The gun debate is what it is. We've all seen it over the years, and the gun control side always says they're just trying to enact a few "commonsense" gun laws and seem really put out that we're not willing to embrace them.
And, to be fair, a lot of people would if we thought for a minute that would be the end of it. And anti-gunners is Massachusetts are proving that it wouldn't be.
See, the state is among the most restrictive in the entire nation. They just passed still more last year.
And, it seems, it's still not enough. Let's start with the headline, "Massachusetts has some of the nation’s strictest gun laws, but why some say it’s not enough," and recognize that no, for them, it never will be.
The 2024 law bans ghost guns and firearm components; mandates live-fire training for gun license applicants; expands red flag laws to allow health care professionals to petition for firearm removal if they believe users pose an imminent threat to life; and imposes new limits on where firearms can be carried in public.
Day said the training course was implemented for new licensed gun owners so they can use it safely. He said there’s been pushback from the National Rifle Association to tear down this law.
State Rep. Michael Day, D-Stoneham, authored a bill that Gov. Maura Healey signed into law last year, requiring all guns to have serial numbers and that all new gun owners undergo live firearms training.
“If they (NRA) can knock it out in Massachusetts, they can run the country,” Day said. “We’re gonna say no in Massachusetts.”
He said lawmakers held a listening tour that occurred before the law’s passage, and they heard from the Gun Owners’ Action League. He said both parties agreed that live firearms training for new gun owners can help improve safety for everyone involved.
But Jim Wallace, executive director of Westborough-based Gun Owners’ Action League, said that distrust in legislative efforts on gun safety, saying during a telephone interview that the law only goes after lawful gun owners.
“The fact that they supposedly included people and had a listening tour was nothing but a sham,” he said. “You know we tried in vain to work with them and they just lied to us the entire time about what this bill was gonna be about.”
And let's understand that this report starts with someone recounting losing their child to so-called gun violence. I'm sympathetic to anyone who loses someone they love to violent crime. I know the feeling better than I'd like.
But she also notes that it was carried out by someone who wasn't allowed to have a gun in Massachusetts. The gun laws didn't work, so she wants more.
That really doesn't make any sense.
And the fact that the Gun Owners' Action League says they were lied to only makes everything about a thousand times worse. It's bad enough to pass it, but when you say you're working with a pro-gun group, but just lie about what you're really doing and using a listening tour as nothing more than a cloak to hide in and say you listened to the people, it's disgusting.
But now we can see that no amount of gun control is ever enough, in part because there's an entire industry built around perpetuating the idea that every failure of gun control is proof that more is needed. Every single time it doesn't do what it was said to do, they can spin it as proof that the issue is simply not enough of it in place.
Massachusetts has some of the most restrictive laws in the nation, but the anti-gun beast there isn't interested in accepting that, even though they brag that their efforts are why the state has a low crime rate--I disagree, of course, because there are a lot of other factors that go into play in violent crime, but this is what they claim.
So they claim victory where they can, then claim the problem where their efforts fail is because there's just not enough.
That's because, for these people, it will never be enough.
Too many people are way too invested financially in keeping this up. They can't afford to draw the line anywhere. They need to winnow down gun rights in a state like Massachusetts as much as they can, but always leaving at least a little something to take, even without a Second Amendment proving to be a barrier to what they'd really like to have.
For all their pontificating on "bought and paid for politicians" on the pro-gun side, money plays just as much of a role in their own efforts, including the anti-gun activist grift where they can't ever afford to say a law didn't work.
