Corey Booker: [redacted] remarks are a “bullshit soup of ineffective words.”

per the Washington Post:

“In one voice, our nation must condemn racism, bigotry and white supremacy,” [redacted] said. “Hatred warps the mind, ravages the heart and devours the soul.”

If that was all he had to say, it would have been OK.  But he went on to blame “fake news”, video games, mental illness, and call for “red flag” laws to prevent people with adjudicated mental illness from owning guns.  Which would be good, but none of the mass shooters were recognized as ill before going on their rampages…  He dropped any mention of background checks, although he had brought this up in his tweets.

At a minimum, universal background checks for all gun sales and transfers are needed.  The handguns used in crimes in places like Chicago are often bought out of state; Indiana has looser gun laws than Illinois, and there is a lively trade in cheap handguns flowing from Indiana to Chicago.  People who live in Chicago who want guns take advantage of the lack of background checks for private gun sales in Indiana.  A similar dynamic exists in several large cities, like New York in relation to  New Jersey.  So universal background checks may actually make a slight difference.

Restrictions on sales of rifles with semi-automatic actions and removable magazines would have the most impact, if combined with mandatory buy-backs of those already in circulation.  This would be political dynamite in the US and extremely expensive if successful buy-backs were implemented.  I suspect that extremists would cause havoc if there were any attempt to remove such rifles from private hands in the US.  This was done in Australia and New Zealand successfully, but there were far fewer rifles in circulation and a much less fractious population affected.

On the other hand, loosening restrictions on weapons of war would be welcomed by extreme gun enthusiasts.  Allowing sales of hand grenades and grenade launchers, bazookas, recoilless rifles, suppressors (popularly known as “silencers”), even obsolete tanks, would make future massacres much more interesting.

(photo courtesy of pixabay.com)