EDITORIAL:

Time is now to act on gun safety

Thu, Apr 1, 2021 (2 a.m.)

Adopting universal background checks for gun purchases would not prevent any legally qualified American from purchasing or owning a gun. Nor would giving the FBI more time to investigate instances when would-be gun buyers are flagged in the background-check system.

We offer these simple, incontrovertible facts to counter the false narrative from the right about gun-safety measures that the U.S. House sent to the Senate last month. Speaking during a Senate Judiciary Committee hearing the day after the Colorado shooting that killed 10 people, Sen. Ted Cruz, R-Texas, summed up that narrative: “What happens in this committee after every mass shooting is Democrats propose taking away guns from law-abiding citizens, because that’s their political objective.”

Wrong. If the Senate passed these House-approved measures, anyone currently qualified to own guns could still buy and own as many as he or she wanted. Anyone who says otherwise is either lying or has been lied to.

But of course, Cruz and his ilk would never be so responsible as to assure gun owners that their Second Amendment rights weren’t being taken away. He knows these measures are designed solely to keep guns out of the hands of the wrong people but lies about the goals of the bill.

For the extremist Republican leadership, their gun rhetoric is about playing the politics of fear and paranoia to gin up their base supporters and keep them coming to the polls. It’s also about feeding the massive money-making machine that is the gun industry, which is among the key supporters of politicians like Cruz.

The good news, though, is that Americans have had enough. They showed it by electing a presidential administration with a responsible mindset on gun safety, and through an endless stream of polls showing they overwhelmingly support such measures as universal background checks and the extension of time for vetting purchases.

In both cases, Americans showed their innate wisdom by closing a couple of troubling loopholes. The universal background checks measure — as Nevadans know after approving them in our state in 2017 — would require vetting of transactions between private individuals online, at gun shows and in other person-to-person settings. Currently, federal law requires background checks only for purchases involving registered gun dealers.

The other House-passed bill would give the FBI 10 days to vet individuals flagged by the background check system. Currently, officials have only three days to do these checks. If authorities can’t get to them in that time, sales can go through.

Would either of these bills solve America’s gun violence epidemic? No, but they would keep Americans safer by fixing holes in the background-check safety net.

Now, President Joe Biden is calling for lawmakers to go a step further and pass an assault weapons ban, which has prompted another round of lies from the right about a supposed effort to confiscate weapons from the American public.

For the record, Biden’s policy — which he stated during the campaign and lists on his website — would allow owners of assault weapons to either allow the government to buy them back or register them under the National Firearms Act. Biden has stated he doesn’t support mandatory buybacks.

Congress should follow Biden’s lead. It’s past time to address the enormous public safety risk posed by assault-type weapons and high-capacity magazines, which are semiautomatic versions of weapons designed with the single purpose of neutralizing enemy combatants on battlefields. Packing massive killing power when fitted with magazines that can carry upwards of 100 bullets, these weapons have been commonly used in mass shootings and are responsible for countless deaths and injuries on a daily basis. They simply have no business being in civilian hands, any more than a flamethrower or a grenade launcher. We know that painfully well in Las Vegas after suffering through the Oct. 1 shooting, where one man killed 61 and gravely injured hundreds more in a matter of minutes.

Nor should the implications of these weapons be lost on anyone: When armed bullies descended on the Michigan statehouse last year, they were carrying assault weapons to intimidate lawmakers and could have easily outgunned law enforcement defending the legislators. The incipient insurrectionists in Michigan were not carrying those guns in self-defense, they were carrying them with implied offensive intent.

And while misled gun enthusiasts defend assault weapons as self-defense tools, there are several other kinds of guns that work perfectly well in that regard — shotguns, pistols and other types of rifles. Biden’s assault weapons ban, as he has described it, wouldn’t restrict those types of weapons.

So-called Second Amendment advocates ignore important language in the amendment itself. The right to bear arms is specifically ensured so that “a well regulated militia” would exist to provide security for the state. Gun safety advocates are simply demanding that all the language of the Second Amendment has weight and that the government take steps toward proper regulation.

No doubt, the Ted Cruzes of our nation will dial up the “taking our guns” narrative to 11 over a proposed ban, but Americans have had enough of these weapons of mass destruction, and of the GOP’s false narratives on gun issues. Congress should act.

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