No answer
Wielding arguments that flog a horse dead and stuffed since Appomattox, some Pennsylvania legislators recently asserted the state’s right to nullify any new federal gun law.
The bill would block any federal law that “attempts to register, restrict or ban the ownership or purchase of a firearm, magazine of a firearm, firearm accessory or ammunition.”
It would bar any federal employee from attempting to register, ban or restrict the purchase or ownership of a gun legal in Pennsylvania.
And it would commit Pennsylvania taxpayers to paying the legal cost to defend anyone in the state who wants to run out and butt heads with the feds over guns.
So much for the people who want to let you keep your own hard-earned money.
Here’s hoping this is the kind of stunt politicians pull to get an obstreperous base to simmer down so the pols then can proceed to adult discussion of serious problems.
Among the proposed new federal gun regulations are a ban on certain firearms, limitations on magazine sizes and a requirement of criminal background checks on all gun sales, including private ones.
Critics of gun control measures make points when they say such moves only heap more restrictions on law-abiding citizens while existing laws go unenforced, although those measures are never specified.
They can point to a long list of horrific mass shootings that would not have been prevented by anything now proposed in Washington.
But nullification is no answer. Pennsylvania used it vigorously once upon a time to thwart the federal fugitive slave laws and defy Washington. The war that ended slavery also closed that path of resistance.
It’s silly season on gun issues nowadays, sadly. When celebrities such as Sylvester Stallone start weighing in publicly, the public probably would like to plug its ears.
Granted, with Stallone, they forgot to click the “adjust sharpness” button before they printed him, but even a movie actor ought to think before shooting off his mouth and recall that he owes his celebrity largely to images of himself, M60 machine gun in hand, mowing people down on screen and that he just released a movie called “Bullet to the Head.”
Yet Stallone, like millions of other Americans, also sees the crux of the problem: “The biggest problem,” he said, “is not so much guns. It’s that the people that have done these things in the past 30 years are crazy.”
Yo, Harrisburg. Guns + crazy (equals) problem. That’s the easy part. We can all identify the problem.
The hard part is to try and do something that can actually work toward solving the problem. And simple solutions such as denying that easy access to guns has anything to do with the problem won’t cut it anymore.
It’s way past time for such nonsense. Everything has to be on the table, including the role of guns in our society. It’s time now for legislators on both sides of the aisle to try and do serious work in solving this very serious problem.
– Intelligencer Journal/Lancaster New Era/Sunday News