Remember after 9/11 when authorities decided to better screen flight schools and ban box cutters on airplanes? And most people thought, "You weren't doing that already?... "
This month's proposed gun laws are producing the same, "I-can't-believe-I'm-hearing-this incredulity.
Make gun trafficking a felony? You mean it isn't already?
Mandate universal background checks? You mean they aren't already? (40 percent of gun buyers are background-check free!)
Limit gun purchases to one a month? You mean people are buying multiple guns a month?
(Yes, straw buyers purchase hundreds a month, according to the Illinois Council Against Handgun Violence.)
Medical providers should share the mental health records of "prohibited buyers" like Seung-Hui Cho of the Virginia Tech massacre and at least ten other mass shooters with law enforcement authorities? They don't already? (In Illinois last year only two counties out of more than 100 reported prohibited buyers to authorities.)
Both citizens and lawmakers have been sleeping at the wheel while the NRA has stripped away one right after another from people who do not want to live in an armed camp. No insurance is required of gun owners though they are capable of inflicting infinitely more damage than car owners and even vicious dog owners, both of whom are insured. What?
Gun owners are not registered like car owners and dog owners, to protect innocent children who go into their homes not to mention law enforcement officers called there. How did that happen?
And where were mothers, fathers, gun victims, teachers, medical professionals, community members, school officials, employers, employees and city, state and federal officials when the "Protection of Lawful Commerce in Arms Act" was passed in 2005? This law gives complete legal immunity to "manufacturers, distributors, dealers, or importers of firearms or ammunition for damages resulting from the misuse of their products" that might be brought by those killed and maimed by guns. The entire gun industry in suit-proof to protect it from "reckless lawsuits" says the NRA. The gun lobby is "protected"; what about us?
Thanks to the black hand of the NRA and its lobbyists, toy guns are better regulated than real guns!
Luckily, the nation is taking a look at the firearm free-for-all we have been living under and enacting anti-straw buyer laws. Thanks to a straw buyer, convicted felon William Spengler, who killed his own grandmother, waltzed into a Gander Mountain in Henrietta, N.Y. and chose the weapons with which he killed firefighters on Christmas Eve 2012. Thanks to straw buyers, 1,300 firearms seized on Chicago's street were traced to one dealer, Chuck's Gun Shop, since 2008.
Just like 9/11, we have been lulled into a false sense of security about existing laws... and Sandy Hook was the wakeup call.