Trump supports efforts to improve gun background checks

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Bootstrap
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Trump supports efforts to improve gun background checks

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Trump supports efforts to improve gun background checks, showing interest in a bipartisan proposal.

He also says he will participate in listening sessions in Florida, where he would be talking to some of the students at the school.

If he shows leadership on this issue, something good could happen. Improving background checks is something both parties have said they are open to, but so far, it has been difficult to get anything concrete passed.
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Re: Trump supports efforts to improve gun background checks

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Improving how the existing law is handled would be a great thing. (For example, making sure data about people with ongoing mental illnesses that meet the criteria for not being allowed to buy guns actually end up in the NCIS database.)

The anti-gun side has consistently stymied these efforts since they are almost always pushing to eventually get an Australian-style mass confiscation. Until they decide to stop doing they, their efforts are going to meet with strong resistance.
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Re: Trump supports efforts to improve gun background checks

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Josh wrote:Improving how the existing law is handled would be a great thing. (For example, making sure data about people with ongoing mental illnesses that meet the criteria for not being allowed to buy guns actually end up in the NCIS database.)
This seems to be something that a lot of groups agree on, and it's politically feasible.
Any Republican who decides to back the legislation can argue that they just want existing laws to be enforced. And it looks like the GOP won’t have to fear backlash from the gun lobby. “We applaud Senator John Cornyn’s efforts to ensure that the records of prohibited individuals are entered into NICS,” Chris Cox of the NRA said in a statement. “The National Rifle Association has long supported the inclusion of all legitimate records in the National Instant Criminal Background Check System.” The National Shooting Sports Foundation, a trade association for the firearms industry, put out a statement on Thursday in which it “praised U.S. Sen. John Cornyn (R-Texas) for his leadership” on the bill.

Gun-control advocates support the bill too, and say it’s evidence that common ground between Republicans and Democrats in the gun debate is possible. “This is both parties affirming that there are people that we believe should not have access to guns, and we want to make sure that the system is set up in such a way that we prevent access to guns for those people,” Christian Heyne, the legislative director of the Coalition to Stop Gun Violence, which supports the legislation, said in an interview. “This is a real, genuine effort from people who couldn’t be further from each other on the other side of the aisle.”
I really do think it's important to do something that makes a difference, and that can't happen without agreement across many groups.
Josh wrote:The anti-gun side has consistently stymied these efforts since they are almost always pushing to eventually get an Australian-style mass confiscation. Until they decide to stop doing they, their efforts are going to meet with strong resistance.
Are any of the major gun-control groups advocating for that? I haven't seen that position in anything I have read. Some of them are pushing some interesting new approaches, though. For instance, the Coalition to Step Gun Violence (CSGV) is pushing an approach based on the kind of temporary restraining order that we have in domestic violence cases. Suppose you have someone like the Florida shooter who has said scary things on Youtube about wanting to be a school shooter, killed a kitten and a pet rat, threatened other students, what can you do to actually prevent him from buying weapons? The CSGV has been promoting this approach:
CSGV has been instrumental in developing, drafting, passing, and enacting the Gun Violence Restraining Order (GVRO) policy — also known as the Extreme Risk Protection Order (ERPO) — in states across the nation.

The GVRO allows family members and/or law enforcement officials to petition a judge to temporarily remove firearms from individuals in crisis. The policy, which is based on behavioral risk factors for dangerousness rather than a mental health diagnosis, gives loved ones the tools to protect individuals in crisis. Concerned relatives can get help for a family member they know to be suicidal, a loved one who is having thoughts of harming others, or a family member whose erratic behavior, violence, and co-occurring substance abuse suggest additional violence is imminent.
Obviously, we have to look for solutions that can be acceptable to most Americans and are compatible with the Second Amendment, but I think there are useful things to consider in this space.

But most things proposed to help with gun violence do not go through. Remember the "bump stock" legislation proposed after Las Vegas? It faded away silently. This is an area where presidential leadership could really help significantly. And to me, the listening sessions are promising. I suspect they may make this an important issue to him.
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Re: Trump supports efforts to improve gun background checks

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Bootstrap wrote:He also says he will participate in listening sessions in Florida, where he would be talking to some of the students at the school.
There's likely more truth in this statement than intended. 8-)
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Re: Trump supports efforts to improve gun background checks

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Bump stock legislation is inherently foolish. It’s something anyone can make themselves with a few minutes, some hand tools, and some cheap off the shelf parts.

The gun control lobby refuses to see eye to eye with gun rights advocates on this. They want to pass laws to basically make it very difficult to legally own firearms without a big risk of accidentally becoming a criminal.

Most notable is that virtually all of the gun control lobby wants to make person to person sales illegal. In every country that’s done this, it eventually led to wholesale confiscation, like in the UK and in Australia.

The gun control lobby needs to figure out how to make right wing America plus a sizeable fraction of left wing America trust them.
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Re: Trump supports efforts to improve gun background checks

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Josh wrote:The gun control lobby refuses to see eye to eye with gun rights advocates on this. They want to pass laws to basically make it very difficult to legally own firearms without a big risk of accidentally becoming a criminal.

Most notable is that virtually all of the gun control lobby wants to make person to person sales illegal. In every country that’s done this, it eventually led to wholesale confiscation, like in the UK and in Australia.
The gun control lobby wants person-to-person sales to use a national system that invokes the same background checks needed for other gun sales. If you don't have that, then there's really no way to keep anyone from buying weapons, no matter what their criminal history or mental health status, because someone with no restrictions can buy the gun and sell it to them. That's really quite different from making person-to-person sales illegal.
Josh wrote:The gun control lobby needs to figure out how to make right wing America plus a sizeable fraction of left wing America trust them.
Actually, polls consistently show that a sizeable majority of Americans wants universal background checks. Most Americans are sold on this.

And our country should not be governed by competing lobbies, it should be governed by cooperative adults working together to solve our important problems, seeking common ground.
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Re: Trump supports efforts to improve gun background checks

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the political hysteria i see over the Parkland, FL shootings reminds only too well of the political antics following the Dylann Roof tragedy. i’m not amused.

there was a lot of pay-off to all that hysteria, so, the motivation is there to repeat the pattern.

i wish i’d never heard the words, “community organizer,” or “political activists.” :(
(in lots of peoples’ minds) these have now become dirty words.

i’ll repeat. fwiw.
my perception of Trump is that he is more of a diplomat/negotiator than lots of others.

he, and Melania, have shown up at the time of these tragedies more quickly than other recent presidents, plural; and, he seems to move quickly with approving disaster relief than others before him. sometimes, addressing imminent disasters, not waiting for them to fully hit. (that has not been done before, to my knowledge.)

the most recent was in American Samoa, which was barely mentioned in news. :-|
https://www.fema.gov/news-release/2018/ ... ican-samoa

regarding this Florida visit, and his willingness to discuss changes in law, i’ll wait+see.
i will not venture to guess what he’s thinking. or what is possible. :-|
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Re: Trump supports efforts to improve gun background checks

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Request: could we please avoid discussing how much we love or hate individual politicians or lobbies in this thread? It gets old when that becomes a big part of so many threads, and it makes it a lot harder to discuss the topic of each thread.

I'm much more interested in discussing what might be politically feasible today, given the people who are currently in power.
Last edited by Bootstrap on Mon Feb 19, 2018 5:01 pm, edited 1 time in total.
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Re: Trump supports efforts to improve gun background checks

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Bootstrap wrote:
Josh wrote:Improving how the existing law is handled would be a great thing. (For example, making sure data about people with ongoing mental illnesses that meet the criteria for not being allowed to buy guns actually end up in the NCIS database.)
This seems to be something that a lot of groups agree on, and it's politically feasible.
Any Republican who decides to back the legislation can argue that they just want existing laws to be enforced. And it looks like the GOP won’t have to fear backlash from the gun lobby. “We applaud Senator John Cornyn’s efforts to ensure that the records of prohibited individuals are entered into NICS,” Chris Cox of the NRA said in a statement. “The National Rifle Association has long supported the inclusion of all legitimate records in the National Instant Criminal Background Check System.” The National Shooting Sports Foundation, a trade association for the firearms industry, put out a statement on Thursday in which it “praised U.S. Sen. John Cornyn (R-Texas) for his leadership” on the bill.

Gun-control advocates support the bill too, and say it’s evidence that common ground between Republicans and Democrats in the gun debate is possible. “This is both parties affirming that there are people that we believe should not have access to guns, and we want to make sure that the system is set up in such a way that we prevent access to guns for those people,” Christian Heyne, the legislative director of the Coalition to Stop Gun Violence, which supports the legislation, said in an interview. “This is a real, genuine effort from people who couldn’t be further from each other on the other side of the aisle.”
I really do think it's important to do something that makes a difference, and that can't happen without agreement across many groups.
Josh wrote:The anti-gun side has consistently stymied these efforts since they are almost always pushing to eventually get an Australian-style mass confiscation. Until they decide to stop doing they, their efforts are going to meet with strong resistance.
Are any of the major gun-control groups advocating for that? I haven't seen that position in anything I have read. Some of them are pushing some interesting new approaches, though. For instance, the Coalition to Step Gun Violence (CSGV) is pushing an approach based on the kind of temporary restraining order that we have in domestic violence cases. Suppose you have someone like the Florida shooter who has said scary things on Youtube about wanting to be a school shooter, killed a kitten and a pet rat, threatened other students, what can you do to actually prevent him from buying weapons? The CSGV has been promoting this approach:
CSGV has been instrumental in developing, drafting, passing, and enacting the Gun Violence Restraining Order (GVRO) policy — also known as the Extreme Risk Protection Order (ERPO) — in states across the nation.

The GVRO allows family members and/or law enforcement officials to petition a judge to temporarily remove firearms from individuals in crisis. The policy, which is based on behavioral risk factors for dangerousness rather than a mental health diagnosis, gives loved ones the tools to protect individuals in crisis. Concerned relatives can get help for a family member they know to be suicidal, a loved one who is having thoughts of harming others, or a family member whose erratic behavior, violence, and co-occurring substance abuse suggest additional violence is imminent.
Obviously, we have to look for solutions that can be acceptable to most Americans and are compatible with the Second Amendment, but I think there are useful things to consider in this space.

But most things proposed to help with gun violence do not go through. Remember the "bump stock" legislation proposed after Las Vegas? It faded away silently. This is an area where presidential leadership could really help significantly. And to me, the listening sessions are promising. I suspect they may make this an important issue to him.
National Review recently ran an article supporting the GVRO. Marco Rubio, among others, tweeted his support of it.
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Re: Trump supports efforts to improve gun background checks

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buckeyematt2 wrote:National Review recently ran an article supporting the GVRO. Marco Rubio, among others, tweeted his support of it.
Here's the National Review article: A Gun-Control Measure Conservatives Should Consider.
— there is broad conceptual agreement that regardless of whether you view gun ownership as a right or a privilege, a person can demonstrate through their conduct that they have no business possessing a weapon.

Felons, the dangerously mentally ill, perpetrators of domestic violence — these people have not only demonstrated their unfitness to own a weapon, they’ve been granted due process to contest the charges or claims against them. There is no arbitrary state action. There is no collective punishment. There is, rather, an individual, constitutional state process, and the result of that process is a set of defined consequences that includes revoking the right to gun ownership.
What if, however, there was an evidence-based process for temporarily denying a troubled person access to guns? What if this process empowered family members and others close to a potential shooter, allowing them to “do something” after they “see something” and “say something”? I’ve written that the best line of defense against mass shootings is an empowered, vigilant citizenry. There is a method that has the potential to empower citizens even more, when it’s carefully and properly implemented.
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