The National Rifle Association has warned Congress not to “mess with” gun rights in the wake of the shooting of Congresswoman Gabrielle Giffords in Tucson. The NRA is busy as usual, promoting legislation allowing guns to be carried in public places, organizing drives to get gun rights allies into state legislatures and state attorney general posts, and pursuing litigation, including a suit against the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives which, if successful, would give people as young as 18 the right to carry handguns.
But Massachusetts Sen. John Kerry, along with Sen. Frank Lautenberg of New Jersey and Rep. Carolyn McCarthy of New York, is pushing two gun control measures. One would tighten regulations affecting the way guns are sold at trade shows. The other would ban the kind of magazine that allowed the Tucson shooter to kill six people, including a nine-year-old girl, and wound 13 others so fast. (McCarthy’s husband was killed and her son seriously wounded in a mass shooting in 1993 by a man who also used a so-called “large-capacity ammunition feeding device.”)
A magazine that enables such rapid firing puts the lie to the NRA’s constantly reiterated dogma that guns don’t kill people, people do. No one with a knife, a lead pipe, or even a less efficient firing mechanism could have done what this shooter did, and setting up a bombing would have involved more risk of failure. The legislation co-sponsored by Kerry et al. would ban “the possession, import, or sale of any high-capacity magazine that has the capacity of more than 10 rounds of ammunition” except those purchased before the law went into effect, or owned by law enforcement officers. (A now-expired federal law against assault weapons banned even the manufacture of clips with more than 10 rounds for sale to the public.)
The question of whether any civilian really needs an ammo clip with 30 rounds or more would seem to many to answer itself, but the proposed law is headed for a fierce fight. To get an idea how deeply rooted the idea that freedom is synonymous with gun ownership is in our country, look at this post by blogger David Codrea on waronguns.blogspot.com:
“Magazine Drive: In light of the folks (Carolyn McCarthy, Dick Cheney, Peggy Noonan, Bob Brady, and dozens more) willing to use the awful Tucson murders to try to take away more liberties from Americans, I am giving away five politically incorrect, full-capacity G3 magazines that they wish were illegal& The first five of my Facebook friends in the Knoxville area to comment below and ask for one will get one, free of charge.” The giveaway, Codrea adds, is limited to one per household.
