The shooting at the Abundant Life Christian School in Madison, Wisconsin, immediately prompted renewed calls for gun control from President Joe Biden and others. As I have previously written, these calls often appear entirely disconnected from the actual crime or the constitutional protections afforded gun owners, including President Biden demanding a ban on assault weapons after a shooting with a handgun.
President Biden’s call for greater background checks and enforcement was a bit incongruous after he pardoned his own son on gun charges. More importantly, the Wisconsin case only highlighted why these standard demands for gun control would not have impacted that case.
This was a juvenile who is believed to have used a 9mm handgun in the attack. Natalie Rupnow, 15, was not supposed to have a gun and would not have gone through background checks. While both Biden and Kamala Harris have raised limiting or banning the popular 9mm, Harris admits that she is one of millions with the weapon and it would not be subject to any of these proposals.
The president once again denounced the availability of what he collectively calls “assault weapons,” a common reference to such popular models as the AR-15. Efforts to ban this model have already failed in the courts on constitutional grounds, though litigation is continuing on that issue.
In 2008, the Supreme Court handed down a landmark ruling in District of Columbia v. Heller, recognizing the Second Amendment as encompassing an individual right to bear arms. The Supreme Court further strengthened the right in New York State Rifle & Pistol Association Inc. v. Bruen.
The AR-15 is the most popular gun in America and the number is continuing to rise rapidly, with one AR-15 purchased in every five new firearms sales. These AR-15s clearly are not being purchased for armored deer. Many are purchased for personal and home protection; it also is popular for target shooting and hunting. Many gun owners like the AR-15 because it is modular; depending on the model, you can swap out barrels, bolts and high-capacity magazines, or add a variety of accessories. While it does more damage than a typical handgun, it is not the most powerful gun sold in terms of caliber; many guns have equal or greater calibre.
That is why laws to ban or curtail sales of the AR-15 run into constitutional barriers. Even the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit struck down a California ban on adults under 21 purchasing semi-automatic weapons like the AR-15.
After past tragedies, some of us have cautioned that there is a limited range of options for gun bans, given constitutional protections. There also are practical barriers, with an estimated 393 million guns in the United States and an estimated 72 million gun owners; three out of ten Americans say they have guns. Indeed, gun ownership rose during the pandemic. When former Texas congressman and U.S. Senate candidate Beto O’Rourke declared, “Hell yes, we are going to take your AR-15,” he was widely celebrated on the left. However, even seizing that one type of gun would require confiscation of as many as 15 million weapons.
These calls for greater gun controls remain either factually ambiguous or legally dubious. For example, former FBI Deputy Director Andrew McCabe declared after the Wisconsin shooting that it is time to “change the context of gun ownership.” While admitting that he did not know all of the facts, McCabe said:
We’re [going] nowhere because it keeps happening. We know it’s going to happen again. It’s happening today. It’s going to happen again in the near future. I can guarantee you that and every time it happens, we do just about nothing. That doesn’t mean there aren’t things we can’t do. We could do things. We could — we could support and enact legislation that changes the — the — the context of gun ownership in this country and emphasizes gun safety and responsibility with the firearms that you own and keeping them out of the hands of children and doing — and really vigorous, consistent background checks across the country. We could stop selling people — stop — you — eliminate the ability to purchase guns without a background check.
It is unclear what “changing the context” means, particularly when the context is first and foremost constitutional.
Likewise, Rep. Mark Pocan (D-WI) called for his House colleagues to “stand up to gun manufacturers” but stopped short of explaining what that would actually mean:
Pocan has previously called for “common sense” laws without tackling the more difficult question of how to produce the sweeping changes given the narrow scope of constitutional limits for an individual right.
Wisconsin has robust gun control laws that did not prevent this shooting because Rupnow was not subject to the background checks and other regulations. She was not supposed to have the weapon and 9mm is not one of the guns that Democrats are calling to ban.
None of this means that people of good faith should not work on new initiatives and measures to combat gun violence. However, politicians like President Biden have misled the public for years about the narrow range of constitutional options for gun control legislation. The suggestion is that “this did not have to happen” despite the fact that none of these proposals would have stopped this from happening.
In a tragedy of this magnitude, our leaders have a duty, first and foremost, of honesty in speaking with the public.
Jonathan Turley is the Shapiro Professor of Public Interest Law at George Washington University. He is the author of “The Indispensable Right: Free Speech in an Age of Rage.”
No such calls after the United healthcare exec killing. The weapon being a ghost gun of 3-D printing manufacture. Pay no attention to the man behind the Resolute Desk. The time for soiling himself, and the rest of the nation, will soon be at an end.
For some reason, Democrats have been, and are on, a ceaseless quest to disarm their subjects….oops, I mean American’s.
The obvious question is how did she get into school with a loaded gun?
Secure the schools is the obvious safeguard. Students must enter interlocked doorway portals while passing through metal detectors.
Off topic in case Professor Turley reads these comments;
Trump sues Des Moines Register, pollster
https://thehill.com/regulation/court-battles/5043821-donald-trump-des-moines-register-ann-selzer-lawsuit/
It was my impression that pollsters have a First Amendment right to publish inaccurate polls. Especially since almost all polls are wrong.
If that is correct, will Professor Turley rhetorically defend the Des Moines Register and the pollster?
Of course he will. The lawsuit is ridiculous, exactly like all the lawsuits aimed at Trump. I think that’s Trump’s point.
Applying a “consumer fraud” law to election reporting is ridiculous; if the law does apply, then it’s unconstitutional.
Off topic in case Professor Turley reads these comments;
Trump sues Des Moines Register, pollster
https://thehill.com/regulation/court-battles/5043821-donald-trump-des-moines-register-ann-selzer-lawsuit/
It was my impression that pollsters have a First Amendment right to publish inaccurate polls. Especially since almost all polls are wrong.
If that is correct, will Professor Turley rhetorically defend the Des Moines Register and the pollster?
Dems always KNOW there is a universal single answer to every gun violence issue – remove the inanimate object, aka the gun, and whallah the problem is absolutely solved! Simpleton Genius is best according to Dem orthodoxy and they are truly Simpletons! Oh but that pesky old document by white supremacist colonialists keeps getting in the way! Time for more Simpleton Genius to cast aside that tired old view I suppose!
Hey, did Biden make calls for more gun laws after that one guy, stalked and killed that health insurance CEO?
Let’s say he did. It would be just as wrong.
The whole idea that “ghost guns” are scary is stupid. “Ghost guns” are no more dangerous than any other guns, and the whole law requiring serialization should be repealed. In the 50+ years that this law has existed, NOT ONE CRIME has ever been solved by tracing a gun. So why require serial numbers? Just to hassle gun owners. And that makes it unconstitutional.
This year ATF stated 700 million guns in circulation. NO ONE is taking our guns. Molon labe.
Says the president who pardoned his son for a gun crime. “Not a joke”
Say When
I would say that rather than gun control (because guns are just one of innumerable weapons available for causing mayhem, we would look to societal “control” where we stop indoctrinating people on untested and unsound societal experiments such as transgenderism and CRT and, instead, begin creating young people with sound, tested, moral structures and reinstating the rule of law. We need to fix the people who use the weapons, not restrict everything (including pencils since you can kill someone with a pencil) that creates the methodology of the mayhem. It is the person – not the weapon – and mayhem can come in any form and always has.
“every time it happens, we do just about nothing.” – Andrew McCabe
Just what America needs, a scolding from a former law enforcement official who equated subverting the will of the people with “doing something” for the public good. Screw him.
OldSchoolFool-Andrew McCabe is about as brain dead as Old Joe. Any person with a remote sense of Justice or Decency would be quiet but not Andy Baby.
Biden, McCabe and all the other FOOLS who look for something to say about “guns” use these murders for their latest sermon – without having facts to support their pontificating. (Of course, Biden even points to a weapon other than the one used in thse murders.) Get some facts before opining!
It is funny (odd) is it not, that Biden and the gun control crowd focus on the weapon rather than the perpetrator? The latest tragedy at another Christian school was a murder committed by a transgender man who was born a female and could not cope with life. Apparently that kind of person is very dangerous. By encouraging people to change their sex we are creating monsters.
I have a lot of gay friends whom I enjoy. There is nothing wrong with men preferring friendships with men, and women with women. There are subjects I can only discuss with a guy. Both men and women will tell you their best and closest friends in life are the same sex as they are. But the LGBTSQxyz movement has successfully expanded public acceptance of gay lifestyles to include transgender people. The American people haven’t noticed that. All of a sudden, if you disagree with their program to encourage and promote gender change, even in adolescents without parental knowledge, you are a bigot who also hate gay people. Hogwash, but that is how extreme movements grow these days . . . by shaming and humiliating those who disagree with them.
This latest shooting (sadly at a Christian school) in Wisconsin, where I suspect there was compassion and empathy, is a warning that women who become men may have serious problems. It starts when we decide that God made a mistake when He made me a boy or a girl.
G-d does not make mistakes. When they realize that perhaps the prog/left will just fade away.
You’re full of shit. The shooter was NOT IN ANY WAY “transgender”. Her real name was female, and so was her preferred name. The only possible conclusion from that is that she was comfortably female.
More than that, she seems to have hated all men, INCLUDING those pretending to be women. And she wasn’t a big fan of women either. But apparently she hated black people more than white people.
Well now we can’t have crack addicts, swindlers, con-artists, and liars, buying guns and tossing them in dumpsters for some youngster to find.
Oh wait…
“Not a joke”. Biden
In response to mass shootings, instead of calling to make ownership of (certain) guns illegal and passing laws to confiscate guns from legal (and responsible) gun owners, legislators should just cut to the chase and pass laws to make murder and manslaughter with a gun illegal. That should solve the problem, right? Oh, wait . . .
We can go way, way back to Moses and the 10 commandments to re-establish the “Thou shalt Not Kill” concept. G-d did not say that “Thou shalt not have weapons”. He knew that it was the evil in man’s heart that caused the death, not the available weapons of the time.
Reporting as of now, says she wrote in her own six page manifesto, she got the handgun through “lies, manipulation, and my father’s stupidity.”
So, Biden. How is any of your proposals going to stop a teenager from lying?
If Children under age want to shoot a gun, then indoctrinate/send them into the Armed Services. They can get their chance of the War front.
The Bench should sentence Minors of Gun Law Violations mandatorly into the Military for no less than 5 years of service.
Locking them up (Corrections) won’t help, if anything it will make them worse. Hard-Duty on the Front will make them see Jesus.
The draft was only two years. It’s enough.
“The Bench should sentence Minors of Gun Law Violations mandatorly into the Military for no less than 5 years of service.”
Why would you want to sentence the military to have to put up with your parenting mistakes for at least five years?
The military isn’t the Parent Surrogate Babysitter Service – fix your own fvckups. The military has other jobs to do other than being Woke, or replacement parents.
The real problem is not the guns but the people who misuse them. Most of those who commit mass shootings have mental health issues that are not properly addressed. Doctors prescribe anti-depression drugs to fight the symptoms of mental health disease but do nothing to combat the root cause. These drugs have side-effects and may very well be the cause of these mass shootings. Calling for more gun laws (that will do nothing to address the underlying problem) is comparable to putting your head in the sand, and believe there is no problem anymore.
Our way of dealing with gun violence sure seems to be working.
I mean this is what, only the 547th mass shooting this year in the U.S. with only 650 or so dead? Who cares. Let;s all send some thoughts and prayers to the deceased, that will make everyone feel better.
Good job! You noticed that all those “gun violence” measures given so much ballyhoo when implemented are apparently ineffective.
Instead of mocking “thoughts and prayers”, maybe you can offer some proven solutions?
“I mean this is what, only the 547th mass shooting this year in the U.S. with only 650 or so dead?”
I mean… George Soros told me to throw those numbers out there. Please believe me and George, and not your lying eyes.
And especially: please don’t go to the FBI UER website just to confirm my numbers on how many mass shootings and deaths I have told you have occurred so far this year.
I mean this is what, only the 547th mass shooting this year in the U.S. with only 650 or so dead?
No, not even close. Mass shootings, as that term is understood and feared by the public, are quite rare. Only a few a year. And school shootings, again as that term is understood and feared by the public, are even rarer.
Lying hacks like the so-called “Gun Violence Project” deliberately set out to scare the public and convince people that these things are happening far more often than they really are, by dishonestly including dozens of incidents that don’t fit the definition, and that most people don’t give a flying f*** about.
If gangsters shoot each other in the middle of the night, in a deserted school parking lot, on on the street half a block from a school, who cares? Let them all kill each other, and we’ll be better off. But according to these people that’s a “school shooting”.
Playing the ‘ol “gun control” scam again, eh Joe?
That is how you know when an old con man has overstayed his welcome; he/his mob get caught in their own scam. Hey Joe, you old fool, do you not recall just giving Hunter a ‘pardon’ for his “gun control” violation? Let me guess, that pablum you spew for your sycophants is not meant to apply to you and your band of hoods, right?
The siren call of progressive platitudes. Obama was a master at these vapid calls, sowing division along the way. Everyone is in favor of “sensible” gun control says Obama, without ever specifying what “sensible” means in terms of policy.
Progressive are simple folk, they have problems understanding anything beyond platitudes. When everyone agrees with their platitudes, it must be the evil gun companies, rich people, insurance companies,… that are blocking their brilliant unspecified plans.
I am surprised no one is calling for “enhanced” background checks, that is usually their go to response. Again without ever specifying their policy or how it would have stopped the shooter.
It’s time to sit back and watch the progressive stupidity.
I think anyone under 18 shouldn’t be allowed to use anything but a pen and paper to exercise their right to free speech. Above 18 all devices that allow rapid reproduction of speech should be outlawed.
Touche.
No!
I call for jailing all the AGs, DAs, etc who release criminals…also being back capital punishment and hard labor.
Make Criminals Pay!
For petty crimes I suggest re-introducing the stocks, complete with baskets of rotten eggs and vegetables nearby.
They did bring back the stocks! Sorta. I mean, you can now publically humiliate someone on Twitter! Not quite as much fun as throwing cow patties at a deserving party, but less messy. 🙂