Last week I suggested that if the gun bill makes it through the Senate, it will be so watered down as to be less than useless.
A large alliance of gun owners announced Sunday it supports the bipartisan compromise on gun sale background checks that senators announced last week.
The chairman of the Citizens Committee for the Right to Keep and Bear Arms, Alan Gottlieb, sent a message to members and contributors stating the bill “bans any federal gun registry and carries a 15-year prison term for anyone who violates it.”
“We protect and expand a good number of pro-gun rights measures as well,” Gottlieb continued, noting he and one of the group’s lobbyists had helped craft the deal. He cited measures like making interstate gun sales easier, and restoring gun rights to veterans, as reasons for his group’s support.
This bill, if it gets through the House and gets signed by the president, will not only be a sop to the gun lobby and make no dent whatsoever in the illegal sales of guns, it will prevent any future laws from being enacted because it will become the model for any further attempts to control them.
So after another school massacre and another round of national mourning and soul-searching and piteous cries to do something, our cowardly elected officials will point to this bill and say, “See, we did the best we could and it didn’t stop the madness.” And we’ll be right back where we started from. Again.
