Opinion | We Cant Get Even Regular Gun Control. How Are We Going to Deal With Ghost Guns? – The New York Times

Its a tough time for gun safety in general. The Supreme Court decided to take a look at New York regulations that set a pretty high bar on the right to, say, carry a revolver in your pocket when you go out for a walk. Nobody knows whats going to happen. The Supreme Court keeps me up at night. For all kinds of reasons, Senator Richard Blumenthal of Connecticut told me.

Lawmakers from Connecticut tend to be very concerned about this kind of issue, an obsession that goes back to 2012, when a 20-year-old stole his mothers gun and then killed 26 people at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, 20 of them children.

The Newtown shooting shocked the world, and many of us simpletons that we were presumed it would be the start of a whole new American attitude toward guns.

Certainly didnt imagine that this month wed be watching activists, many of them survivors of the Parkland high school shooting in 2018, place 1,100 body bags on the National Mall. Each bag stood for about 150 lives lost to guns since Parkland including homicides, accidental gun deaths and suicides. Organizers said there was no way to include one for each victim since that would have meant 170,000 body bags.

And hows Biden, who clearly sees himself as a champion of gun safety regulation, doing? It depends on what your expectations were, Blumenthal said, carefully. While many anti-gun activists say theyve been disappointed, Blumenthal still has a lot of hope. Hes more passionate and determined than any president in my memory, the senator said.

Definitely more than the guy who came before. Like most New Yorkers, Donald Trump sympathized with gun control for most of his life. Then he began making political speeches and told people he was stunned stunned! by how enthusiastic Republican crowds got if you gave a shout-out for the right to bear arms. Instant switcheroo.

Bidens been consistent, if not always successful. His first attempt to name a director of the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives imploded when the Second Amendment lobby managed to torpedo the nomination of gun control activist David Chipman last year. Either this was impossible to win or the strategy failed, Chipman said afterward an analysis that could be used for many, many administration encounters with the United States Senate.

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Opinion | We Cant Get Even Regular Gun Control. How Are We Going to Deal With Ghost Guns? - The New York Times