Bolder action on guns
To call President Joe Biden’s limited actions on firearms a “gun grab” is typical of the hair-on-fire rhetoric that keeps Congress from enacting sensible gun control.
It’s to Mr. Biden’s credit that he is not letting this predictable blowback from the gun lobby and its allies in the House and Senate, or Congressional inertia, stop him from taking a few modest steps. Whether it will inspire Congress to take stronger action remains to be seen.
The president is directing the Justice Department to propose new regulations to help stop the proliferation of “ghost guns” — kits that enable people to assemble an unregistered, untraceable gun with no background check, a gaping loophole in state and federal gun laws.
Justice will also propose a rule on stabilizing braces, attachments that make pistols more stable and accurate while still concealable. Such a device was used in the March 22 shooting at a Boulder, Colo., market that took ten lives. The rule would bring such weapons under the same regulations as short-barreled rifles, which require registration and a $200 excise tax.
Mr. Biden is further calling for Justice to produce model state “red flag ” legislation for allowing family members or law enforcement to ask courts for an order to temporarily confiscate a person’s firearms if they’re deemed an imminent danger to themselves or others. This is exactly the sort of action to “deal with mental illness” that even gun rights activists often refer to as they steer the topic away from regulation.
Mr. Biden is also ordering the first study of gun trafficking in the U.S. in more than 20 years, a problem long overdue for fresh study.
And he is nominating a gun control advocate, David Chipman, to be the new director for the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives, which has been without a Senate-confirmed director since 2015. Having one would say as much about Mr. Biden’s commitment to gun control as not having one said about Donald Trump’s disdain for it.
All these actions, though, cannot take the place of a few sensible measures Congress has been unable for years to pass, but potentially could now with Democrats controlling both chambers. The House has already passed universal background checks for all firearms transactions, even private ones, but the legislation will likely face resistance in the Senate — even though it’s supported by the vast majority of Americans and gun owners, and would in no way infringe on anyone’s Second Amendment rights except those who, by law, cannot legally own a gun. If there’s a credible argument against this, we’ve yet to hear it.
And we need an assault weapons ban, one that curtails the proliferation of military-style guns designed for one main thing: to quickly kill a lot of people. That Republicans, and some Democrats, have resisted this since the last ban expired in 2004, despite these weapons’ prevalence in mass shootings, is indefensible.
The president is already taking plenty of flak for even the small steps he outlined last week. Now, if only his political courage would stiffen the spines of enough Democrats and even — who knows? — some Republicans to take more sweeping action, they might actually save some lives.