White House Statement after Temple Shooting

I’ll summarize this for you. The administration’s official position is that it wants the Assault Weapons Ban renewed. But the White House is not going to push for it in Congress. Too many other more important things. In the mean time, they’ll be improving the background checks, though they offer no specifics on how exactly they plan to do that.

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12 thoughts on “White House Statement after Temple Shooting”

  1. It is called wait until the new term begins and hope he gets majority in the House and keeps the Senate.

  4. Good for him. Appreciate the honesty. Would like it much better if he’d go all out for gun control. Let’s have this talk, now.

    But even if he did, I agree that the media would largely hide it. They know what it would do in places like Ohio, and even Northern Virginia.

  5. “. . .they’ll be improving the background checks. . .”

    I’m going to engage in some paranoia, so get ready. :-)

    Yesterday we had some oblique comments about trading off “National CCW Reciprocity” for “improved mental health background checks.” (I don’t recall anyone actually advocating that, but it was a “suppose.”)

    At my age I am unavoidably becoming aware of the tradeoffs in choosing between many common and mostly innocuous medications, e.g., for hypertension. It is surprising how many, in their fine print, itemize “psychotropic” effects among potential side effects.

    I can well imagine enhanced “mental health” background checks that quietly add consumption of almost anything with a potential psychological side effect to factors disbarring us from first, CCW, and later, firearms possession completely. And it would be done by regulation, never touched by elected officials’ hands. For us old guys (and gals), linked straight to our Medicare Part D formularies.

    1. He could try it, but it would be actionable in court. It would take an Act of Congress to accomplish that legally, since there’s no authority in the GCA. I’ve seen the courts bend the Gun Control Act quite liberally, like they did with allowing the multi-sale reporting requirement on the border, but in that case they resolved ambiguity in the law in favor of the government. There’s not as much ambiguity in the GCA’s mental health prohibitions, unless they want to try to push a very broad reading of what constitutes an adjudication. I wouldn’t be surprised to see them try, though.

      1. ” I wouldn’t be surprised to see them try, though.”

        That’s the point and the value of paranoia. You keep a couple percent of your resources in reserve for the “not likely, but neither would I be surprised” stuff.

        Actually if you consider probabilities as a function of time, probability converges to 100 percent when enough time passes. I have to get out my old textbooks to remember what those probability distributions are called, but they likely are applicable to most things political.

      2. “He could try it, but it would be actionable in court. It would take an Act of Congress to accomplish that legally”

        I’m not intending this as a “gotcha,” but remember that a PA state police firearms registration system is specifically banned by law in Pennsylvania — and yet we have one. And, that was certainly “actionable,” but Allegheny County Sportsmen’s League “actioned” it all the way to the state Supreme Court — who said it was just fine by them.

  6. “. . .they’ll be improving the background checks. . .”

    I’m thinking degrade their computer system to 30% uptime, outsource the phone bank to a foreign country where their english is unintelligible…

  7. What if by “improving the background checks” they mean they aren’t going to delete the “OK to transfer” NICS records, and retain them? That would be de-facto gun *OWNER* registration. Very easy to implement, and in a relative short span of time (say, 5 years), you’ll capture probably 75% of active gun owners.

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