Please excuse me for being blunt, but if you think these bills have anything to do with reducing crime, you are a misled fool!!
Bill
I don't take offense. This is a place for debate as far as I'm concerned. I don't think these officials writing the laws are bad or have malicious intent but I do think they are pandering to a group of people who are misguided by the media, ignorant of how guns work and the current laws surrounding them, and how new laws would affect gun owners. People can fall into two categories when it comes to safety. You're either willing to do what is necessary to protect yourself or you want other people to do it for you. And in general a lot of people don't want that responsibility so they feel like other people shouldn't be allowed to either and that's where bad intent starts to creep in.
These laws aren't going to reduce crime by any measurable amount. I doubt criminals will care about an extra felony charge. But it lets politicians go back to their voters and say "We passed some gun control legislation, vote for me again next election and I'll continue to fight for you" So they get those points without actually having done anything meaningful to stop crime. And since there's more of them in office right now they get to do that. The law basically amounts to "We don't care where you got them but you didn't get them here." Which in itself could still be fought in court depending on how other cases go. This is probably as far as they'll be able to get with it if the CA magazine ban goes to the supreme court.
Also bear in mind that more new people are buying guns than ever before and great deal of them are women and people of color which is a large portion of the democratic electorate. I think the gun control argument is losing steam in the face of real world realities where people realize you can't count on the police when it really matters and police are taking a more cautious approach in the face of heightened media scrutiny. If the police can't fight crime effectively then owning a gun is the best way to stay safe.
Our job is to inject some common sense into the discussion and counter their statistics with our own. We could do a much better job at educating people about gun violence and countering the narrative that more guns equals more death. The next few years should prove that even with all the new guns out "on the streets", the murder rate should drop as people's lives become more stable. 2020 was a hell of a year.
Don’t see how having our rights flushed down the toilet is an “improvement”. We should concede nothing.
I don't think we're conceding anything just yet. I don't see these new developments as another attack. I think this is a huge success that the force of our arguments has caused them to rethink their bill to the point where it's almost meaningless. Hopefully in the next election those running for office will be able to reach all those new gun owners.