#assault-style rifle bans

[dontmeantobepoliticalbut]

The Illinois Supreme Court on Friday upheld a Democratic-backed ban on assault-style rifles and large-capacity magazines enacted after a deadly mass shooting in Chicago's Highland Park suburb in 2022 that left seven people dead and dozens of others wounded.

The state's high court in a 4-3 vote rejected arguments by a group of plaintiffs led by a Republican state Representative Dan Caulkins, that the ban violated the Illinois Constitution by not applying the law equally to all citizens.

Democratic Illinois Governor J.B. Pritzker in a statement called the ruling "a win for advocates, survivors, and families alike because it preserves this nation-leading legislation to combat gun violence and save countless lives."

In January, he signed into law the measure, the Protect Illinois Communities Act, which bans the sale and distribution of many kinds of high-powered semiautomatic "assault weapons," including AK-47 and AR-15 rifles, and large-capacity magazines.

Justice Elizabeth Rochford, a Democrat, wrote that the constitution's equal protection and special legislation clauses did not bar the state's legislature from treating certain citizens differently than others by exempting them from the law.

Those exemptions applied to people who complete firearms training while employed in law enforcement, the military and private security and individuals who already owned the prohibited guns before the ban was enacted.

"The Act attempts to balance public safety against the expertise of the trained professionals and the expectation interests of the grandfathered individuals," Rochford wrote in an opinion that was joined by three of her fellow Democratic justices.

The ruling reversed a lower-court judge's ruling in the plaintiffs' favor. Justices Lisa Holder White and David Overstreet, both Republicans, and Mary Kay O’Brien, a Democrat, dissented.

The plaintiffs also argued the law violated the right to keep and bear arms under the U.S. Constitution's Second Amendment. But Rochford said the plaintiffs waived that argument by not raising it at the lower-court level.

That Second Amendment argument is central to separate ongoing federal lawsuits also challenging Illinois' law.

The conservative-majority U.S. Supreme Court last year in striking down New York state gun limits on carrying concealed firearms announced a new legal standard requiring firearms restrictions to be "consistent with this nation's historical tradition of firearm regulation."

That ruling has made it more difficult for lower courts to uphold new or existing gun regulations, several of which have been declared unconstitutional.

[soberscientistlife]

BAN ASSAULT STYLE RIFLES

[darkbanez]

So if y’all aren’t caught up with the shooting this morning:

Today, in Nashville, Tennessee, a 28 year old trans man broke into and opened fire on a Christian Elementary School.

According to CNN:

“Here's what we know so far:

About Covenant School: The school is a private Christian school founded in 2001 as a ministry of Covenant Presbyterian Church. It has an average enrollment of about 200 people in recent years, according to its website, and it teaches preschool through 6th grade.

What happened: Don Aaron, spokesperson for the Metro Nashville Police Department, said the first calls of an active shooting came in at around 10:15 a.m. local time. When officers arrived, they went through the first level of the building, he said. They then heard gunshots coming from the second level of the building, according to Aaron. He said that's where police confronted and killed the shooter at 10:27 a.m. local time.

The shooter: The shooter has been identified as 28-year-old Nashville resident Audrey Hale. The shooter was armed with a handgun and two AR-style weapons — one a rifle and an AR-style pistol, Metro Nashville Police Chief John Drake said. Two of those may have been obtained legally and locally in Nashville, Drake said. According to initial findings, the shooter was once a student at the school, he added, though he said police are unsure what years.

Prior planning: The shooter had drawn detailed maps of Covenant School, Drake said, including the entry points to the building and detailing "how this was all gonna take place." Drake said police believe the shooter shot through one of the doors to get into the school. Drake said the school was the only location targeted by the shooter. Police have also located a manifesto that they are reviewing.

The victims: The three students who were shot and killed at Covenant School were all 9 years old, police said. They have been identified as Evelyn Dieckhaus, Hallie Scruggs and William Kinney, according to police. Three adults were also killed in the shooting. They have been identified as 61-year-old Cynthia Peak, 60-year-old Katherine Koonce and 61-year-old Mike Hill, police said.

What's next: Police will spend the next two days processing the scene and working to gather more details about what happened during a shooting at a Nashville elementary school, Aaron said, adding police also intend to release video soon. Officials said they knew where the shooter lived and they have interviewed the shooter's father.

Call for gun safety legislation: President Joe Biden called the shooting at a Nashville school "heartbreaking, a family's worst nightmare," while advocating for gun reform. Biden said Congress needs to pass an assault weapons ban because we "need to do more to protect our schools." However, a bipartisan solution is extremely unlikely this Congress with a slim Democratic majority in the Senate and a GOP-led House. Nashville Mayor John Cooper said too many children are dying from guns and that the community needs to come together to support each other.

Mass shootings in America: The Nashville shooting is the 129th mass shooting in the US so far in 2023, according to data from the Gun Violence Archive. The Gun Violence Archive, like CNN, defines a mass shooting as one in which at least four people are shot, excluding the shooter.”

(via https://www.cnn.com/us/live-news/nashville-shooting-covenant-school-03-27-23/index.html)

Obviously Twitter is having a hayday with this, right-wingers seemingly celebrating the fact that the shooter was transgender.

If you choose to care more about what the shooter identified as, rather than the LITERAL children and teachers that were killed, you are a despicable human being and you deserve everything that comes to you.

Please feel free to add more info in reblogs/replies!

[sirfrogsworth]

We might not know enough about guns to regulate them properly.

Some folks on the Left probably need to learn more about guns.

I've seen so many people pronounce loudly that banning the AR-15 is the single greatest thing we could do to stop mass shootings.

But I'm afraid it is much more complicated than that.

During the first assault weapons ban in the 90s, legislators had trouble defining the weapons they wanted to ban so they included details like no bayonet lugs or foldable stocks or pistol grips. I guess they were trying to find aspects that a lot of these weapons had in common in order to identify which guns to ban. But soon after, gun manufacturers just left these elements out of their designs and made essentially the same guns.

Despite some dubious statistics I've seen on Twitter about this 90s ban being amazingly effective, most experts found that the ban had little to no effect on firearm deaths or the lethality of gun crimes. People just used different guns that weren't banned.

Beyond that, the AR-15 is one model of gun from one manufacturer. There are tons of copycat designs from other brands. There are kits you can build yourself. You can even 3D print all of the non-metallic parts. Not to mention there are plenty of assault weapons that have similar characteristics. The AK-47 uses even more powerful ammunition.

And then there is this "ranch rifle."

It doesn't look like a scary Rambo gun, but it shoots the same bullets as the AR-15 and has large capacity magazines. It is functionally the same.

Would this be included in the ban? Or would our legislators think it is just a harmless varmint rifle used for shooting pests on the farm as the marketing suggests?

There is also the fact that most shootings take place at short distances where even small caliber handguns would be plenty lethal and effective for a mass shooting. Bigger rifles send the rounds out quicker and can penetrate better at longer distances, so the casualty count might be a little higher versus a handgun. But at the most common distances, I don't know if it would be a huge difference. Las Vegas might have been less deadly due to the shooter firing from a longer distance, but he could have also used much higher caliber hunting rifles, though with a slower rate of fire. If 20 people die instead of 60, that is certainly an improvement, but probably not the result people are hoping for with these bans.

I guess what I'm trying to say is there are so many options when it comes to firearms that I just don't know if gun bans are going to be the solution to this issue. I think focusing resources on identifying dangerous people and preventing them from getting weapons in the first place might be a better place to start. Mandatory training, gun licenses, liability insurance, and expensive background checks could all be used as barriers for a dangerous person to acquire a gun. We could also flag large ammo purchases.

Getting rid of one style of gun when there are hundreds of other flavors of gun that can do a similar amount of damage doesn't seem like it will do much in the grand scheme. Creating hoops for bad people to jump through so that hopefully they get snagged in one of them might work better.

If we were to do gun bans, I think it should be more like... every household is allowed one revolver for self defense and all other firearms must be secured at a gun club or shooting range.

But that feels like a pipe dream in this country.

The sad truth is the toothpaste may be out of the tube. We literally have more guns than people right now. How would we logistically confiscate millions of guns? Especially from people who might use those guns to try and prevent said confiscation.

Honestly, I'm not sure we can actually solve this problem. At best maybe we can make it slightly less bad.

[mariacallous]

On June 19, 2021, a convoy of armed men drove into the border city of Reynosa, Mexico, in the state of Tamaulipas, and opened fire on pedestrians. For more than eight hours, gunmen roamed four neighborhoods, kidnapping and killing 15 people, including two cab drivers, a nursing student, and a group of construction workers. After security forces were deployed throughout the city, four suspected gunmen were killed. In the days that followed, rumors spread on social media. People in Reynosa were afraid to go back out into the streets, factories shortened their night hours to protect their employees, and local businesses closed early.

Three days later, the attorney general of Tamaulipas, Irving Barrios Mojica, said the motive of the attack was to destabilize Mexican society. The attackers belonged to a cartel that was looking to gain control of the area surrounding the Pharr-Reynosa International Bridge, which straddles the U.S.-Mexico border. The authorities seized a formidable amount of weaponry from the men: about 180 cartridge cases in total, as well as five long guns, and several .223-caliber magazines, which are commonly used in AR-style semi-automatic rifles. These weapons had one thing in common: They came from the United States.

The Reynosa massacre is just one recent entry in a long list of violent acts committed with U.S.-made weapons in Mexican territory. At least 70 percent of guns recovered at crime scenes in Mexico between 2014 and 2018 were trafficked into the country from the United States. Although the exact number of weapons smuggled across the border is uncertain, a study quoted by the Mexican government estimates that 2.2 percent of the nearly 40 million guns manufactured annually in the United States make their way into Mexico, amounting to more than half a million weapons a year. Hidden inside vehicles, appliances, and furniture or trafficked by sea in sealed shipping containers, U.S.-made weapons are bringing violence from north to south, according to the Mexican government.

In 2021, Mexico filed an unprecedented lawsuit against U.S. weapons manufacturers and a firearms distributor in the District Court in Boston, the first suit filed by a foreign government against the U.S. gun industry. The lawsuit names gun manufacturers such as Barrett Firearms Manufacturing, Colt’s Manufacturing Company, Smith & Wesson Brands, Glock, Beretta, and Century International Arms and aims to hold them responsible for facilitating the flow of weapons across the border.

The complaint was dismissed by the District Court in September 2022, and Mexico filed an appeal in March. On July 24, the Mexican government urged the U.S. Court of Appeals in Boston to revive the suit, arguing that a U.S. law does not protect U.S. gun manufacturers from being sued over gun trafficking that leads to violence in Mexico. A ruling is expected in the coming months, but this lawsuit could potentially set a precedent for cross-border litigation and strengthen the global fight against the illicit arms trade. The Mexican government is seeking at least $10 billion in damages for economic harm, yet the primary aim of the lawsuit is more ambitious: to curb gun trafficking by forcing changes to the business practices of U.S. gun companies and pushing for tighter controls on their distribution systems.

Mexico has strict national gun laws. There is only one store in the country where individuals can legally purchase a gun. The store is owned and operated by the military, and fewer than 50 gun permits are issued annually, mainly to prominent businesspeople, public figures, or individuals who have been the victim of a crime and need a firearm for protection, said Lt. Col. Israel Martínez Valdés from the Federal Registry of Firearms and Control of Explosives, responsible for gun permits.

After a U.S. ban on assault weapons expired in 2004, the Mexican government’s suit argues, U.S. gun manufacturers increased production, “particularly of the military-style assault weapons favored by the drug cartels.” The lawsuit alleges that this accompanied a dramatic increase in homicides across the border after 2004. One of the most common types of gun smuggling across the U.S.-Mexico border is the hormigas (“ants”) method, in which straw buyers—intermediaries with clean records who are sent to buy guns on behalf of third parties—pass weapons on to traffickers, who smuggle them in small quantities.

Zulia Orozco Reynoso and Gerardo Hernández, researchers at the Autonomous University of Baja California in northern Mexico, explained that local gun shows in the United States lack restrictions and controls, which makes it easier for weapons to cross the border undetected. Dealers purchase large quantities of guns from distributors and resell them at gun shows with no paperwork and no questions asked, the Mexican government’s suit states. Private or unlicensed sellers at gun shows in the United States are not required to conduct background checks or maintain records linking weapons to buyers, a fact known as the “gun show loophole” or “private sale exception.” Traffickers can buy several guns at once and smuggle them in private vehicles without being monitored by U.S. or Mexican authorities.

The California-Baja California border region, which stretches for 120 miles, is one of the busiest land border crossings in the world. Yet while an enormous law enforcement operation ensures that people do not travel from south to north unauthorized, movement from north to south is far less surveilled. The guns “come by land, by air, by sea, and through the tunnels along the border,” Hernández said.

Much of this trafficking is done by people with dual citizenship or Americans hired by drug cartels. Mexican citizens can face up to 10 years in prison for trafficking a gun and up to 30 years for trafficking weapons intended exclusively for military use. Yet foreigners introducing a single weapon to the country for the first time are merely fined, Orozco Reynoso said, and the weapon is returned to them when they leave the country.

“The risks for Mexicans are greater, or at least they are not given a second chance, unlike Americans,” Orozco Reynoso added.

Dangerous weapons don’t just end up in the hands of criminal cartels. Law enforcement and members of the Mexican defense ministry, the nation’s sole authorized importer of firearms, have also committed atrocities with U.S.-manufactured firearms. A 2018 report by the Mexican Commission for the Defense and Promotion of Human Rights affirms that legally imported firearms have been used by police and military units in gross human rights abuses. The local police who attacked the 43 Ayotzinapa students who disappeared in September 2014 were armed with legally imported Colt AR-6530 rifles. In 2011, a man was arrested in Tamaulipas for allegedly belonging to a criminal organization; while he was in custody, a navy lieutenant killed him with a 5.56 mm Colt M16 rifle.

Legally acquired firearms from military and law enforcement stocks are also diverted with the cooperation of corrupt authorities. Between 2006 and 2017, more than 20,000 firearms were reported as lost or stolen, according to the Mexican defense ministry. Last year, a leak of more than 4 million confidential documents from the ministry by the hacker activist group Guacamaya revealed that high-level military members had sold guns, grenades, and tactical equipment to criminal organizations.

U.S. gun manufacturers know that their marketing and distribution practices have caused harm in Mexican territory, the Mexican government claims. According to its complaint, U.S. gun manufacturers have not implemented public safety measures in their distribution systems, such as comprehensive training for dealers and a code of conduct that requires distributors to keep better track of their inventories. Mexico contends that U.S. gun manufacturers design semi-automatic rifles that can be easily modified to fire automatically, a feature sought after among cartels. These practices “aid and abet the killing and maiming of children, judges, journalists, police, and ordinary citizens throughout Mexico,” the lawsuit says.

For Alejandro Celorio, Mexico’s lead attorney and spokesperson for the foreign ministry, this “lack of care” facilitates the illegal trade in their weapons. “It’s the number of guns but also the type of guns that are sold in the United States with total irresponsibility,” Celorio said. In the United States, “guns are sold to someone who wants to kill children in a kindergarten or to someone who works with organized crime.”

Mexico argues that these companies have access to firearms trace data that identifies specific networks of distributors and dealers that regularly supply drug cartels in Mexico. Based on reports from the U.S. Justice Department’s Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms, and Explosives, the Mexican government revealed that over a four-year period in the mid-2000s, more than 500 Century Arms WASR-10 rifles originally purchased in the United States were seized at crime scenes in Mexico. Yet Century Arms, the lawsuit claims, continued to supply its rifles to the same distributors and dealers. (Century Arms did not respond to a request for comment.)

The U.S. gun-makers filed a joint motion in 2021 to dismiss Mexico’s claims, arguing that the injury is not traceable to the gun manufacturers but rather stems from violence committed by criminals in Mexico. They further argue that allowing foreign law to apply “would invite other nations to likewise invoke their own laws to attack the U.S. firearms industry.”

“The scope of liability the complaint suggests well exceeds what any U.S. court would permit at common law, even under strict product liability. And such a pervasive assault on the firearm industry would imperil civilian access to firearms—a right guaranteed by both the U.S. and Massachusetts constitutions,” the joint motion states.

On Sept. 30, 2022, when Judge F. Dennis Saylor dismissed Mexico’s lawsuit, he stated that “while the Court has considerable sympathy for the people of Mexico,” the Mexican government’s claims do not outweigh the protections provided to gun manufacturers by the Protection of Lawful Commerce in Arms Act (PLCAA), a U.S. federal statute that bars lawsuits seeking to hold gun manufacturers liable when individuals use their guns illegally. Since 2005, the PLCAA has granted gun manufacturers and dealers broad immunity from lawsuits when deadly crimes are committed with their products. Saylor added that while the PLCAA contains several exceptions, such as claims for damage caused by a defective firearm or for entrusting a gun to someone the dealer knows is high risk, none apply in this case.

However, in its appeal, the Mexican government argues that because crimes were committed on Mexican territory, U.S. federal law does not apply; instead, Mexico should be allowed to sue the companies for breaches of Mexican law. When U.S.-based corporations cause injury abroad, the U.S. Constitution and statutes allow other nations to sue for violations of their own laws, the lawsuit states. It further argues that the defendants violated Connecticut and Massachusetts consumer protection laws by knowingly marketing their products to criminals and drug cartels.

Heidi Li Feldman, a law professor at Georgetown University and an expert on gun litigation, said the Sandy Hook settlement provides a road map for how to circumvent PLCAA protections with consumer protection laws. In that case, the families of nine victims of the 2012 shooting at Sandy Hook Elementary School argued that Remington Arms, the manufacturer of the AR-style semi-automatic rifle used in the shooting, violated state laws by marketing its Bushmaster XM15-E2S to “at-risk” young men as a combat weapon and allowing the gun to be depicted in video games. They reached a $73 million settlement with Remington in 2022.

“The suit’s going to be fiercely fought on the grounds of whether PLCAA applies to it in the first instance,” Feldman said. The PLCAA was never meant to apply extraterritorially, she said, and it would be “politically unpopular” in the United States to allow foreign governments to sue.

Mexico filed a second lawsuit in a U.S. federal court in October 2022, this time against five gun dealers in Arizona. That lawsuit seeks to prove that the dealers knowingly sold weapons to straw purchasers.

The complex and extensive web of protections for U.S. gun manufacturers, mainly created by the PLCAA, makes it difficult for Mexico to beat the industry. But the lawsuits have received international support. Among those who submitted supporting amicus curiae briefs are U.S. prosecutors and district attorneys, activists, victims of armed violence from both sides of the border, and Latin American and Caribbean countries that argue that guns smuggled across the U.S.-Mexico border do not end up only in Mexico—they continue to flow into other countries throughout the Western Hemisphere, while more weapons are transported from the United States directly to the rest of the region via shipping companies and commercial airlines.

“We have come a long way, and this conversation about the illicit arms trade is becoming more and more questioning about the irresponsibility of companies,” said Celorio, the lead attorney.

A new piece of legislation in the United States, the first major federal gun safety law passed in nearly 30 years, also may change smuggling patterns. Signed into law in June 2022, the Bipartisan Safer Communities Act cracks down on straw purchasers, allowing them to be punished with up to 15 years in prison or 25 years if the firearms are linked to serious criminal activity such as drug trafficking. In September 2022, a 25-year-old U.S. citizen living in Mexico was driving south to the port in Laredo, Texas, with 17 handguns. He is the first person to be convicted under the new law. According to Justice Department officials, between Jan. 21, 2020, and July 11, 2022, the 25-year-old purchased 231 handguns.

The success of the Mexican lawsuits, however, depends largely on lifting the general immunity that the PLCAA grants to the powerful gun industry and lobby. A win for Mexico could open the door for other foreign governments to sue U.S. gun-makers for violence in their countries. Whatever the outcome, the litigation raises a question that the United States has not wanted to answer: Who will hold U.S. gun manufacturers responsible for the violence they cause abroad?

[allthecanadianpolitics]

The Liberal government is introducing a revised set of amendments to its pending gun legislation after dropping some initial changes that sparked outcry from firearm owners.

Public Safety Minister Marco Mendicino said Tuesday the amendments to Bill C-21 include a new definition of prohibited firearms that encompasses certain "assault-style" rifles.

"These reforms are about keeping AR-15 assault-style firearms off of our streets while at the same time respecting gun owners," he told a press conference.

In May 2020, the government announced a ban on roughly 1,500 makes and models of military-grade and "assault-style" weapons in Canada. [...]

Continue Reading.

Tagging: @politicsofcanada

[dontmeantobepoliticalbut]

Congresswoman Lauren Boebert was filmed wordlessly threw throwing away a pamphlet calling for gun reform and sharing the story of Maite Rodriguez, one of the 19 students fatally shot in the 2022 Uvalde school massacre.

Anti-gun violence activist Sarah Fishkind filmed the interaction in the Capitol on Tuesday.

The Republican representative from Colorado is seen quickly grabbing the pamphlet and then throwing it in the trash, as a bystander is heard off-camera saying, “We hope you take action on gun violence prevention.”

In a separate video, the pamphlet is in a nearby trash can.

Activists, including Parkland survivor David Hogg, condemned the interaction.

“Lauren Boebert just threw away a pamphlet of a mother fighting to honor her child who was gunned down and murdered in her classroom,” he wrote on Twitter. “This is how Congress treats survivors.”

The flier included testimony from Maite’s mother and a green pin, modeled after the green Converse sneakers the student’s family used to help identify her body.

“On that fateful morning, my daughter walked out of our home, not knowing she would never return to her mother,” the pamphlet read. “It was the last week of school and she was excited about watching movies with her friends.”

“Maite, her classmates, and her teachers were killed with an AT-15 style rifle in their classrooms. ENOUGH IS ENOUGH,” it continued. “We must ban assault weapons in this country and protect our children.”

The Independent has contacted Rep. Boebert for comment.

Lives Robbed told The Independent in a statement, “The video of Rep. Boebert throwing out the pin of Maite’s Shoes is disgusting and beyond insulting. We will not be resharing the video.”

Ms. Boebert, who once ran a gun-themed restaurant in Colorado called Shooters Grill, is a staunch opponent of gun control laws.

In June, she was accused of blowing past gun violence survivors hoping to speak with her in Washington.

She has previously compared new gun laws to banning planes after 9/11.

“When 9/11 happened, we didn’t ban planes,” she told Fox News earlier this year. “We secured the cockpit.”

“I want our schools secured, I want their children protected, and I want teachers that can protect themselves and their students,” she added. “And you know what? We can achieve this without trying to disarm law-abiding citizens.”

She has previously mocked Mr. Hogg online, telling him to “give it a rest” when he criticised her record on safety issues.

[soberscientistlife]

Ban assault style rifles and save lives.

[trashwaaveactual]

So, we've banned "assault style weapons" and "frozen the market" on handguns in Canada. How is this possible?

"Crimes with all weapons types have risen, with handguns (50 per cent), rifles or shotguns (45 per cent) and fully automatic firearms (35 per cent) seeing double-digit increases."

Fully automatic and select fire firearms have been banned since the fifties.

How did the Liberals manage to increase that?

Makes this make sense....

@liberalsarecool @allthecanadianpolitics

[freetheshit-outofyou]

I want to point out that every law on the books, red flag laws, bans on Semi-Automatic style rifles and standard capacity magazines, laws prohibiting murder, assault, use of a firearm in the commission of a crime, discharge of a firearm in a congested area, aggravated discharge of a firearm, aggravated battery with a firearm, attempted murder and dozens of stacking charges per victim did nothing to deter this cowardly attack. The reason all of that failed is criminals don't give a fuck about laws. It's literally in their actions to not give a fuck about laws. So, when the left is screaming for more laws, more bans, I need them to first explain why all the things they want passed all over the nation stopped nothing in Highland park? How their utopia of gun control still could not stop an attack by a determined criminal? I'd also like to know how punishing law abiding Citizens, stops criminals from being criminals? Or is it that they just want to create criminals out of the law abiding?

[xlntwtch2]

from september 26, 2023 AP news article...

"...The federal government already taxes the sale of guns and ammunition at either 10% or 11%, depending on the type of gun. The law Newsom signed adds another 11% tax on top of that — making it the only state with its own tax on guns and ammunition, according to the gun control advocacy group Brady...

"Newsom is in the middle of a national campaign to amend the U.S. Constitution to restrict gun sales to people over 21, require extensive background checks, impose a waiting period for purchases and ban the sale of assault-style weapons. Restrictions like that are in place in some states, but not in the Constitution...

"Also on Tuesday, Newsom signed a law overhauling the state’s rules for carrying concealed weapons. The new rules are a reaction to a new standard for interpreting the nation’s gun laws that the U.S. Supreme Court issued last year. California’s new law bans people from carrying guns in nearly all public places — including public parks and playgrounds — public demonstrations and gatherings, amusement parks, churches, banks and any place where alcohol is sold...

"Chuck Michel, president of the California Rifle and Pistol Association, criticized the new laws — calling them unconstitutional...

"...The tax has some exceptions. It would not apply to police officers and it would not apply to businesses with sales of less than $5,000 over a three-month period. State officials estimate it would generate about $159 million annually.

The law says the first $75 million of that money must go to the California Violence Intervention and Prevention Grant Program. The program has funded projects targeting young people in gangs, including sports programs, life coaching and tattoo removal.

The next $50 million would go to the State Department of Education to boost security at public schools. That includes things like physical security improvements, safety assessments, after-school programs for at-risk students and mental and behavioral health services for students, teachers and other school employees.

California has some of the lowest gun death rates in the country, ranking 43rd out of 50 states with 9 deaths for every 100,000 people, according to 2021 data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention..."

[beardedmrbean]

The Liberal government has withdrawn a series of controversial amendments to pending firearms legislation, Bill C-21, that some firearms owners say would have unfairly targeted hunters and farmers.

Faced with fierce opposition from Conservative, NDP and Bloc MPs and firearms rights groups, Liberal MP Taleeb Noormohamed said Friday the government is withdrawing a long list of guns that would have been classified as "prohibited" as part of a push to ban "assault-style" weapons.

The amendments, which were quietly tabled by a Liberal backbench MP in November, would have banned these weapons under the Criminal Code, rather than through regulation. That change would have made the prohibition much more difficult for future governments to reverse.

The government is scrapping clauses that effectively would have banned any rifle or shotgun that could accept a magazine with more than five rounds — whether it actually has such a magazine or not.

The government also intended to ban long guns that generate more than 10,000 joules of energy, or any gun with a muzzle wider than 20 millimetres — two rules that would have rendered many firearms illegal.

These amendments would have had the effect of banning a number of long guns in wide use by hunters.

C-21, as originally drafted, was designed to ban handguns. The amendments expanded its scope.

Because the amendments strayed so dramatically from how the bill was initially written, opposition parties questioned whether the changes were even admissible under parliamentary rules. Those concerns are moot now that the government has backed down.

The government will still push ahead with C-21, which enacts a handgun sales ban, cracks down on gun smuggling and automatically revokes firearms licences held by domestic abusers.

While backtracking on some of the more contentious elements, Public Safety Minister Marco Mendicino said Friday the government would try to revive some parts of the now-defunct amendments package.

Among other changes, the withdrawn amendments would have defined "assault-style firearm" — a term often used by the government that has no definition in law.

In an interview with CBC's Power & Politics, Mendicino said the government will pursue some sort of ban on firearms "designed for the battlefield that have no place in our communities."

What's needed in this minority Parliament, Mendicino said, is support from either the NDP or Bloc — parties that withheld support in the face of backlash from rural dwellers and some Indigenous peoples.

Mendicino conceded the government bungled the process.

"We've got to accept responsibility from where we're at. The step we've taken today is about resetting the narrative," he said, promising the Liberal government still intends to ban firearms used in mass casualty events, like the semi-automatic weapon used in the Quebec City mosque massacre.

Mendicino had defended the amendments before Friday, saying the changes were necessary to reduce gun violence in Canada.

Critics said a ban on popular hunting rifles would do little to make Canadians safer when many crime guns are handguns illegally smuggled over the U.S. border.

Mendicino said the proposed amendments prompted "considerable discussion about the best way to move forward" and "legitimate concerns" were raised by critics "about the need for more consultation and debate."

"We hear those concerns loud and clear, regret the confusion that this process has caused and are committed to a thoughtful and respectful conversation that is based on facts, not fear," he said.

Mendicino said the government didn't draft the amendments to punish rural Canadians, hunters or Indigenous people who rely on these firearms.

"As we've said time and again, the government's intent is to focus on AR-15s and other assault-style weapons. Hunting isn't just a proud Canadian tradition, it's a way of life for communities across this country. Bill C-21 isn't about targeting hunters. It's about certain guns that are too dangerous in other contexts," he said.

PolySeSouvient, a gun control group, said it was "shocked" by the government's decision.

Some guns used for hunting may still fall under firearms ban, Liberal MP says

How Bill C-21 turned from banning handguns to hunting guns

"It is clear that the misinformation propagated by Conservative MPs and the gun lobby has won," said Nathalie Provost, a spokesperson for the group.

Provost said she wants the Liberal government to work with the NDP and Bloc Québécois to table legislation to deliver on its promise to ban assault weapons.

The Liberal government has already banned what it calls "assault-style" firearms through an order-in-council — a directive from cabinet enacted in May 2020 after the Portapique massacre in Nova Scotia.

The intent of the now-withdrawn Bill C-21 amendments was to codify that assault ban in law (an order-in-council can easily be revoked by another government) and add many more makes and models to the list of illegal firearms.

Government House Leader Mark Holland said the government "needs more time" to consult with the firearms community before reviving some of the amendments that were scrapped — including a section that would have banned "ghost guns," which can be bought online and assembled at home.

Meanwhile, a spokesperson for the Canadian Coalition for Firearm Rights, a firearms lobby group, called the Liberal reversal "a small win in a bigger battle."

"It's imperative we crush #C21 in its entirety. The Liberals are retreating, now is the perfect time to push forward and #ScrapC21 altogether," Tracey Wilson said. "Good work. Now, let's refocus and scrap it all."

Conservative Leader Pierre Poilievre said Friday he "forced Trudeau into a temporary and humiliating climb down."

"He desperately wanted to ban hunting rifles — it was a sucker punch to our lawful and licensed firearms owners," Poilievre said of the amendments. "He's doing this because he got caught. We will not let up. Conservatives will never allow Justin Trudeau to ban hunting rifles."

Poilievre said he described the Liberal backtracking as "temporary," adding he expects Trudeau will be back with another plan to target rural Canadians, Indigenous peoples and sport shooters who used these firearms.

"God forbid if he ever got a majority — he'd ram it through," Poilievre said.

NDP Leader Jagmeet Singh said he supports both a national handgun ban and a move to restrict "assault-style" weapons, but he described the government's management of the file as a "failure."

"It is clear that the Liberal government did not do the necessary work and they mismanaged the entire issue. That is clear," Singh told reporters, adding the government bungled Indigenous consultation on the issue.

"They endangered the work we need to do to protect our communities."

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When will you gun nuts realize that Universal Background checks and Red Flag Laws will go a long way to stop School Shootings. We don't have to ban AR-15s to do this.

“Gun nuts”.

You have the freedom to do anything you do in the USA because somebody else took up a gun and risked their life, honor, fortune and more. The right to own a gun is not just for protection and hunting…. It is literally a natural right to keep government in check. What other rights do think need a background check to exercise? Just who gets to determine why another person must give up their God given rights because of something in the past?

We have background checks. Hunter Biden lied on his, clearly broke the law, yet folks like you aren’t calling for his arrest.

Red Flag laws? They are unconstitutional. Here is the thing. Around 99 percent of all legally owned guns will never be used in a crime. Yet you want to go after responsible people in the quest of your Utopia. Utopia is a myth. Freedom is dangerous.. less freedom is even more dangerous. Care about children? Advocate for the training and arming of teachers. Mass shooters love “no gun” zones and avoid places where the victims are armed. Also eliminate the publishing of the shooter’s name and image. They lust for infamy.

Put this another way? Do you trust the government? Any government or party? It’s sad if you do. Power corrupts and government is powerful. So it’s not about guns, background checks and idiotic red flag laws. It’s about keeping the government… and regular bad guys in check. Over 2.5 million civilians use a weapon to prevent death, injury and theft every year. The actual number is likely significantly higher.

Want to protect kids? Arm and train the adults around them.

I note that 11 teens a day die due to texting and driving. Hundreds of thousands injured annually. No headlines, no national horror. No national movements to ban teens from driving, an activity that kills over 4,000 teens annually.

You want to end school shootings?

Arm and train the teachers who want to do so. Keep the knowledge of who is armed private. Have classroom doors hardened so each classroom is its own safe room. Have video cameras in every room and hallway in the school. Make sure that the police can easily access to the video feed in an emergency.

When the police arrive they will instantly know where the shooter is. No need to waste valuable time and manpower to clear every room while searching for the shooter. Seconds count in active shooter events.

The fact is every shooter is mentally unhinged. Interestingly enough the overwhelming majority of mass shooters are progressives.

Some want to go after the AR style of rifles. AR stands  armaLite, not assault rifle. All rifles account for only 2.6% of murder annually in the USA. In 2019 rifles were used in 364 homicides. 1,476 deaths were caused by knives and cutting instruments. 1,591 deaths were caused by hammers and blunt objects. Rifles cause less death than hammers and knives by a large factor.

They bottom line is there are many solutions to better protect the lives of students and educators that don’t impinge on the natural rights of all citizens. They are cost effective and can be implemented on the local level. Those that want to leave students at risk can choose to do so. This is Federalism. Each state deciding what is best for itself.

Yes there are gun nuts in the USA. They are hoplophobes.