Senator Chuck Schumer (D-NY) is one of the more outspoken advocates of gun control in Congress today. Every single time there’s a firearms related incident that makes the national news he takes the opportunity to wave the bloody shirt and demand that we “do something about gun violence.” For the children. More often than not the proposals he makes have nothing whatsoever to do with the widely publicized incident he’s using to promote his agenda, and quite often they would have exactly zero impact on reducing the kind of crime he’s trying to target. This time is no different.
From the NY Daily News:
Sen. Chuck Schumer vowed Sunday to make a major push to get new gun control legislation through Congress, connecting the Charleston massacre to other mass killings that have rocked the country.
[…]
Schumer proposed three components of “common-sense” legislation: increasing the strength of gun background checks, particularly to weed out mentally ill individuals; requiring background checks at gun shows, and cracking down on the flow of guns from the South to cities in the Northeast.
Not a single one of Senator Schumer’s proposals would have stopped the attack in Charleston.
“Stronger” background checks would not have worked, since the Charleston attacker did not have a background which would have disqualified him from purchasing a firearm. Unless Senator Schumer proposes that anyone who espouses certain views (which do not match his own) should be banned from owning a firearm, that is.
Background checks at gun shows already take place, lest we forget that gun dealers are required to perform a NICS check for every sale they make regardless of the location. What Chuckie is talking about are private party sales, which still would not have stopped the Charleston attacker. He bought his gun fair and square from a gun store, passing the required NICS background check with flying colors.
“Cracking down on the flow of guns” is already something that Chuckie can enforce, but chooses not to. Selling guns across state lines without a license is already a Federal felony. Possession of an unregistered firearm in New York City is already a crime. Chuck could ask the police to crack down and enforce the laws already on the books rather than trying to blame the rest of the country for his state’s appallingly high murder rate, but that would mean taking responsibility for his state’s failings and actually doing something about the problem. Better to blame everyone else.
The good news is that these new proposals have exactly zero chance of passing right now, especially with the Republicans in charge of the House and Senate. But constant vigilance is the price of freedom.