible for this week’s massacre in Uvalde, Texas, was able to buy two AR-15s days after his 18th birthday highlights how much easier it is for Americans to purchase rifles than handguns.

Under federal law, Americans buying handguns from licensed dealers must be at least 21, which would have precluded Salvador Ramos from buying that type of weapon. That trumps Texas law, which only requires buyers of any type of firearm to be 18 or older.

Following Tuesday’s massacre at Robb Elementary School, which killed 19 children and two adults, a growing number of lawmakers in Texas and beyond are calling for the minimum age to purchase assault rifles to be raised to 21 from 18. Doing so would require undoing nearly two centuries of more permissive regulations on so-called long guns.

“It’s something that could happen at either the state or federal level, but I don’t see movement on either front,” said Sandra Guerra Thompson, a criminal law professor at the University of Houston Law Center.

Only six states — Florida, Washington, Vermont, California, Illinois and Hawaii — have increased the minimum purchase age for long guns to 21, according to the Giffords Law Center to Prevent Gun Violence. The majority did so following the 2018 massacre in Parkland, Florida, where a then-19-year-old assailant killed 17 people at a high school.

Several states have since faced legal challenges.

The National Rifle Association sought to repeal the Florida law.

“The ban infringes the right of all 18-to-20-year-olds to purchase firearms for the exercise of their Second Amendment rights, even for self-defense in the home,” the NRA argued in a court filing, according to the South Florida Sun Sentinel. “The ban does not just limit the right, it obliterates it.”

Government attorneys, however, argued that because “18-to-20-year-olds are uniquely likely to engage in impulsive, emotional, and risky behaviors that offer immediate or short-term rewards, drawing the line for legal purchase of firearms at 21 is a reasonable method of addressing the Legislature’s public safety concerns.”

A federal judge upheld the law last year; the NRA is appealing.

[LFC]

Josh Marshall on how police shifted with the right-wing in general in their absolutist support for gun access. (paywalled)

In my previous post I got at one of the evolutions of the gun issue over the last decade. There’s another, over a considerably longer period, which seldom gets discussed but is, I believe, extremely important. As strange as it may seem today, one of the biggest supporters of restrictive gun laws used to be police unions. On its face this is hardly surprising. A central feature of the state is that the state has a monopoly on the legitimate use of violence. That state sanctioned violence is primarily exercised by the police. Who wants to be outgunned? Police unions as a consistent supporter of gun laws remained the case as recently as the Clinton era. But that has shifted marked over the last twenty to thirty years.

The reason barely requires explanation. Indeed, it’s so intuitive it can take a few moments to put it together. Police are demographically more or less an exact overlap with the part of American society that is most pro-gun. Disproportionately male and white. Police are also disproportionately conservative. At the most basic level, one of the defining characteristics of American police officers is that most if not all of them carry firearms as part of their essential job responsibilities. Of course, they’re going to be into guns, though in the past that didn’t necessarily go hand in hand with opposing any restrictions on their ownership and use. When you put all the overlapping Venn diagrams together it’s obvious that police as a group will be overwhelmingly pro-gun rights and that this will overwhelm any remaining desire not to be outgunned in a violent confrontation.

It is important to note that police officers, officers of the law, will always tend in a conservative direction. After all, they are charged with enforcing civil authority. So it is an inherently authority-confirming occupation. But while officers of the law have always tended in a conservative direction, ‘conservatism’ didn’t always mean supporting the unrestricted use and ownership of guns.

Politically, this shift had major consequences. As recently as the 90s this was a key part of gun control advocacy. That’s the origin of “cop killer” bullets and the attempt to ban them. The support of police unions allowed gun control advocates to appeal to conservative beliefs and anti-crime sentiments. Today, determined political support for police – as exemplified by the blue line flags and the like – is almost indistinguishable from pro-gun advocacy, if not necessarily logically than certainly in terms of those who support the two lines of advocacy.

[LFC]

National Review published a piece that just came out and said it; so sad but it's the price we have to pay for gun access.

TPM Reader JT flagged this Uvalde/mass shooting editorial from The National Review. I found it notable for two very different reasons. The first is that the editorial states with a clarity, both horrifying and admirable, what we have been discussing over recent days: for pro-gun advocates child massacres are simply the very unfortunate price of being free. Here’s the key text: “We must reiterate that the Second Amendment protects a foundational individual right and that, however heartbreaking the behavior of their heinous criminals might be, free countries do not wantonly limit foundational individual rights that are, in well over 99 percent of cases, exercised by law-abiding citizens.”

The gun writing at National Review seems mostly under the influence of writer Charles Cooke, an immigrant from the UK who, if I’m remembering right, told me about a decade ago that it wasn’t that he was into guns personally but rather as an ideological and freedom thing. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

In any case, it’s nice to see the reality of the position stated so clearly.

But there’s something else I wanted to note about this editorial. It advocates raising the age at which people can buy AR-15s and all long guns from 18 to 21. This also appears to be a focus of discussion on Capitol Hill – though I’m not foolish enough to get my hopes up.

When I first saw this proposed I considered it yet another in that list of farcically marginal reforms. Certainly it is woefully inadequate to the challenge. But as I’ve read more about it and considered it more, there’s more to it than that. It’s worth doing.

A stunningly large number of mass shooters are between the ages of 18 and 21. Uvalde shooter, 18; Buffalo shooter 18; Newtown shooter, 20; Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School shooter, 19. In addition to those in this three year age range many others are just above it. The shooter in the 2019 El Paso mass shooting was 23; the shooter in the AME Church mass shooting in Charleston, South Carolina was 21. This isn’t random chance. There’s a lot we know about the teenage and young adult male brain that makes 18, 19 and 20 much higher risk for this stew of interlocking behaviors than men ten or twenty or for that matter even five years older. (Check out the actuarial tables that put a premium for auto insurance for men under the age of 25.) The shooters in Buffalo and Uvalde both appear to have waited until their 18th birthdays to purchase assault rifles to use in their massacres.

Of course young sociopaths can find other ways to get AR-15s. But getting them illegally is another way to get caught. You might say, “Well, they could still just buy a hand gun.” But in fact they can’t. Perversely, federal law requires purchasers of handguns to be 21. But you can buy rifles and shotguns (which includes all assault rifles) when you’re 18.

It’s not a huge change. But it’s a bigger one than it seems on the surface. Florida changed its state law to require purchasers of long guns to be at least 21 in the aftermath of the Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School shooting in 2018. Like The National Review, many conservatives who are open to this reform say it must be done at the state level for all the standard and nonsensical ‘federalism’ reasons. But that likely still leaves a substantial opening at the federal level.

It seems possible to do. It’s worth doing. We should try very hard to do it.

BTW they also play the "well there are so many guns now that there's nothing that can be done" card.

Very little of what Democrats have proposed as “common sense” measures has anything to do with what happened in Uvalde. Nothing that the president is pushing for would touch the 450 million firearms that are already in private hands.

I call bullshit. Register all guns. If an owner misuses or fails to secure their guns they get taken away. If caught with unregistered guns for any reason they get taken away and, like other felons, you lose the right to own or operate a firearm for the rest of your life. Let's implement FULL responsibility for owning a gun. Of course that would never fly with the all rights / no responsibilities crowd.