"My hard-on for gun-control is this long." -DF
Always looking to capitalize on the latest tragedy for
political support, Democratic senators from the state of California—Dianne
Feinstein and Barbara Boxer have proposed the “Pause for Safety Act”. According to this article, the bill would
allow people to take out “temporary gun prevention orders” on those they
suspect are unstable or potentially threatening. Under this bill, courts can
issue orders allowing for the seizure of firearms by those who are deemed
dangerous. With the Elliot Rodgers case and several other recent spree-shootings
still fresh in everyone’s minds, it is no wonder the gun-control crowd has yet
again seen fit to exploit the victims of these tragedies as a means to push
their own agenda.
At first glance, it might seem like this bill does not
infringe on the freedom of a law-abiding citizen’s right to bear arms, but in
practice it may not be as innocuous as it appears. First of all, had this law
been in effect already, how many spree shootings would it really have stopped?
If the bill requires someone to file a temporary gun prevention order against
someone they believe to be a threat, then I fail to see how this would have
stopped any of the recent spree shooters. It takes a certain kind of disturbed
lunatic to open fire on a crowd of innocent people. Those who are bent on doing
harm to others are not likely to obey gun laws in the first place. In fact, the majority of firearms involved in murders in the United States were purchased illegally.
This bill effectively does nothing to eliminate the thousands of illegal
firearms already in North America, which aren’t going away regardless of how
many laws are passed. It is naïve to think that homicidal lunatics are going to
relinquish their firearms just because Dianne Feinstein said so. Mentally
unstable criminals are not thwarted by temporary prevention orders.
You might be saying, “Well, maybe this bill won’t actually
prevent any crimes, but it still sounds like
a good idea, right? I mean, who wants to let potentially dangerous people own
guns?” The problem with this line of reasoning is that it is not always easy to
determine whether someone is a potential threat. Whenever one of these spree
killers goes out and shoots twenty people, we always look for red flags in
their behaviour that would have allowed us to prevent the violence beforehand.
Sometimes it is quite obvious that somebody is a threat, as in the case of
Elliot Rodgers, but oftentimes you can't tell that someone is violent until they've acted out.
How then, is a court supposed to draw the line between someone who is a legitimate
threat or just a well-meaning eccentric? To me it seems as though there is no
accurate criteria by which we can label somebody as a potential threat. Without
any reliable criteria in that respect, how are the courts in a position to
issue warrants allowing for the seizure of people’s property? If this bill
becomes law, then I predict that there will be many gun-owners who will
unjustly be labelled as “potentially dangerous” and have their weapons seized
by the government. Maybe the guy who
lives on your block doesn’t like you face and decides he’s going to file a gun prevention
order on you because he feels “threatened”. Or maybe a manipulative wife files
a prevention order against her husband on a whim because she got mad at him for
some reason. If you have a decent imagination, you can probably think of
scenarios when a law like this could be abused.
This is a classic example of a group of misinformed
politicians fishing for votes by the proposition of well-meaning, albeit completely
useless legislation. It’s all about making things sound good on paper. Those who support this bill have not made an
effort to look past their knee-jerk reactionary
instincts to gun violence to consider the ineffectiveness of controlling
firearms. Taking guns away from anyone
will not prevent violence, it will only encourage it.
